The column was titled “The New Blacklist” and he declared “my departure represents an undeniable victory for the blacklisters….prattling about their love of dissent and devotion to the First Amendment, they seek systematically to silence and censor dissent.”

While some blogs tried to claim Buchanan “quit,” AP’s David Bauder reported: “MSNBC dropped conservative commentator Pat Buchanan on Thursday, four months after suspending him following the publication of his latest book.”

The network said on Thursday that “after 10 years, we have decided to part ways with Pat Buchanan. We wish him well.”  Buchanan cried foul:

The calls for my firing began almost immediately with the Oct. 18 publication of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?”

A group called Color of Change, whose mission statement says that it “exists to strengthen Black America’s political voice,” claimed that my book espouses a “white supremacist ideology.” Color of Change took particular umbrage at the title of Chapter 4, “The End of White America.”

Media Matters parroted the party line: He has blasphemed!

A Human Rights Campaign that bills itself as America’s leading voice for lesbians, bisexuals, gays and transgendered people said that Buchanan’s “extremist ideas are incredibly harmful to millions of LBGT people around the world.”

Their rage was triggered by a remark to NPR’s Diane Rehm — that I believe homosexual acts to be “unnatural and immoral.”

On Nov. 2, Abe Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League, who has sought to have me censored for 22 years, piled on.

“Buchanan has shown himself, time and again, to be a racist and an anti-Semite,” said Foxman. Buchanan “bemoans the destruction of white Christian America” and says America’s shrinking Jewish population is due to the “collective decision of Jews themselves.”

Well, yes, I do bemoan what Newsweek’s 2009 cover called “The Decline and Fall of Christian America” and editor Jon Meacham described as “The End of Christian America.” After all, I am a Christian.

And what else explains the shrinkage of the U.S. Jewish population by 6 percent in the 1990s and its projected decline by another 50 percent by 2050, if not the “collective decision of Jews themselves”?

I haven’t read the passages about Jewish population decline, but some conservative Jews like Elliott Abrams have lamented how inter-marriage has led to a serious decline in Jewish identity.

Buchanan’s fears about the “end of white America” might seem awfully overblown, but there is no doubt that Buchanan crossed enough liberal lines of “decency” that MSNBC felt they had to dump him. Recall that when MSNBC started putting radicals like Rachel Maddow on the air nightly, they tried to use Buchanan as a friendly sparring partner to make Maddow more “mainstream.” Now they just don’t care at all how radical they look. Buchanan continued:

In the 10 years I have been at MSNBC, the network has taken heat for what I have written, and faithfully honored our contract.

Yet my four-months’ absence from MSNBC and now my departure represents an undeniable victory for the blacklisters.

The modus operandi of these thought police at Color of Change and ADL is to brand as racists and anti-Semites any writer who dares to venture outside the narrow corral in which they seek to confine debate.

All the while prattling about their love of dissent and devotion to the First Amendment, they seek systematically to silence and censor dissent.

Without a hearing, they smear and stigmatize as racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic any who contradict what George Orwell once called their “smelly little orthodoxies.” They then demand that the heretic recant, grovel, apologize, and pledge to go forth and sin no more.

Defy them, and they will go after the network where you work, the newspapers that carry your column, the conventions that invite you to speak. If all else fails, they go after the advertisers.

I know these blacklisters. They operate behind closed doors, with phone calls, mailed threats and off-the-record meetings. They work in the dark because, as Al Smith said, nothing un-American can live in the sunlight.

Speculation is rampant that Buchanan will end up contributing at the Fox News Channel.

SOURCE: http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2012/02/17/pat-buchanan-admits-ive-been-dumped-msnbc-victory-blacklisters#ixzz1meOkGKJV

“We’re trying to take delegates and delegations,” says Paul national campaign chairman Jesse Benton of the campaign’s strategy. “Obviously, we want to do as well as we can in the beauty contests, like Maine’s beauty contest, but the most important thing is that we’re electing a majority of delegates as Ron Paul delegates to state conventions.”

