The turn of events in the Middle East only demonstrates one more time how difficult it is to predict history before it happens.

There was overwhelming conventional wisdom in the West, and in the Middle East Arab establishment as well, that the “Arab Street” was reliably anti-American and anti-Israel, and not the least inclined (nor able) to overthrow various totalitarian regimes that had been put in place decades ago. Particularly “safe” were the affluent Emirates, Morocco (where the king was respected), and the one-man rule of Libya,, Tunisia, Egypt and Yemen. If any dictatorships were in danger, they were the kingdoms of Saudi Arabia and Jordan, both friendly to the U.S.

While there is unrest in Jordan, and potential insurrection in Saudi Arabia, these are not the current flashpoints of upheaval in the Middle East today.

It is uncertain what the timetable will be for Mr. Kaddafi’s departure, but there can be little doubt that his cruel regime will end soon.

Only the police state of Syria remains to fit the conventional wisdom of the recent past.

A new conventional wisdom emerged quickly after the fall of the Tunisian and Egyptian regimes. That was that the revolts sparked by the Arab youth in the’ region would soon be replaced by extremist Islamicist leaders and groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood. So far this is not happening, as the Arab masses seem to be insisting on the creation of democratic structures, and the introduction of new civil rights, particularly for women, in those states where dictatorships have been replaced. Of course, it is very early, and the transformation of the Middle East, almost certainly, will be a long and painful process. Totalitarian forces, anywhere in the world, do not ever play “fair,” nor are they ever transparent in their goals and intentions. Historically, they have, since the Hitler regime in Nazi Germany, been willing to use democratic elections to gain power before employing violent police power to crush democracy.

This could happen now, but several observers have made a salient point in discussing how the current situation came to pass, i.e., the impetus for the uprisings came from the youth, a youth aware through internet and social technology of how the rest of the world, particularly in the West and the democratic East, were living, enjoying the fruits of democratic capitalism. Even in non-democratic but newly-quasi capitalist China, affluence was breaking out. Apparently, this Arab youth was also not buying the shell-game that the tiny state of Israel was the cause of their problems and justified suffocating police states across the Arab world.

I am not saying that the Arab youth are necessarily less anti-Israel than before, nor are they less sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, but removing the current pathological preoccupation with Israel may, in time, provide some room for true negotiation between Israel and the new democratic Arab states. Maybe.

I suspect that history will show that the creation of a democratic state in Iraq had more impact on the current revolt of the Arab masses than most observers are willing to concede now. This is because the rabid “George W. Bush hatred” of most of the Western media and establishment still persists, and to credit the “change of political chemistry” in Iraq with contributing to a region-wide democratic outbreak would mean that these critics might have to admit they were wrong about Mr. Bush.(Remember how long it took for Ronald Reagan to overcome his “cowboy movie star image” and be rightly credited for his giant role in the Cold War?)

Such a realization might even be more traumatic than the concession by these same critics that their conventional wisdoms about the Middle East were wrong.

History, as does Nature, has a persistent way of making all of us realize how complicated the world and its planet really are.

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-Please visit Mr. Casselman’s personal site, The Prairie Editor Blog.

Yesterday’s poll from Wisconsin is just the latest of a string of impressive performances by Mike Huckabee in midwestern states. At first, these were viewed as rather surprising, because they ran contrary to the perception of Huckabee as a regional candidate, with little appeal outside the south (though his Iowa victory in ’98, coupled with a near-win in Missouri, should have indicated otherwise).

Matt Sanders has argued persuasively that Huckabee’s midwestern strength should be no surprise, because rural and small-town midwesterners are culturally very much like southerners.

Good point, and winning strongly in rural areas may very well prove enough to win Republican primaries in the midwest (certainly in the early stages, when the vote likely will be split several ways).

But can a candidate whose identity is almost entirely as a SoCon win in the midwest in November? I think the evidence is otherwise.

Let’s take Bill Brady as an example. Brady was an excellent candidate for governor of Illinois last fall. Illinois is not a Republican state by any means, but it was a strongly Republican year, the incumbent was weak and saddled with the corruption of his predecessor, and hopes were high. Brady came close, but failed.

There’s nothing new about a Republican losing in Illinois. What’s interesting is how he lost. Comparing Brady’s vote totals to the Republican (but definitely not SoCon) senate candidate, Mark Kirk, we find that Brady lost the race in Chicago and its surrounding ‘Collar Counties’ (the first group of numbers are Brady’s and Kirk’s percentage of the vote in each county, the second is their vote totals in thousands):

Kirk ran 2.1 points ahead of Brady statewide. He ran ahead by that amount or more in every county in the northeast corner of the state. Statewide, Kirk ran 65,300 ahead of Brady. In Cook and the surrounding counties, Kirk was 68,800 votes ahead. Since Brady lost by about 21,000 votes overall, it’s clear the race was lost in metro Chicago.

And who within those counties voted for Kirk but not Brady? We get a clue from the racial breakdown of the exit polls:

Brady ran seven points ahead of Kirk among blacks (who tend to be socially conservative), but six points behind among whites.

So it’s not unreasonable to conclude that Brady lost the race because of white urban/suburban voters. And given that the major difference between the two Republican candidates was their views on social issues, and that urban/suburban whites tend to be, on average, fairly moderate/liberal on those issues, it’s again not unreasonable to conclude that Brady lost the election on those issues.

No comparison is perfect, of course, and an obvious point is that it’s very unlikely that any of our major candidates will be as moderate/liberal on social issues as Mark Kirk. Nor is Illinois important to our 2012 hopes.

But a look at Republicans who have had success in the other states in the midwest indicates that there is no need to be moderate on social issues — the need is to be moderate in one’s approach to the issues. Midwesterners are perfectly willing to elect pro-life Republicans, but their choices tend to be soft-spoken, understated pro-lifers of the Tim Pawlenty and Mitch Daniels breed. Neither made a secret of their social conservatism when seeking office, both signed pro-life legislation in their first terms, and both were re-elected. So it would appear to be a style issue, not substance.

We see similar cases elsewhere. At the same time Brady was losing in Illinois, Republican governors were winning in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Michigan. Although the three winners all described themselves as pro-life, none of them made it an important part of their campaigns. It should be noted that even in Iowa, the Republicans who win in generals are of the Terry Branstad type. Branstad, like the others mentioned, is pro-life, but not sufficiently vociferous on the subject to satisfy Huckabee, who endorsed his opponent in the primary.

The point is that, while midwesterners are somewhat socially conservative, they also tend to be conservative in the way they express it, and they prefer as candidates people who are as low-key and easy-going as themselves. They also seem to not view social issues as of first importance — all the governors I’ve mentioned are, as noted, pro-life, but none are perceived primarily as SoCons, as Mike Huckabee is.

Urban and suburban voters in the midwest are, as elsewhere, far less likely to support an outspoken SoCon than their rural/small-town brethren. These voters are vital in a general, though perhaps less so in a Republican primary.

Mike Huckabee does not fit the midwestern profile on social issues, and thus seems less likely to win these vital states in the general election than candidates who are social conservatives, but adopt a less combative stance.

When you are facing a challenge in a Republican primary from your right flank, does it make tactical sense to be the first Republican senator to come out in opposition to the 61 billion dollars of spending cuts in the house budget bill? Whether it makes sense or not, that’s essentially what Dick Lugar has done. To be sure, Lugar hasn’t shyed away from previous controversies involving the tea party, most notably his spearheading of the START treaty in November. This has drawn him a very credible challenger in Richard Mourdock, Indiana’s state treasurer. Lugar’s announcement that he wouldn’t support the house bill as written would seem to only provide grist for the 2012 primary challenger’s mill. So, why do that if you don’t have to? Is he not running? Is he angling for a position in the Obama administration? Or is there some more prosaic explanation?

I think, in fact, that the latter is the case. And indeed–and this is entirely speculation on my part based on no inside information whatsoever–I suspect Lugar may be opposing the house bill because of one particular 43 million dollar program which house Republicans plan to cut, the US Institute of Peace. It’s important to keep in mind that, in his announcement of his opposition to the house plan, Lugar emphasized that the dollar amount–around 61 billion–was “about the right figure” that should be cut. This leads me to believe it’s the particular cuts–or I suspect, particular cut–to which he objects.

What is USIP? Based on the organization’s name, you may assume it’s something like the Department of Peace which Dennis Kucinich routinely threatens to inflict on the country. In reality, USIP is a pretty useful source of US soft power, does a good job of conflict analysis, and probably gets at least as much bang for the buck as any organization in government. House Republicans probably figured that USIP could pick up funding elsewhere, and indeed, given how many foreign policy academics rely on USIP analyses, that’s not impossible. Lugar, however, probably feels that house Republicans could have found a better place to chop 43 million from the budget, and he’s probably got a point too.

If I’m right, then getting Lugar on board with the house plan would be an easy fix. House Republicans could pretty easily offer to retain USIP, and off-set it with cuts elsewhere. And the fact is, it’s in both Lugar’s interest–and that of house Republicans–to deal on this issue. For Lugar, ultimately voting for a serious spending bill, particularly one with which he clearly seems to agree in principal, is good politics. After all, he does have to run for reelection in the primary, and while tea partiers may not give him a lot of credit for ultimately making a deal with house Republicans, Hoosier primary voters at large just might. For house Republicans, not having a defection among their senate colleagues is of equal value. It will be hard enough getting serious cuts through Harry Reid’s senate without having senate Republicans defecting; and indeed, putting USIP back in the budget, and off-setting the cuts elsewhere, is probably one of the less distasteful deals to house Republicans’ sensibilities they’ll have to make before the budget finally passes. And in the long-term interests of US foreign and national security policy, USIP is probably of greater value than entire sections of the State Department, in which it’s technically housed. USIP is one of the very few pieces of Foggy Bottom which really seems to get the fact that diplomacy, for a global hegemon like the US, can’t be limited to just embassies. The concept of “expeditionary diplomacy” is an embryonic one, but crucial to any successful counter-insurgency mission. I don’t have a lot of first-hand experience with USIP, but my sense is that they’re playing a valuable role in this mission. Thus, in so far as the US is going to be doing coin, and other complex operations in the future (which is likely regardless of the winner of the 2012 election), USIP provides considerable added value. Like any part of government, it could probably do it’s job better, but cutting it is probably not in the long-term national security interests of the US. And if, indeed, this is part of Dick Lugar’s hesitation about the house bill, I’m reluctantly forced to concede that he may have a point.

Update:

I think less than ten minutes after my post, Dick Lugar announced via twitter that he would indeed back the house CR. This means one of two things happened: either Lugar and house Republicans read my trenchant analysis of the impasse and resolved their differences in record time, or, and this is more likely by several orders of magnetude, it was a miscommunication in the first place and my analysis was just flat wrong. Though I still think cuts to USIP should be off-set with cuts to a different part of the budget (perhaps even a different part of state), that no longer appears to have any relevance to the Dick Lugar situation. However, if it later comes out that USIP funding was restored within this twenty-four hour period, inexplicably, then we can go with the my-pressiant-analysis-was-right-on-the-money thing again.

PPP (D) 2012 Maine GOP Primary Survey

• Newt Gingrich 19% (14%)
• Mike Huckabee 19% (16%)
• Sarah Palin 17% (23%)
• Mitt Romney 15% (18%)
• Ron Paul 8%
• Mitch Daniels 4% (1%)
• Tim Pawlenty 3% (3%)
• Haley Barbour 2%
• Someone else/Undecided 13% (23%)

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At last night’s Presidential Forum in Iowa, Newt Gingrich unveiled one of the things that will probably become a standard piece of his stump speech: four executive orders he would sign his first day in office. These four EO’s, according to Gingrich, would show Presidential leadership and shift us from a leftward path to a center-right one.

The four executive orders are:

1. Prohibit funding to international family planning groups that provide abortion
2. Allow doctors and nurses to opt out of providing abortions for moral reasons
3. Eliminate all “czar” positions in the White House, and
4. Relocate the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem

I fully support the “truce” proposed by Mitch Daniels, as do GOP primary voters in general (by an 8-1 margin). However, I will say that these executive orders are a brilliant idea. They are simple, straightforward, and – as Newt points out – something that can be done with no argument on the first day of a new administration. The first two are a nod to social conservatives, the third to the small-government fiscal wing, and the fourth to neocons (and, to some extent, evangelicals).

Obviously, our problems run much deeper than these EO’s can touch, but they represent a great step in the right direction. This was a very smart strategic move by Gingrich, and I am hopeful that more of our contenders will come up with similar ideas.

Haley Barbour has taken a step forward in his plans to run for President by hiring Jim Dyke to be the Communications Director for his PAC – and, ostensibly, his eventual primary campaign. Chris Cillizza has the details over at The Fix:

Former Republican National Committee communications director Jim Dyke has signed on with Mississippi Gov.Haley Barbour’s political action committee, a major signing in the below-the-radar fight for staff talent in advance of the 2012 GOP presidential primary fight…

Dyke served as the communications director at the RNC during the 2004 re-election race of President George W. Bush then went into business for himself forming Jim Dyke & Associates in 2005…

Dyke’s hiring is the clearest signal yet that Barbour will run for president in 2012. He has said he plans no formal decision until the Mississippi legislature adjourns in April.

One of Barbour’s greatest strengths (and potentially weaknesses) is his insider status at the RNC and closeness with the inner workings of the party, so to hire an RNC guy for his communications director makes a lot of sense for him.

Thus continues the slow trickle of staff talent signing on with nascent campaigns – something that we should see speed up dramatically in the next month or two.

(Also interesting to note: with this news, Barbour is up a point and a half on Intrade, while Daniels has lost a couple points. Are their destinies truly inversely intertwined…?)

I have made no secret of the fact that I think John Huntsman is an intriguing candidate. He seems to have many of the advantages of Romney, without the health care baggage. Today Jim Geraghty of The Nation Review posted an article that explains how Huntsman could make a splash when he finally does announce that he is running.  Geraghty imagines a coming out speech where Huntsman says among other things:

Huntsman sets a record for talking out of school, sharing a series of anecdotes that make Joe Biden look cloddish, Hillary Clinton frustrated, dismissed, and quick to lash out, David Axelrod meddling in areas he doesn’t understand, and the man at the top so far out of his league he terrifies Huntsman.

Huntsman shares frustrating tales of trying to be the voice of reason while the president tried to tailor his foreign policies to the whims of congressional Democrats. He laments that Obama’s Middle East vision begins and ends with Israeli settlements, that he effectively sold out Iranian democracy protesters in pursuit of a Quixotic dream of a summit with Tehran, and that in two short years he has snubbed India and insulted almost every major ally. He laments that the administration was caught flat-footed time and again: cartel violence in Mexico spilling over the border, North Korean shelling, WikiLeaks, the uprising in Egypt and beyond.

He ends his litany, “And I told him the president of the United States isn’t supposed to bow.”

All of this sounds good, but at the same time I have this lingering doubt in my mind. I wonder whether Huntsman is running in 2012 merely to set the groundwork for an aggressive 2016 run. Recent history has shown that the chances are much better the second time around, and if Huntsman is gambling that Obama will win re election in 2012 (which, lets be honest, is a very real possibility) 2016 could be a much better year in which to run.

But by setting himself up for 2016 is he going to undercut Romney’s base of support and therefore cost us our best candidate for 2012?

Lots of questions with no good answers yet. Time will tell.

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Steve regularly posts at his own blog, The Lyceum

PPP has released their latest Wisconsin horse race poll. Here are the results, first without Paul Ryan then with him:

PPP (D) 2012 Wisconsin GOP Primary Survey

• Mike Huckabee 23% [18%] (15%)
• Newt Gingrich 15% [13%] (14%)
• Sarah Palin 15% [21%] (18%)
• Mitt Romney 12% [17%] (12%)
• Tim Pawlenty 10% [10%] (8%)
• Ron Paul 5% [4%]
• Mitch Daniels 3% [2%] (2%)
• Someone else/Undecided 17% [12%] (28%)

• Paul Ryan 30%
• Mike Huckabee 17%
• Newt Gingrich 12%
• Mitt Romney 9%
• Sarah Palin 9%
• Ron Paul 5%
• Tim Pawlenty 4%
• Mitch Daniels 3%
• Someone else/Undecided 13%

Huckabee has the Badger State down tight if Ryan doesn’t run. Of the big four, Romney is hurting the most here. He is double digits behind Huckabee if Ryan doesn’t run, and is down more than twenty points to Ryan if he runs. Full results below the fold.
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Part 3 in a developing series of in-depth analysis by Dr. Jeff Fuller (See part 1 and part 2)

I was saving this to be the final part in this series, but Romney’s comments over the weekend in New Hampshire made it instantly timely and relevant to this on-going discussion.

Politico got the headline right, “Mitt Romney’s Prescription for ObamaCare: Repeal it.” I recommend reading or watching Mitt’s speech to the Carroll County GOP group in their entirety, but some specific comments stick out:

Obamacare has to be repealed and the other programs have to be made sustainable. . . . If we re-shape each of these programs today, and repeal Obamacare, we can honor our promises to seniors, and protect our economy as well. . . .  At every turn, he and his fellow liberals sought to seize more power for Washington.  And in that cause, nothing was more misguided and egregious than Obamacare!

Living in New Hampshire, you’ve heard of our healthcare program next door in Massachusetts. You may have noticed that the President and his people spend more time talking about me and Massachusetts healthcare than Entertainment Tonight spends talking about Charlie Sheen [link to part 1 in this series documenting all the "attention" Mitt's been getting from the White House on Health Care].  Our approach was a state plan intended to address problems that were in many ways unique to Massachusetts.  What we did was what the Constitution intended for states to do—we were one of the laboratories of democracy.

Our experiment wasn’t perfect—some things worked, some didn’t, and some things I’d change. One thing I would never do is to usurp the constitutional power of states with a one-size-fits-all federal takeover.

I would repeal Obamacare, if I were ever in a position to do so.

My experience has taught me that states are where healthcare programs for the uninsured should be crafted, just as the Constitution provides. Obamacare is bad law, bad policy, and it is bad for America’s families.

Can Romney be trusted to keep this campaign promise? Some skeptics will never be satisfied, but I challenge any reader to point out an actual instance where Romney broke his campaign promises as Governor of Massachusetts (should be pretty darn easy for to do for someone who flips and flops with the political winds, eh?). Yes, Romney has a record of keeping campaign promises and can be trusted to keep this one.

And Romney’s been consistant in his opposition to ObamaCare and it calling for it’s repeal.  Immediately after passage, Romney called for it’s repeal, citing procedural and substantive reasons:

America has just witnessed an unconscionable abuse of power. President Obama has betrayed his oath to the nation — rather than bringing us together, ushering in a new kind of politics, and rising above raw partisanship, he has succumbed to the lowest denominator of incumbent power: justifying the means by extolling the ends. He promised better; we deserved better.

He calls his accomplishment “historic” — in this he is correct, although not for the reason he intends. Rather, it is an historic usurpation of the legislative process — he unleashed the nuclear option, enlisted not a single Republican vote in either chamber, bribed reluctant members of his own party, paid-off his union backers, scapegoated insurers, and justified his act with patently fraudulent accounting. What Barack Obama has ushered into the American political landscape is not good for our country; in the words of an ancient maxim, “what starts twisted, ends twisted.”

His health-care bill is unhealthy for America. It raises taxes, slashes the more private side of Medicare, installs price controls, and puts a new federal bureaucracy in charge of health care. It will create a new entitlement even as the ones we already have are bankrupt. For these reasons and more, the act should be repealed. That campaign begins today.