The Paul campaign calls Maine’s caucuses a “beauty contest” because the Pine Tree State’s 24 delegates aren’t bound. If delegates aren’t bound, those delegates can choose to vote for whichever candidate they please at the convention, even if their preferred candidate did not win the state. In other words, Paul could theoretically finish dead last in a state’s caucuses and yet win most or all of the delegates sent to the convention.

The campaign refuses to worry about backlash from the party if its plan succeeds, and Paul’s percentage of delegates at the convention is significantly higher than his percentage of votes.

“We think that’s the way a party should really pick its nominee,” Benton says. “We think that the activists that are most tuned in to the issues, most engaged in the process should be the ones selecting the nominee.”

Take Colorado, which will be sending 36 delegates to the convention. Of the four candidates, Paul finished last, with 12 percent of the votes. (In contrast, Rick Santorum received 40 percent, and Mitt Romney 35 percent.) But according to the Paul campaign, currently 50 percent of the Colorado county-assembly delegates are Paul supporters.

“We are confident in gaining a much larger share of delegates than even our impressive showing yesterday indicates,” said Paul campaign manager John Tate, in a statement after the Minnesota and Colorado caucuses and the Missouri primary. Tate gave a few examples to back up his claim, including the results from a precinct in Larimer County, Colo. Paul received 13 out of the 43 caucus votes cast for the top four candidates in the precinct. But there were also 13 county-assembly delegates elected by the precinct, and, according to Tate, every single delegate was a Paul supporter.

Right now, there are around eight to ten thousand delegates and alternates, according to the Colorado Republican party. That number will be whittled down to 36 through a series of contests in the state.

Colorado GOP executive director Chuck Poplstein says that it is possible the Paul campaign could get a disproportionate share of the state’s delegates, but notes that the campaign still faces plenty of hurdles. As the number of delegates shrinks, those still running to be one of the 36 will face increased scrutiny. “I think you’re going to see campaigns realize these rules, and try to smoke certain people out more and more,” observes Poplstein. “When somebody’s up there saying I want to be a delegate, they’re going to go, ‘Well, who are you voting for?’” And while delegates are not bound, they can pledge to vote for a certain candidate if elected a delegate to the convention.

Asked if the campaign can maintain its high percentage of delegates throughout the various states’ elimination rounds, Benton acknowledges that that outcome (meaning that 50 percent of the state’s total delegates would remain Paul supporters) isn’t “automatic,” but is confident that the campaign can pull it off. “If we continue to work hard and be smart and understand the process and keep our nose to the grindstone, it will happen,” he predicts.

The Paul campaign has focused on diligently training its supporters, who, as any reporter whose e-mail address is public can tell you, are a passionate lot. Paul backers are willing not to just show up and pull the lever for Paul, but also to learn the arcane rules that govern delegate selection.

Consider what happened at one Maine caucus site. Washington Post reporter Felicia Somnez reported that while the original schedule had been selection of delegates first and then the caucus vote, a voter’s proposal that the order be reversed was approved by the attendees. Around half of voters had come for the caucus vote, not for the delegate selection. “The state delegate race would be conducted with only about half that many people in the room,” Somnez wrote. “And that meant the pool had effectively been reduced to only the most committed voters of an already quite diehard bunch — among them, many Paul supporters like [Alex] Lyscars who were willing to spend more than four hours at a caucus on a Saturday afternoon and for whom the straw-poll results were secondary to the actual delegate race.”

After Maine’s caucus, the state GOP called Romney the caucus winner. But the Paul campaign had a different spin on the outcome. “We are confident we will control the Maine delegation for the convention in August,” said Benton in a statement issued that night. The campaign estimates that about 75 percent of the state’s current delegates are Paul supporters.

And it’s not just Maine and Colorado. Talking to reporters in January, Benton predicted that the Paul campaign would ultimately “win the Iowa delegation, even though we took a close third place . . . on caucus night.” Seventy-five percent of the Minnesota delegates to local party conventions are Paul backers, according to the campaign.