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Here’s a quick update on the major, minor and potential senate news people are talking about today, with a couple of house special elections thrown in for good measure:

1. Ensign is out: John Ensign is widely expected to announce he’s not running for reelection in a matter of moments. Like the Bunning retirement in 2010, this is a retirement which probably helps us hold the seat. The most likely candidate is Dean Heller, former secretary of state and current representative of most of rural Nevada. For the Dems, Rep. Shelley Berkley has been playing Hamlet on this one, but is likely to jump in. I’d have to say Heller looks like a clear but not an overwhelming favorite at this early point.

2. Moderate New Mexico representative Heather Wilson looks like the first candidate to actually jump into the race for the seat of retiring Democratic senator Jeff Bingamin. Conservatives have not yet coalesced on an alternative to Wilson, and it’s not certain that they will. However, if they do, chatter is now focused on LT Gov. John Sanchez, rather than Rep. Steve Pearce. A Wilson Sanchez primary would be unfortunate (both seem like pretty good candidates), but perhaps somewhat mitigated by the almost certain Democratic primary between Rep. Martin Heinrich and state auditor Hector Balderas. It’s also possible that, if Heinrich does run for senate, Wilson could switch to the house race, and a pretty easily winnable race for her. Sanchez may also benefit from the sense among state and national GOPers that Latino outreach is an area that needs a lot of improvement, and a hope that he can unite the base and pull Latino voters as well. It’s worth noting that Sanchez, like Wilson, has run and lost statewide, in a gubernatorial race against Bill Richardson. The machinations in NM will be worth watching, but Republicans should beware the specter of a bruising primary similar to the one which cost them deeply in 2008 here.

3. Bernie Sanders is perhaps one of the most extreme far-left members of the U.S. Senate, and a real, no foolin’, honest-to-goodness socialist. So it’s somewhat heartening to hear that he looks likely to get a real, no foolin’ honest-to-goodness opponent in state Auditor Tom Salmon. Salmon, who switched from Democrat to Republican in 2009, probably will not set many conservative hearts a-fire, but I will say two things in his favor: making the switch to the GOP takes some serious guts in Vermont, and even another Snowe or Collins is at least a fifty percent improvement over Bernie Sanders.

4. Proving that conservative lawyers and former law clerks stick together, Utah senator Mike Lee has endorsed Texas solicitor general Ted Cruz in the very crowded primary to replace the retiring K Bailey Hutchinson. That primary got more crowded with the entry of Dallas mayor Tom Lepert into the race last week. Though David Dewhurst seems very interested in a run, one wonders if he really wants to get into this rapidly developing dog-pile. As I’ve mentioned before, my ideal scenario here would be for Texas AG Greg Abbot to run for Dewhurst’s open seat, allowing Cruz to run for the open AG slot and giving Michael Williams the ability to consolidate tea party support. Of course, this probably isn’t going to happen, and this race will likely remain a bewildering dog-pile until primary day.

5. Speaking of developing dog-piles, the Hawaii senate Democratic primary looks like it could potentially be a mess. As in Texas, the retirement of Senator Daniel Akaka has left every single elected member of the Hawaiian state and federal Democratic party thinking he or she might just like a promotion thanks. And, as in Texas, factional politics are likely to come into play as moderates, liberals and various regionally-based patronage networks all vie for the spoils. The, ahem, short list of potential Dems here include: former rep. Ed Case, current reps Hirono and Hana-Busa, Lt. gov. Brian Shatz, former Honolulu mayor and gubernatorial primary loser Nufi Hannaman, and probably just about every state senator in Hawaii. For Republicans, all eyes are on Linda Lingle, just about the only candidate with a potential path to victory here. Even with Lingle in and the Dems bitterly divided in the primary, this is a tough up-hill race for Republicans, especially with Barack Obama at the top of the ticket.

6. One more dog-pile potential is, of course, FL-Sen, where most Republicans in the state seem to be flirting with a run at Bill Nelson. To that end, state senate President Mike Haridopolos’ chances of preventing said dog-pile diminished last week, as details about a troublesome-looking book deal came out (apparently Haridopolos was paid a substantial amount of money to write a book of which there’s only one copy). This may not be fatal for Haridopolos, but may encourage others looking at the race who haven’t yet jumped in (Conney Mac, Vern Buchanan, Adam Hasner), to give the race a go. One hopes that such a crowded primary serves to temper, rather than badly damage, the eventual nominee.

7. NY-26: Democrats’ hopes of winning this special election just pretty much up and flew away, as Conservative Party chairman Mike Long has officially endorsed Assemblywoman Jane Corwin. Though this was extremely likely, it should put to rest the possibility of a third party challenger splitting the vote and allowing the Democrats to squeak bye with a win in this one. The real question is: will this district survive? I think it will; no Democrat wants to take on the Republican voters of this rural and suburban seat, and Tom Reid’s district is already pretty big (Rochester all the way over to Corning). I rather expect the squeeze to come from central NY, to the detriment of either Richard Hanna, Anne-Marie Buerkle, or both. I’m pretty sure one of the NY delegation’s losses all but has to come from down-state as well, meaning someone in the NYC area could get squeezed for the first time in a very long time. Of course, if Governor Andrew Cuomo gets his way, the redistricting issue may get handled by an independent commission anyway.

8. CA-36 special: So, two Republicans named Mike from the same city decide to run for congress in a Dem-heavy district… and one of them is an openly gay Chinese mayor? Yep, Mike Gin, the openly gay, ethnically Chinese and Republican mayor of Redondo Beach, and Mike Webb, the city attorney for the same town, look like they’re both running for the special election in Jane Harman’s old seat. This is not good news, in that it means the already not too large Republican vote is likely to be split up. And since California’s going to a “jungle primary”, this means a Republican might not make it into the general at all. On the other hand, it looks as though the progressive elements in the district will be divided between anti-war activist Marcy Winograd and SoS Deborah Bowen. So the special here looks–to me at least–as follows: Jannis Hahn, a city counsel woman from LA, is in the cat-bird seat, and will probably be the highest vote-getter coming out of the primary. The real scrum will be between the two progressive Democrats and the Republicans for second place. If Gin–who ran on his ability to pull indies and groups from non-traditional Republican groups–can actually perform as promised, he may be able to squeak bye Winograd and Bowen, as they divide progressives. For Webb–about whom I know next to nothing–the path to victory is pretty much the same. Ideally, however, one of these two Mikes should probably run for something else, so that we can have a decent shot at a ticket out of the jungle here.

Romney’s Free and Strong America PAC has put together their first campaign ad for 2011. It is built around Mitt’s keynote address last Saturday to the Carroll County Lincoln Day Dinner in New Hampshire

Very nice, very nice indeed.

Oh, in case you are wondering how his PAC can legally produce an ad for him when they are only allowed to spend $5000 on any given candidate, note how carefully the ad is constructed. It spends all its time attacking Obama, his economic politics, and the harm they are doing to the country; and it covers Romney prescription on what needs to be done about it. It never actually endorses Romney, only what Romney is saying. It is generic enough that just about any Republican in the country could run it.

It’s a fine but significant point to remain in good graces with the campaign finance laws. If you think it’s no big deal, just recall Newt Gingrich’s comedy of errors  last week. He was all set to announce his campaign when he ran afoul of campaign finance laws. He had to downgrade the big  proclamation of his campaign starting to a lame little bulletin about the startup of his new website. It wasn’t exactly an auspicious start to his campaign.

At least that’s how Iowa GOP Chairman Matt Strawn is characterizing the first debate/forum/event of the 2012 primaries – officially named the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition Presidential Forum.

The forum is being held at Point of Grace Church in Waukee, Iowa tonight from 5:30-7:30, and will feature five candidates-to-be: Gingrich, Pawlenty, Santorum, Cain, and Roemer.

Each candidate will be given 10 minutes to make his case before the anticipated crowd of 500 attendees.

Gingrich and Pawlenty will, of course, be the most closely watched tonight, although this blogger doesn’t think the event will have quite the importance former IA GOP Chair Chuck Laudner thinks it will:

“If you stumble [tonight], it could very well be the end. It’s that big… Monday night is the beginning of the winnowing process because you can’t split the social conservative vote 10 ways.”

With exactly zero formally announced candidacies, this event doesn’t quite have the punch it could have when it was originally planned. But it is the first time we get to see multiple candidates-to-be on the same stage at the same time, so it should be fun to watch, talk about, and dissect until the next event comes along.

Quinnipiac 2012 National Thermometer Survey

“I’d like to get your feelings toward some of our political leaders and other people who have been in the news. I’ll read the name of a person and I’d like you to rate that person using something called the feeling thermometer.

You can choose any number between 0 and 100. The higher the number, the warmer or more favorable you feel toward that person, the lower the number, the colder or less favorable.”

Following are the mean scores on the “feeling thermometer” and, in parentheses, the percent who said they did not know enough about the people to rate them:

• Chris Christie 57.0 (55%)
• Barack Obama 56.5 (0%)
• Rudy Giuliani 52.3 (13%)
• Mike Huckabee 51.8 (22%)
• Mitt Romney 50.4 (23%)
• Tim Pawlenty 48.2 (67%)
• Jon Huntsman 47.9 (84%)
• Ron Paul 46.3 (34%)
• Michael Bloomberg 46 (35%)
• Michele Bachmann 45.6 (55%)
• Mitch Daniels 45.1 (78%)
• Donald Trump 45% (5%)
• Rick Santorum 43.9 (63%)
• Haley Barbour 43.5 (65%)
• Newt Gingrich 42.7 (17%)
• Sarah Palin 38.2 (4%)

(more…)

In this curious moment of the 2012 presidential contest, when not a single major Republican candidate has yet announced his or her definite intention to run, there is nontheless a lot of campaign activity going on. Deprived of declared candidates, but thinking there is pressure for them write extensively about something which does not exist, i.e., a formal race for the GOP nomination, many in the media are turning out reams of gossipy analysis, speculation, and pseudo-news which, I don’t want to shock those colleagues, few if anyone is really interested in knowing about.

At the same time, more than a dozen potential candidates, including the half dozen or so who might eventually become finalists, are busily writing books, giving speeches, hiring consultants and campaign workers, and raising money, all of which IS worth reporting about, and even speculating about.

I have been saying for several weeks that the large initial field (10-14 well-known GOP hopefuls) will become a much smaller number after the Iowa Straw Poll in August. That list of finalists will probably include Mitt Romney, New Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, Mitch Daniels and Tim Pawlenty (and perhaps one more person). Mr, Huckabee may yet decide not to run, as might Mr. Daniels. I may be wrong, but I don’t think Sarah Palin will be a candidate in 2012. While I am a big fan of Haley Barbour, and think he is one of the superlative political minds in his party (as well as a superb governor), I think his recent inappropriate statements about the KKK in his state dispositively prevent him from being a top tier candidate from here on. Sorry, Haley.

Although many pundits and GOP campaign experts think Mitt Romney, the early provisional front-runner, can’t actually win the race (because of “Romney-care” and his Mormonism), I think his recent speeches and appearances indicate he remains quite formidable. He has not yet solved his “cold fish” reputation problem, but he has the will, organization, cash and previous experience to outlast his rivals in a possible bitter battle.

Similarly, many pundits and GOP experts write off the chances that Newt Gingrich might actually win the nomination. The media recently made something-out-of- nothing in Mr. Gingrich’s preparation to announce his exploratory committee, and created an unnecessary nightmare for the Gingrich staff who. like the staff of all candidates this year, must walk an over-regulated fine line for candidate announcements. Mr. Gingrich, easily the most knowledgeable and well-prepared GOP candidate for president, must find a way, however, to overcome all the media hype he can’t win. Having known the former speaker for 26 years, I doubt he will allow conventional wisdom to prevent him from running a formidable and possibly surprising run. We shall see.

Mitch Daniels is the biggest question mark of the campaign so far. Undeniably a first-rate and effective governor, and a man with a excellent resume and broad experience, he has been reported to be a dull speaker and unexciting figure. But his appearance at CPAC this year, of all places, was notable and favorable. Some of the most respected leaders in his party have already virtually endorsed him. He is, by all accounts, a man of uncommon ability. He could, as the twists and turns of the campaign yet to unfold take place, be the one to take the prize.

And then there is Tim Pawlenty.

I have known and covered his political career in Minnesota since 1990. He was, even in 1990, an obvious political “comer.” He was elected to the state legislature, and eventually became state house majority leader. He won a surprise GOP endorsement for governor, and then won the governorship twice with less than a majority of votes cast. His first term was not extraordinary. But then, during his second term, he seemed to find his cause and identity at a time when those causes and identities were the ones the state and nation came to need and want. From a truly reliable source, I have been told that a recent speech he gave to a conference in Georgia was an absolute barnburner. Many, many things stand in his way, but as I have been saying, “It’s a long, long way to Tampa.”

I don’t know if Mike Huckabee will run. He easily has the most charm of the whole field, and a very good resume, including his time as governor of Arkansas. He seems to me a regional candidate, something not disproven by his efforts after his upset win in Iowa in 2008, but subsequent years of his own national show on television may have taken him past that. His poll numbers to date have been consistently quite high. And yet…….

The debates between all of the above who decide to run, as I recently suggested, will sort much of this out. So will events, including the domestic economy and the always explosive international environment. But may I suggest: Watch for which of the above candidates, or any last-minute sensation who might appear, gets the right “breaks” at critical early moments. In every case in the recent past, these are best indicators. Just ask Carter (1976), Reagan (1980), H.W. Bush (1988), Clinton (1992), G.W. Bush (2000) and Obama (2008).

I have been writing about presidential politics for ten cycles now. Some cycles offered few surprises. But if I have learned anything about these early parts of a presidential campaign like this one, it is that anything can happen.

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-Please visit Mr. Casselman’s personal site, The Prairie Editor Blog.

One of my all time favorite movies is 1969′s “Support Your Local Sheriff” starring James Garner. Just below is one of my favorite scenes. James Garner’s character is applying for the job as town sheriff, and here he is discussing his “qualifications” with the town council (click to watch):

At the very end of this delightful scene is this bit of dialog:

Jason McCullough: [Fingering dented badge] That must have saved the life of whoever was wearin’ it.
Mayor Olly Perkins: Well, it sure would have, if it hadn’t been for all them other bullets flyin’ in from everywhere.

Mike Huckabee’s past week got me thinking of this little exchange between the future sheriff and the town’s mayor. By all accounts, Mike had a horrible week. The gaffes came fast and furious. It seemed at times that he couldn’t open his mouth the entire week without putting his foot in it.

Now gaffes are an unavoidable fact of political life. All public officials make them from time to time. However the sheer number of them last week from Mike Huckabee was amazing.  Try as I might, I cannot recall ever seeing someone who was considered to have a legitimate shot at his party’s Presidential nomination making so many of them in so short of time. Just like the one bullet deflected by the badge wasn’t fatal to the previous sheriff, one gaffe isn’t going to stop someone like Mike Huckabee. But when the gaffes come thick and furious like last week, the hail of bullets coming in is going to overwhelm that poor little badge.

I do not want to overstate my point. It is early and these gaffes will likely not prove fatal to Huckabee’s 2012 hopes if he should eventually choose to run. But he had better take steps to avoid anymore gaffe storms in the future. Otherwise that badge is going to be passed on to someone else besides him.

Well, cap off a horrible week for Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich by adding this insult to injury: getting taken to the woodshed by George Will.

George Will, conservative columnist extraordinaire, blasted Mike Huckabee and Newt Gingrich in his Sunday Washington Post column (which is, in my opinion, an absolute masterstroke of political insight as we aim to make Obama a one-term President). Here are some highlights — but really, you ought to read the whole thing:

[S]ensible Americans, who pay scant attention to presidential politics at this point in the electoral cycle, must nevertheless be detecting vibrations of weirdness emanating from people associated with the party.

The most recent vibrator is Mike Huckabee… Huckabee was asked by Steve Malzberg, a talk radio host, this:

“Don’t you think it’s fair also to ask [Barack Obama] . . . how come we don’t have a health record, we don’t have a college record, we don’t have a birth cer – why, Mr. Obama, did you spend millions of dollars in courts all over this country to defend against having to present a birth certificate. It’s one thing to say, I’ve – you’ve seen it, goodbye. But why go to court and send lawyers to defend against having to show it? Don’t you think we deserve to know more about this man?”

Huckabee should have replied, “I’ve seen paranoia, goodbye.” Instead, he said:

“I would love to know more. What I know is troubling enough. And one thing that I do know is his having grown up in Kenya. . . .” Huckabee thereupon careened off into the (he thinks) related subject of Obama having sent back to the British Embassy in Washington a bust of Winston Churchill…

A spokesman for Huckabee dutifully lied, saying his employer “simply misspoke”: “The governor meant to say the president grew up in Indonesia.” But Obama did not really grow up there – he spent just five of his first 18 years there and the other 13 years in Hawaii. Obviously Huckabee, with his dilation on the Mau Maus, was deliberately referring to Kenya. Unless Huckabee thinks the Mau Maus were Indonesians, which he might count as another “one thing that I do know.”

Republicans should understand that when self-described conservatives such as Malzberg voice question-rants like the one above and Republicans do not recoil from them, the conservative party is indirectly injured. As it is directly when Newt Gingrich, who seems to be theatrically tiptoeing toward a presidential candidacy, speculates about Obama having a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” mentality. (Emphasis mine.)

Will finishes just as pointedly and direct, with this powerful charge (and warning):

Let us not mince words. There are at most five plausible Republican presidents on the horizon – Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, former Utah governor and departing ambassador to China Jon Huntsman, former Massachusetts governor Romney and former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty…

But the nominee may emerge much diminished by involvement in a process cluttered with careless, delusional, egomaniacal, spotlight-chasing candidates to whom the sensible American majority would never entrust a lemonade stand, much less nuclear weapons.

Again, read the whole thing.

There is little to be added to Will’s excellent analysis (which will undoubtedly infuriate Huckabee and Gingrich supporters), other than to say that Huckabee proved to be even less of a mature Presidential candidate by the way he handled that initial gaffe. He followed up the Kenya/Mau Mau mistake with the anti-American/madrassa gaffe and followed that up with the page 183 error.

When the debates come, it would be really nice if we had as many grown-ups on stage to represent the Republican Party as possible. Here’s hoping George Will’s warning doesn’t become prophecy.

The state Republican parties of Oregon and Washington state have had their annual meetings. During that time, they followed the time-honored tradition of holding a Presidential Straw Poll among the party’s most active activists. As the Oregonian Magazine says, “Straw polls of party activists usually have little impact on the presidential nominating process, but they do offer a sense of who is exciting interest among those likely to get involved in campaigns.” So take the results with a grain of salt.

Here they are:

Mitt Romney sat down before his speech yesterday for an one-one-one interview with WMUR in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Mitt looks quite comfortable. No tie, unbuttoned collar, and are those Levis I see him wearing?

He touched upon a number of themes his speech covered. He answered questions on ObamaCare, MassCare, Obama’s failing economic policy, etc.

He was asked about running in 2012. He stated he was doing everything necessary to prepare for a run, but that he hasn’t yet decided whether or not to pull the trigger. He wife, Ann, is very keen on the idea, but he isn’t so sure.

I used to think he was just being coy, but I am starting to think that maybe he’s telling the truth. After all, can you really blame him?

He’s already been down this road before. He has seen what savaging Mike Huckabee has taken from the press this past week, and he is fully aware of the vicious attacks that have been non-stop on Sarah Palin for the past two years. He has no illusions. Wasn’t it Huckabee’s campaign manager last time who stated that he wanted to knock Mitt’s teeth out? And that was from a ‘Top tier” candidate.

Running for office, especially the highest office in the land is a serious decision not to be taken lightly. So I think he has the right strategy. Keep your options open. Prepare like you are going to run. So if you decide to go for it, you can hit the ground running.

As fortune favors the bold, I am about to make a rather bold prediction, given that the first presidential primaries of 2012 are at least 11 months out. Based on the shape of the presidential field, the shape of the electorate, and the “narrative” of the 2011-2012 election cycle, I predict that absent a Mitch Daniels run, Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota will be the 2012 Republican presidential nominee.

First, let’s examine the narrative of the current cycle. The U.S. economy is in the gutter. The economy hasn’t truly been “booming” since the 1990s, and real growth hasn’t reached most middle class households in a long time. Structural changes to the economy have created a now-defunct housing bubble, and a probably soon-to-burst higher education bubble, and the dearth of economic growth has led to a collapse in private sector profits and in public sector revenue, resulting in reductions in pensions and benefits. The unemployment rate is hovering at or around 9 percent. The underemployment rate is probably higher. The collapse of Social Security and Medicare is imminent. While most Americans don’t have doctorates in economics, the average citizen just sort of knows in his or her gut that something is wrong, and that the solution is to somehow move around the tectonic plates of economic and fiscal policy in order to right the ship before it plummets to the bottom of the sea.

It’s not rocket science to figure out that in this environment, John Bolton doesn’t win the GOP presidential nomination. That is to say, the nominee will be someone who at least loosely fits the narrative of the cycle, someone who has demonstrated the courage and the skill to move around the economic and fiscal tectonic plates at some level of government, despite the resistance from entrenched interests and demagogues. A candidate who has been able to cut spending, hold down the growth of government, challenge the public sector unions, and implement policies conducive to job growth will ultimately win the nomination. Also, given the continued unpopularity of ObamaCare, a candidate who can be trusted to work to roll back ObamaCare, and perhaps replace it with a conservative version of health care reform, will tend to rise to the top as well. Candidates who seem as if they would be unable to take the heat when attempting to take on the “hard things” that will have to be done in Washington in 2013 and beyond will not fare well. Nor will those who have not demonstrated the smarts to do those “hard things.” And nor will those who are deemed sympathetic to ObamaCare.

That’s the narrative of the coming election cycle, but that narrative is useless without applying it to the actual GOP presidential field. And just as important as those who probably will be running is the list of candidates who have taken themselves out of contention. Gov. Christie is a man who absolutely fits the narrative of this cycle. He has also done everything he can to take himself out of the race, including suggesting that he’s not ready to be president. Paul Ryan is another man who fits the narrative. He has also given Shermanesque statements that he won’t run. Gov. Walker and Gov. Kasich both fit the narrative as well, yet both are in the midst of their first legislative sessions as governor and would be laughed out of the race by the media. Meanwhile, Mike Pence, while never having run a state, nor designed a Ryan-esque roadmap, is a strong and articulate voice for conservatism, and could potentially have morphed into the sort of candidate who fits this year’s narrative. He’s opted out of the race though. Gov. Jindal is another public official who could probably morph into the right sort of candidate for this year given his smarts, but again, he’s not running. The same logic applies to Jeb Bush.

Once you narrow the GOP presidential field down to the folks who actually seem to be running, you’re left with very few candidates who actually fit the narrative. First, there’s a group of candidates who seemingly have the courage to do the hard things, but who have not demonstrated the ability to, or even an interest in, actually governing, a process that requires deal-making, compromise, and being something other than a purist. This group consists of Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Sharron Angle, Rick Santorum, and if he runs, Jim DeMint. I suspect that these candidates will end up doing very poorly once the race is underway, forcing the candidates to actually spell out what they would do to right our economic and fiscal ship. Then there is a group of candidates who will essentially be vetoed by the base given concerns of apostasy. Mitt Romney is in this group, due to the seeming similarities between RomneyCare and ObamaCare. So is Jon Huntsman, the cap-and-tradin’ former Obama appointee. I am a big fan of former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, but the reality is that a social liberal and foreign policy dove just isn’t going to win the GOP nomination. And while I’m convinced Mike Huckabee will not run, it’s possible that the 2008 campaign against him by Drudge and the talk radio types has left a bitter taste in the mouths of fiscal conservatives in a way that will deny him the nomination.

That leaves four possible nominees: Newt Gingrich, Haley Barbour, Tim Pawlenty, and Mitch Daniels. At this point, one really has to understand the mood of the GOP electorate in order to determine in which direction primary voters will head. Polls suggest that by and large the GOP electorate wants a candidate who can beat Obama. Like the 1988 Democratic electorate, it doesn’t want to nominate Jesse Jackson and go down in a blaze of purist glory, but neither is the base ready to be “Sister Souljah’d” by a Bill Clinton. What the base really wants is someone who comes across the way Michael Dukakis did initially to the Democratic base of 1988: a smart, inventive public official who would be electable but who had also demonstrated loyalty to all of the factions of the base.

Those considerations knock Newt out of contention, given the increasingly erratic former Speaker’s poor poll numbers against Obama, and his seemingly bipolar politics, shifting from a believer in man-made global warming to a supporter of impeachment of the president. Gov. Barbour, a good governor who is probably running at the wrong time, is also nixed due to his lobbyist past, which wouldn’t play well during a cycle in which special interests are the baddies, as well as his Old South demeanor, which would hurt the ticket as it attempts to unseat the first Black American president. That leaves Gov. Daniels and Gov. Pawlenty competing for the prize.

What’s interesting is that if Daniels runs, he has the potential to really mix things up, as he could totally displace Pawlenty, or displace him just enough to throw this whole analysis out the window and allow Mitt Romney (or whoever) to slip through to the nomination. But what if Daniels doesn’t run? I would say the chances of a Daniels run are less than 50 percent at this point given that his wife is cool to the subject (and given that every married man I’ve ever known says that once married, you pretty much do what your wife tells you to do). In that event, Pawlenty stands alone as the candidate who is actually running for president, who fits the narrative of the election cycle, and who fits the requirements of the GOP base as someone who is electable but remains loyal to the various factions of his party’s base. And all of that leads me to the conclusion that, if Daniels takes a knee on 2012, Gov. Pawlenty will be the GOP nominee.

The precipitous rise in oil and gas prices in recent weeks has created a situation few would have expected a couple months ago: energy may become one of the most salient issues of 2012.

This bodes well for the GOP, with the Obama administration repeatedly shooting itself in its collective foot on the matter:

The Obama administration late Friday appealed a judge’s orders directing the Interior Department to act on several Gulf of Mexico deepwater drilling permits.

…Gulf state lawmakers and the oil industry have accused the department of enacting a “de facto” moratorium against new drilling, while Interior says it needs to ensure safety and environmental protections are in place.

…Earlier in February, the judge held Interior in contempt, citing “dismissive conduct” by blocking offshore drilling during last year’s spill.

The delay in issuing permits since last year’s Gulf of Mexico oil spill is “increasingly inexcusable,” [Judge Martin] Feldman wrote.

Few things do more to push up energy and gas prices than limiting supply.  The administration’s apparent lack of concern for the basic laws of economics presents Republican candidates with a prime opportunity to appeal to voters, with poll after poll after poll showing that clear majorities of the public support expanding the nation’s supply of energy sources.  Not coincidentally, Sen. McCain made some of his greatest gains in general election polling when oil and gas prices spiked to nearly $150/barrel and $4.50/gallon in the summer of 2008.

Unfortunately, after quickly examining the probable 2012 candidates’ records and statements on energy, I could not find many substantial differences; all of them seem to embrace the “all of the above” proposal that has garnered significant public approval.  Of course, Sarah Palin and her supporters have touted energy as her “signature” issue, so one can argue that she has the most to offer.  However, her…questionable…electability may negate the potential gains she would make with the issue.

My admittedly brief research effort revealed that, among the major 2012 contenders, only Haley Barbour and Gary Johnson have no record of support for cap-and-trade.  As we know, Mike Huckabee, Jon Huntsman, Mitt Romney, and Tim Pawlenty have questionable histories with it, with Huckabee and Huntsman expressing very clear and public support in the past and Romney and Pawlenty embracing voluntary, regional, state-based forms of it during their gubernatorial tenures.  The same goes for new conservative hero Chris Christie.  Mitch Daniels, like virtually every Midwestern governor, likes the taste of corn-based ethanol.  And how can we forget Newt Gingrich’s embarrassing anti-global warming tag-team effort with Nancy Pelosi (thanks to Bob Hovic for bringing this to our attention again)?

Obviously, things have changed substantially since 2007 and 2008.  You’d find yourself hard-pressing to get any prominent Republican to speak fondly of cap-and-trade or other global warming initiatives.  And while most would offer tepid support for ethanol, they would almost certainly only do so on the condition that it come as part of a comprehensive policy of energy from multiple sources.

When it comes down to it, we’ll have to wait for the candidates’ actual 2012 energy platforms to see who can best capitalize on the issue’s recent developments.  Those who can successfully integrate it into a compelling, broader vision for the economy may find themselves with a winning combination.

A few odds & ends that have come to my attention recently.

How tolerant is New York City? Not very, is the summation of this item from the New York Times, detailing various ads that have been removed under pressure from the easily-offended. The most recent is this billboard referencing statistics showing that 60% of black pregnancies in the city end in abortion.

The Conservative Establishment likes Christie, Jeb, and Daniels. Not so much Huckabee, Palin, and Romney. That the first two are unliked is hardly a surprise, given the sample base (Arthur Brooks, David Frum, John Podhoretz, John O’Sullivan, Reihan Salam, and Karl Rove are mentioned as participants in the poll — one assumes the rest are similar), but Romney’s horrible showing is a surprise. The only positive quality he possesses, according to this group, is fundraising ability. To be fair, I’d have given him a checkmark for speaking.

Christine O’Donnell won’t be on Dancing with the Stars. Too bad, that would have been fun. I wonder if she would have chosen the Eagles’ Witchy Woman as one of her numbers?

WSJ/NBC Poll Finds Support Lacking for Entitlement Reductions. Very discouraging news for those of us who hope to see real fiscal reform.

In the poll, Americans across all age groups and ideologies said by large margins that it was “unacceptable” to make significant cuts in entitlement programs in order to reduce the federal deficit. Even tea party supporters, by a nearly 2-to-1 margin, declared significant cuts to Social Security “unacceptable.”

Every time I see something like this (and it’s hardly the first of its type), I become more convinced that it will take a Greek meltdown to wake up Americans.

The numbers aren’t quite as bad as they look at first glance, though. Although only 22% said cutting Social Security would be necessary, another 27% had no opinion – which I will optimistically take to mean that half are at least starting to think the unthinkable.

Will the truce hurt Daniels? Another question in the same poll asked Republicans if they would be more or less likely to support a candidate who said the party should focus more on the economy and less on social issues. The Daniels position won by an 8-1 margin.

• More Likely 65%
• Less Likely 8%
• No Difference 25%
• Not Sure 2%

Nancy and Newt. Expect to see this video a lot if/when Newt decides whether to decide whether he’s going to decide whether to run. Of course, given the direction of his poll numbers, he may not be worth attacking by that time.

Homicide case involving Daley nephew closed without charges. Calling this self-defense may be 100% justifiable, but since it’s Chicago, skepticism is not unreasonable.

Good numbers on unemployment? The BLS says so – down to 8.9%, a very sharp drop. But just as they did last month when the government announced a drop, Gallup says otherwise. According to Gallup’s survey, unemployment rose in February to 10.3%. I’d like to believe unemployment is dropping, but Gallup has more credibility than the feds.

Please feel free to add any topics of interest in the comments.

Mitt Romney gave a wonderful speech in New Hampshire yesterday. The occasion was the Carroll County Lincoln Day Dinner. Here are some excerpts from the full text available at Mitt’s Free and Strong America PAC:

First he attacked Obama’s Foreign Policy (such as it is):

The President promised that his unique personal background would give him special insights into foreign policy. What we have seen instead is a President that is unprepared and unequal to the task of leading the free world.

He supported Honduras’ Marxist President, but puts off pro-American Colombia. At the United Nations, he condemns Israel, but ignores Hamas’ thousands of devastating rockets. His proposed engagement with Iran and North Korea that won him the Nobel Prize—how has that worked out? Iran is arming Hamas and Hezbollah and rushing toward nuclear weapons. North Korea tested nukes, launched missiles, sunk a ship, and shelled a South Korean island.In the Middle East, the President was silent last year when dissenters took to the streets to challenge Iran’s fanatical ayatollahs. And now, with the entire Middle East in turmoil, he and his administration were caught off guard. The President and his team look like deer in the headlights.  Instead of leading the world, the President has been tiptoeing behind the Europeans. Newsweek magazine this week said that he hasn’t just lost his foreign policy map for the Middle East—he doesn’t even have one. This is the first time in a quarter of a century that America has had no discernible foreign policy. Not since the days of Jimmy Carter have we had such a foreign policy vacuum in Washington. And it could not have come at a worse time.

Then he went after Obama’s economic policy:

Here at home, the President points out that he inherited an economic crisis. He did. And he promptly made it worse. He borrowed nearly a trillion dollars and promised that it would keep unemployment below 8%–it blew past that level and hasn’t looked back since.

Our current high unemployment isn’t just a statistic. It is 14 million Americans out of work. It’s kids who can’t go to college, it’s people in the prime of their life who wonder if they will ever find a good paying job again, it’s marriages that crack under the strain. This is not just a policy problem, it is a moral tragedy. The President and his Administration are failing our fellow Americans in one of their fundamental responsibilities.

There’s plenty more where that came from.

Romney then listed what the next President needs to do. For clarity, here are some as bullet points:

• Cut taxes on employers.
• “[S]top penalizing companies that want to invest in America.”
• “[C]lean up the red tape, bureaucracy and tax mess that this Administration has left behind.”
• “Government should make the rules, but it shouldn’t be one of the players.”
• Cut discretionary spending.
• “[G]iven what’s happening in the world, we should not reduce our commitment to national security.”
• “Obamacare has to be repealed and the other programs [Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare] have to be made sustainable.”

Mitt then tackles what some people have accused him of avoiding, ObamaCare and MassCare:

Our experiment wasn’t perfect—some things worked, some didn’t, and some things I’d change. One thing I would never do is to usurp the constitutional power of states with a one-size-fits-all federal takeover.

I would repeal Obamacare, if I were ever in a position to do so.  My experience has taught me that states are where healthcare programs for the uninsured should be crafted, just as the Constitution provides. Obamacare is bad law, bad policy, and it is bad for America’s families. (emphasis added)

And finally he closes with what appears to be the theme of his upcoming campaign:

The right answer is to believe in America—to believe in freedom, free enterprise, capitalism, limited government, federalism—and to believe in the constitution, as it was written and intended by the founders.

…

I don’t apologize for America because I believe in America!

…

Believe in America. Our freedom depends on it.

All in all, a fine speech. No wonder Politico described it as, “Mitt Romney unofficially kicking off his New Hampshire campaign”

I cannot find any decent video of the event yet. I will update this if and when a good video becomes available.

It’s been a bad week for Mike Huckabee. I’m a Huckabee supporter, but it’s undeniable

First, he blurts out that Obama grew up in Kenya. Then, he tries to correct it by saying he really grew up in an indonesian madrassa. And then, that he of course knew this and wrote about it on page 183 in his new book, A simple government. To make matters worst, he didn’t actually say that on page 183. No reason why he should; the book wasn’t about Obama anyway. But it doesn’t say Obama grew up in Indonesia, which he said it did.

As a matter of fact, if you’re looking for a condemnation of birthers, you don’t have to look far: On page one, Huckabee writes:

Since Barack Obama was elected, plenty of books have been written criticizing his administration and accusing him of all sorts of things – from being a Marxist, to lying about his citizenship to being a muslim.. But if you know me or if you’re familiar with my commentaries on TV and radio, you know that I don’t like to make politics personal. That’s because I was raised to believe in the Golden Rule, and I don’t know about you, but I certainly don’t like being called names or ridiculed. So I want to start out by saying that if you’ve come here looking for a personal attack on President Obama and those in Washington, you should head to another shelf in the bookstore.

Here, he clearly says that saying Obama is a muslim and/or lying about his citizenship is a form of namecalling and ridiculing which he doesn’t engage in. Why would he condemn birthers more than that – the book isn’t about them after all?

On page 183, he writes (regarding why Obama had given back a bust of Winston Churchill):

The British newspaper The Daily Telegraph explains Obama’s strange behavior: “Churchill has less happy connotations for Mr. Obama than for those American politicians who celebrate his wartime leadership. It was during Churchill’s second premiership that Britain suppressed Kenya’s Mau Mau rebellion… Kenyans allegedly tortured by the colonial regime included one Hussein Onyango Obama

The point is that Huckabee is saying that Obama has ties to Kenya, but not that he grew up there. After the disastrous interview, he corrected himself and said Obama’s grandfather grew up in Kenya (which is true). On this page (183), he proves that he already knew that since he mentions it.

No, he doesn’t say directly that Obama was born in the US, or that he spent some of his childhood in Indonesia. If he said that information was on page 183, then he was wrong. Still, I think the whole controversy has blown way over proportion.

Obama was born in America. Unfortunately, his ideas were born in Russia.

The second question I’d like to clarify in this post is: Why is this happening now? Why is the media making such a big thing out of everything that Huckabee says all of a sudden? Not just this Kenya stuff, but also the thing about Natalie Portman. The media seems to be really harsch on him, all of a sudden.

My theory is that they want to remind Huckabee of what a campaign feels like. Huckabee has said several times that he dislikes campaigning, but also that he feels he can win. The media is now telling Huckabee “This is what you’ll have to go through every day if you run – is it really worth it?”. They are trying to demoralise him; he has been sounding more like a candidate lately and they think that maybe he has forgotten about what he had to endure during his 2008 campaign.  The media is trying to remind Huckabee about how badly he was treated in the last campaign, they are telling him “We’ll be even worst on you this time”.

Hopefully, Huckabee won’t fall for that one. I think he’s stubborn and the more people try to scare him, the more likely he’ll be to jump in. I think there are few things Huckabee want more than punching these media people in the face, and what better way to do that than being elected President? Yeah, I know what you are going to say, “You shouldn’t run because of that, you should run because you love your country etc”. But Huckabee has always loved his country. If that was the only issue, he would have declared his candidacy the day after ending his last bid. Now, he has been confronted with the evil forces in America once more, and I am confident this will only make him realize even more how needed he is.

Congratulations, supporters of Romney and Palin. You may just have pushed your worst enemy into the race.

There was a post last night that offered several (plausible) explanations for why Mitt Romney’s campaign is collapsing.

Quite fairly, Romney’s supporters questioned the premise of the post — Romney isn’t collapsing, they argued. I actually had the same reaction to the post, though it was largely that the imprecise term ‘collapse’ was too strong — my sense has been that Romney is in a ‘decline’ — equally imprecise, I admit.

So I decided to check out my opinion with some actual numbers. This chart is based on creating a rolling average of the most recent five national polls as of the indicated date. The source of the data is RCP. Obviously, this method creates anomalies, since there are periods of many polls (four this month) and other periods with few (winter 2009-10), but I think it will be of interest nonetheless.

So, is Romney in decline/collapse? Yes and no.

Yes, from his high point in spring 2009 he has been in steady decline. But no, he’s really not doing substantially worse than his main competitors.

Huckabee has had a bit of a resurgence over the past few months (about which his cheerleaders are crowing loudly), but in context, as the chart shows, it appears to be no more than the brief bumps all three have had previously. From his peak to his trough just before this bump, Huckabee’s decline was actually sharper than Romney’s.

Palin has the steadiest and worst decline, accentuated by a recent sharp drop after a period of stabilization in the second half of 2010 (during which she got ahead of Huckabee occasionally during his bottoming out).

The most interesting point, I think, is that they’re all down. In part because the pollsters are now including more competitors, but in part (in my opinion) because there’s little enthusiasm for any of them.

Update: I added Gingrich from the point where he began to be routinely included in polls. There are modest adjustments to his first few data points because of a poll he was omitted from, but it doesn’t alter the line much.

In the 1980s, something interesting happened to the Democratic Party. The leftist base of the party, angry that the New Deal, the Great Society, and the cultural revolution of the 1960s had only moved the U.S. a few notches leftward, instead of transforming America into a Western European-style social democracy, began to turn its hostility inward and put the blame on the Democrats and on liberalism itself for failing the American people, who “obviously” wanted this sort of transformation. The Left helped to ruin the presidency of a man elected as a pragmatic Southern Democrat in 1976, both by demanding policies that the country didn’t want, and by supporting a primary challenge against Jimmy Carter in 1980. To the Left, any Democrat who didn’t represent raw, unadulterated liberalism simply wasn’t a good Democrat, and didn’t belong anywhere near the Democratic nomination for public office.

All of this culminated in a serious effort to nominate Jesse Jackson for president in the 1980s. Never mind the fact that Jackson had never held public office and would clearly have been unqualified for the job. Never mind the fact that Jackson turned off the vast, vast majority of America. Never mind the fact that Jackson would lose possibly all 50 states in a general election, and would give the Republicans a shot at re-taking the House for the first time since the 1950s. All that mattered was that Jackson, because of his divisiveness, because of his lack of qualifications for the job, and because of his status as a cultural symbol of the Left, represented an up-or-down vote on liberalism itself, something that liberals demanded as their anger and insecurity mounted, as they feared they were losing America.

Today, there is a segment of the Right that is displaying the same symptoms as the sorts of Democrats who actually thought that nominating Jesse Jackson for president would have been a good idea. These “Jesse Jackson Republicans” were convinced that the Reagan Revolution, the Contract with America, and the Tea Party movement would bring about the idyllic conservative society they’ve always wanted. Yet as we enter America’s fourth decade of the Era of Reaganism, entitlements still exist, the tax code is still thousands of pages long, abortion is still legal, and Washington continues to grow. The logical response to this would be to continue to field solid candidates, who come about organically and who are good fits for the populations that will be voting for them, and who have the smarts both to get elected and to implement conservative policy once in office. That will move government in a right-wing direction, as has been the trend for three decades. But many on the Right simply can’t accept this sort of incremental, half-a-loaf change, and are ready to tell America to put up or shut up with Jesse Jackson-esque candidates who represent the uninhibited id of the Right.

These Jesse Jackson Republicans are making the same arguments that the Jesse Jackson Democrats probably made back in the 1980s. I can hear the actual Jackson supporters from the 1980s now… “Of course Jackson will win! Americans aren’t going to forget what eight years of Reagan/Bush has done to this country! This IS the country that elected FDR and LBJ, after all.” Those are the mirror images of the arguments made in support of the candidacies of Sharron Angle, Ken Buck, and, my personal favorite, Christine O’Donnell, all of whom went on to lose races to Democrats who fully supported Obama’s unpopular domestic agenda.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Republicans could easily nominate John Kasichs and Scott Walkers and Chris Christies all over the country, win elections more often than not, and implement conservative policy. But to the Jesse Jackson Republicans, the very fact that these officeholders are focused on policy misses the point. Most of us realize that, say, public support for Social Security and Medicare is never going to dip below 65 percent or so. That is why Republicans like Paul Ryan are so popular, given that they have a plan to design the most “conservative” versions of Social Security and Medicare possible. But there is a certain segment of the base, I think, that views this strategy as surrender, and that wants candidates for public office who are as far removed from competence, governance, and swing voter-friendly packaging as possible so that Americans will have to give an up-or-down vote to purist conservatism.

Note that the Jesse Jackson wing of the Republican Party does not have to nominate one of its own in order to re-elect Obama. A far more likely scenario is that a regular conservative will win the nomination, say, someone like Daniels, Barbour, or Pawlenty, and that the purists will strategically torpedo the nominee via a series of op-ed pieces, interviews, and Drudge sirens that attempt to paint the nominee as a raging RINO unworthy of the Republican nomination. And then a lot of the non-purist conservatives, reasonable folks who just want a conservative president, will start to believe the hype and will go into “RINO alert” mode as well, dampening enthusiasm for the ticket and depressing turnout. The endgame of all of this is four more years of President Obama.

This is why the GOP purists who have disproportionate influence over the base need to realize that every hit piece that they pen against the “impure” 80 percent of the potential GOP presidential field is only helping to re-elect Obama. It’s one thing to point out actual facts, such as the reality that Jon Huntsman supports cap and trade, or that Mitt Romney was once pro-choice, etc. But to look for every opportunity to connect dots that aren’t there and turn otherwise reasonable candidates into Nelson Rockefeller is unfair to the candidates, and to the party that is ultimately going to nominate one of them.

It’s time for another installment in our series. Last week’s report was skipped due to PPP only releasing one poll all week. We now have enough new data to make a worthwhile report.

First the Horse race table:

Notes:

• The 1/28 North Carolina entry is now obsolete. It has been superseded by the 2/28 poll.
• Thune has announced that he is not running, so his data has been removed.  Apparently PPP has substituted Haley Barbour for Senator Thune.
• No Weighted Average has been computed for Barbour. There are too few data points. When we have at least four, I will include it.

Here is the table of the movement in the Weighted Average:

Note that I have shifted to 1/10th accuracy. Rounding to the nearest point hid the movement too much.

Here is the above data in graphical form for those in double digits:

Everyone has dropped except Romney, both since the last data point and since last month.

Now for the vs. Obama numbers. Here are the numbers in tabular form:

Again, note the exclusion of the obsolete 1/25 poll of North Carolina.

Here is the history of the Weighted Average is tabular form.

And here is the above data in Graphical form:

Not much relative movement between the hopefuls.  Any difference is really more statistical noise than anything else.

And finally, here is the latest Electoral Vote data:

As can be seen, Huckabee starts with nearly a triple digit lead over Palin.

Why has Romney dropped so much in the polls? I presented my opinion this morning, but unfortunately some people took offense – which was never my intention. One member shamelessly used the thread to bash Romney’s religion, a subject we are not to discuss here.

Having said that, I am now going to present five different theories that I have heard about why Romney’s numbers have collapsed, together with the arguments for and against those theories. Feel free to add any arguments, theories etc by commenting on this post.

Romneycare

The theory: With the passage of Obamacare, Romney’s own health care reform became a hot topic and this has distracted people from viewing Romney as a successful businessman and instead they now see him as a Massachusetts liberal in Republican clothing.

For: Romney made a health care reform with some similarities to Obamacare, a reform which Republicans are decidedly against. Obviously, being associated with a reform like that can’t be good for your numbers.

Against: No-one is arguing Romneycare isn’t hurting Romney somewhat, but it hasn’t gotten that much attention at the end of the day; in the political sphere it is certainly hotly debated, but how many “Joe sixpacks” actually know about this reform? Also, even to Republicans, Romney has never been the “Mr Health care guy” (is there any such candidate?), he has always been an economy guy, and so a health care reform shouldn’t hurt his image very much. He has never supported a federal health care reform, and even if he had done that and then changed his mind, his support should still have been stable – surely his supporters must know already that Romney’s beliefs are… constantly developing.

Intentional strategy

The theory: Romney is staying out of the spotlight intentionally, because he fears overexposing himself. He doesn’t want voters to get tired of him.

For: Romney has turned down several interviews, showing that he does intentionally try not to be on TV all the time. He has seen Palin overexpose herself without moving her favorability ratings one bit, and also seen Huckabee effectively promote himself every Saturday on Fox News without being able to pull away from the pack. He can never be as exposed as they are, so why not try to lay low and stage a comeback when people starts to pay attention.

Against: While Romney is definitely trying to lay low, this isn’t because he’s afraid of overexposure. It’s because every time he goes to an interview, he is asked about his health care reform. Also, is he laying low out of choice, or because he isn’t good at attracting media interest (except when he tries to reform health care)? “Laying low”, may be kind of like “strategic retreat” – yes, they do happen, but many times they are just another way of saying “panicking and running to the woods”. Why would he want bad polling numbers in the beginning of the primary season? That ought to tempt other candidates to jump into the race thinking they have a chance now that Romney has seemingly collapsed. In particular, it might tempt potential candidates like Mitch Daniels and Rudy Giuiliani to step in and fill the role as the moderate in the race. If they do, things will be more difficult for Romney than they had had to be.

It’s Gingrich, stupid

The theory: Romney has lost support in polls because Gingrich has been added to them; he never really had those extra %, they were really Gingrich supporters who said they picked him because Gingrich wasn’t offered as a choice.

For: Statistically, there appears to be some correlation. Gingrich was added to the polls in May 2010, right after Romney’s peak. Gingrich is an establishment Republican and has a good reputation when it comes to the economy – kind of like Romney.

Against: Polls have shown that Gingrich supporters have Huckabee as their second choice, not Romney (the last poll had Huckabee receiving 31 % of the second choice votes from Gingrich supporters, compared to 19 % for Romney). We should note though that this is on a national level; it is possible that Gingrich steals social conservatives from Huckabee in the south at the same time as he is stealing moderates from Romney in California – he is perceived differently by different individuals, and in his home state of Georgia he is definitely hurting Huckabee more, being the favorite son.

Conspiracy

The theory: Public Policy Polling have deliberately made up their numbers or manipulated their method in some way to make Romney drop.

For: PPP is showing a much larger drop in support for Romney than any other polling firm. It is a democratic polling firm and fears that Romney would be strong against Obama.

Against: If it is trying to sink Romney, why does it so often show that Romney is competitive against Obama? Nothing could discourage Romney more than knowing that even if he were to win the nomination, he wouldn’t be able to beat Obama. So why does PPP keep showing that he has a decent chance? If the purpose of the conspiracy is to convince Romney to stay out of the race, it’s an utter failure. Also, why does PPP always show Palin with such bad numbers? Shouldn’t they be promoting her, considering that every pollster in the country shows that she is the worst candidate against Obama? And why were PPP so accurate in 2008? And why did they show Romney leading in the spring/summer of 2010?

No longer Mr Frontrunner

The theory: Originally after the 2008 election, people took for granted the party would nominate Romney in the next cycle. People supported him because they thought everyone else did (“unite around our candidate” kind of stuff). The perception of Romney as THE frontrunner kept his numbers inflated for a long time, but like all bubbles, it was bound to burst.

For: Romney was seen as the Republican’s only hope when Obamania was still around; surely the party couldn’t be so stupid as to nominate a conservative candidate in the following election? Many Republicans bought this and supported Romney not because of who he is, but because he was their only chance. As Obama has become weaker, confidence has grown and Republicans no longer think they have to settle for Romney. Romney has a lot of good friends in the media like Sean Hannity who kept calling him the frontrunner in the race while hardly ever mentioning someone like Huckabee.

Against: Are Republican primary voters really that strategic? Do they only vote for the person they think can win, even in opinion polls? To decide in the last second before actually voting that you are going to vote for someone you think can win so that you’re vote isn’t “wasted” is one thing, but why wouldn’t people be open about how they really feel about a candidate when answering a robocall? Also in maybe the first poll done after the 2008 election, Palin received 64 %, probably because of her name being in every paper – at the time, McCain’s earlier primary opponents were more or less forgotten (though that would soon change), proving again how important it is to be in the spotlight and create headlines if you want good results in the polls.

Please give me your opinion on what has happened – and please stay away from unserious comments and religion bashing.

Chris Cillizza is out with his latest Friday Line, and here’s how he ranks the candidates (according to their likelihood to get the GOP nomination – rankings in parentheses are from last month’s Line):

10. Santorum (10)
9. Bachmann (n/a)
8. Huntsman (9)
7. Barbour (6)
6. Daniels (7)
5. Huckabee (4)
4. Gingrich (3)
3. Palin (2)
2. Pawlenty (5)
1. Romney (1)

Check out Cillizza’s reasoning below the fold.
(more…)

The horses are lining up at the starting gate for the big race of 2012. Of course, every pundit, every observer; yes, virtually every voter is trying to handicap this race. We have a good idea who will be running for the Republican nomination, and we know with almost certainty (at this point in time) who will be the Democratic nominee.

But who will be the GOP nominee against Barack Obama?

As in every presidential election cycle, certain factors weigh more than others in this contest, and from cycle to cycle their relative importance changes.

Some of these factors are recent. Certainly, cable TV, the internet and other new technologies had great impact in the past, as usually one candidate exploited the new technology better than his or her opponents. Mass direct mailings used to be a powerful tool to reach voters, and to some extent still are, but today many new communication forms are available. This includes not only employing various refined tools of the internet, but also so-called robo-calling in which large numbers of voters are reached through automatic and recorded and sometimes interactive telephone. In 2004, Howard Dean’s campaign, although he did not did not win the nomination, nevertheless very successfully raise large sums of campaign funds via the internet, something Barack Obama also did in 2008.

What will be the dispositive factors of the 2012 campaign? Money, of course, will continue to be quite critical. After winning Iowa in 2008, Mike Huckabee did not ever have the financial resources to build on that success in later primaries and caucuses. Media coverage in 2008 was so one-sided that it was increasingly difficult for McCain-Palin to get their message across successfully. By that cycle, conservative radio talk hosts, Fox News and a plethora of conservative columnists had begun to match the liberal bias of the Old Media, but there were misgivings about Senator McCain in some conservative circles, and his communications lacked the impact of the young and unknown senator from Illinois who had upset Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, and subsequently outspent the GOP ticket by a huge sum. There are some estimates for Mr. Obama’s campaign to raise and spend a billion dollars in the 2012 cycle.

The U.S. media has been changing very rapidly in recent years, and in the 2012 cycle, conservative and liberal media are more evenly matched than in recent memory. Second-term elections of presidents are historically races about how voters feel about them and their policies. Mr. Obama continues to have problems in the polls, although his numbers are higher than for many recent first-term presidents who were ultimately re-elected. The problem for the president seems to be that, although he maintains a certain consistent personal popularity, his policies are much more unpopular. This is aggravated by the nation’s continuing economic problems, particularly chronic unemployment. The Obama administration’s sole major legislative accomplishment, healthcare reform, moreover is so unpopular that provided much of the catalyst for the Democratic party’s huge losses in the 2010 mid-term elections.

Thus, the Republicans probably don’t need to have an astonishingly charismatic nominee. What they do need is a nominee who can credibly convey he or she knows how to solve our domestic and foreign policy problems, can identify what they are,.and will not require on-the-job training as Mr. Obama did in 2009-10.

This leads me to conclude that while money, name recognition, a good resume and excellent organization will once again be very important, the series of debates, mostly the ones that are televised or taped, will have greater impact in this cycle than any in recent memory. It will not only be ”appearances” that will count, as they did in the first televised debate in 1960 when John F. Kennedy looked much better than Richard Nixon. (It’s important to remember that most voters who heard the debate on radio instead of TV thought that Nixon had won the debate). This time I think voters will be looking for an executive and leader who will transmit his or her knowledge of the problems the nation faces, and convey a clear sense they know what to do when in office. If the Republicans put up an amateur, they will lose. It is interesting to remember that in his pivotal race to win a third term, President Franklin Roosevelt was thought to be vulnerable in 1940. The GOP, however, nominated an unknown businessman who had lots of charm, but could not compare in reliability to FDR as war clouds began to cross the skies from Europe.

Of course, the campaign organization of each GOP hopeful will be trying to convey their candidate’s “bona fides,” but the nature of the media today means that the real tests will be in the face-to-face, one-on-one debate combats that will begin soon in Iowa, and will quickly spread out across the nation and over the airwaves.

I am not just speaking of “debating” skill. I am speaking of the whole impression a candidate will give. As Ronald Reagan and Kennedy both demonstrated, a sense of humor is invaluable. Both of their opponents, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon were humorless communicators. Knowledge of their subject will be also vital. With a relentless media on both sides looking on, frequent mistakes of facts and representation will become mortal wounds to a candidacy. (Vice presidential candidates were perhaps excepted from this rule, in 2008. Joe Biden and Sarah Palin, each in their own way, kept making mistakes.)

Although I do agree that domestic economical issues will be primary again in 2012, the instability in the world, the the transformation of the U.S. role in the world, will require a successful GOP nominee to demonstrate a depth of knowledge, understanding and skill in foreign affairs as perhaps more than in recent previous presidential elections.

Finally, I’m not sure that “flamboyance” or “charisma” will be as important in these upcoming debates as depth of knowledge and understanding, and the skill a candidate has in communicating their will and self-confidence to take his or her rightful place in the world arena and among the other leaders in the world. That arena contains friends and foes, and those who are merely resentful of us, but all of them will still be looking once more for American initiative and leadership.

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-Please visit Mr. Casselman’s personal site, The Prairie Editor Blog.

There is an old saying that “the more things change, the more they remain the same.”  My many years in politics at various levels from activist-insider to casual observer cause me to periodically say, “hey, I’ve seen this act before!”  This morning, I was reading Karl Rove’s op-ed in today’s Wall Street Journal in which he was arguing that advocating spending restraint and fiscal austerity would not be enough to get the GOP to the White House next year, that they would also need to be promoting a convincing plan for economic and job (read income) growth coupled with smaller government and reductions in government spending.  Well, I totally agree.  Then Rove went on to cite “the political genius of Ronald Reagan” and how Reagan combined the message of less government and stronger economic growth in his 1980 campaign.  Once again I found myself thinking that’s right, Karl, but hey old buddy you weren’t on the right side back then when it really counted.  I say ‘once again’ because over the last two years I have heard Karl Rove toss rhetorical bouquets to Ronald Reagan more times than any in the previous 37 years!  Reading Rove’s commentaries over the last two years would give one the impression that he was a Reaganite from way back, totally devoted to small government conservatism and expansion of the conservative coalition.  Not long ago in a Der Spiegel interview he was citing and quoting Hayek!  Wow, what two years out of power can do for one’s perspective.  Reading Rove’s commentaries in the WSJ coupled with his appearances on Fox News, one would never know that he had been the chief  architect-Svengali of the George W. Bush presidency.  Almost never a mention of the Bush years when writing about the GOP and fiscal responsibility and the need for less government and less spending–as if he had been an outside critic all those years bearing no responsibility for their policies and political style.

Rove’s revisionist omissions remind me of another political Sevengali from a different era—the inimitable Henry Kissinger of the Nixon-Ford administrations, architect of the failed detente policy, the disastrous Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and SALT agreement with the Soviet Union and who was on record saying that he believed the American people had lost their will to resist Soviet expansion and thus it was his job to negotiate the most comfortable accommodation possible.  Yet, after Ford’s defeat at the hands of Jimmy Carter, Kissinger began talking a different game, so different that one would have never thought that he had held sway over US national security policy the previous 8 years.  Following the Reagan nomination and election in 1980 (which Kissinger and his patrons did their damnedest to thwart), and once it was becoming clear that Reagan’s new national security policies were working, Kissinger tried his best to gain appointment in the Reagan Administration so that he could take credit for its success.   He went so far as to blatantly denounce the ABM Treaty (the cornerstone of detente) that he had negotiated some 12 years earlier.  In hearing him commenting on Soviet behavior in the early ’80s, you would have thought you were listening to, well—Ronald Reagan; most definitely not to the architect of detente just a few years back.  But from the outset, Reagan had made it clear that Kissinger would never be part of the Administration; thus Henry spent 8 years rapping at the window and crying at the lock.

Both Rove and Kissinger held sway during their power years by serving needy and dependent clients.  Both were tactically clever, brilliant at times, but strategically wrong, and neither accepts responsibility for the failed policies and operational strategy they engineered.  In fact, both actively avoid any such association.  Kissinger never regained his lost power and influence.  Rove is trying to stay in the game largely through his independent political action committee, American Crossroads, and through other activities.  It remains to be seen whether or not he will be able to glob onto a future presidential candidate.  If so, the extent of his influence on operational strategy and tactics and how that might differ from his past (if at all) will be something to watch.  So, just for kicks, just for fun—Henry Rove meet Karl Kissinger.