Ultimately, the odds that Paul could get enough delegates to swing the national convention to a vote nominating him are nil. But the more delegates Paul controls, the more of an impact he can have on determining the GOP platform at the convention. Furthermore, if it does come to a brokered convention — admittedly an unlikely scenario — the Paul campaign will be ready. Benton refuses to speculate about what the specific odds are that there will be a brokered convention, but does say of the possibility, “We’ve always seen it as more likely than most people would.”

The campaign is also flirting with the possibility that “bound” delegates won’t ultimately be bound. “We would like to take a majority of the delegates and so if there is an unbinding after round one, or if there is a rule passed on the floor of the Republican National Convention to unbind the delegates, then the majority of the delegates [in a given state delegation] would be our supporters and we would control that delegation,” Benton remarks. He notes the campaign’s efforts in Nevada, where delegates are considered bound for the first round of votes: Paul came in third, winning 19 percent of the vote, but the campaign believes it currently controls 60 percent of the delegates. If by some chance those delegates became unbound (and the campaign managed to control 60 percent of the convention delegates), the convention-delegate vote would not mirror Nevada’s caucus vote.

Looking ahead, the campaign is particularly targeting Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, Idaho, North Dakota, Kansas, and Missouri. Most of those states’ delegates are bound.

The Paul campaign is frank about its belief that no other campaign is as well set up to acquire delegates.

“We don’t think anyone understands or has more experience with the convention process than our professional team,” Benton says. “And then also we believe we have a substantially higher level of training and intensity amongst our supporters.” That, Benton muses, can “really shift the playing field to our advantage.”

SOURCE:  http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/291218/ron-paul-s-delegate-strategy-katrina-trinko

For Team Romney, the ultimate question in the general election may be whether it needs Hispanics more than an enthusiastic evangelical base in an election that, on paper, many experts believe will be extremely close. HUMAN EVENTS editors looked at the top-tier Veep candidates who could appeal to the Hispanic and evangelical vote, as well as pump some excitement into the campaign. Other Veep candidates might well be able to deliver Reagan Democrats in important Midwest and industrial states. And, as in any race, there are a few dark horse candidates who may turn out to be the “mudders” of the race who perform well in stormy and uncertain circumstances.

TOP PICKS

Chris Christie Governor of New Jersey

WHY WE CHOSE: The brash New Jersey governor has fiercely battled public sector unions and reduced the size of New Jersey’s government.

BRINGS: He would be perhaps the best attack dog a candidate could employ (something Romney needs more than Gingrich or Santorum). He articulates America’s high purpose as well or better than anyone and is an energizing speaker (see Reagan Library speech).

POTENTIAL LIABILITIES: He would overshadow a Romney, as some say he did when he stumped on Romney’s behalf in Iowa. There are serious doubts he would be able to help turn a blue state in the Northeast red.

Marco Rubio Junior Senator from Florida

WHY WE CHOSE: He articulates American exceptionalism exceptionally and speaks forcefully on issues related to finances and life. He will excite Republicans in general and obviously appeal to Hispanics. He has surgically and effectively attacked Barack Obama as few other Republicans have been able to.

BRINGS: Besides appealing to the Hispanic vote, particularly Cubans in Florida, he has made a point to reach out to Hispanic communities across America. To many Republicans, Rubio would erase or neutralize most of Romney’s vulnerabilities and help Republicans start to gain a foothold among Hispanic voters for a generation.

POTENTIAL LIABILITIES: Democrats are likely to focus on Rubio’s financial problem, which stems from Rubio having put some personal expenses on the Florida Republican Party’s credit card, which he eventually repaid. This situation conflicts somewhat with Romney’s oft-quoted assertion that people should not run for office if they need politics to pay their mortgage. But Rubio’s upside and electoral value greatly outweigh his potential liabilities.

Susana Martinez Governor of New Mexico

WHY WE CHOSE: She has been a fiscally conservative governor who also has been conservative on immigration without turning off Hispanic voters in New Mexico.

BRINGS: Hispanics of Mexican descent, who vote differently from Cubans, will be crucial in swing states like New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada. Martinez, who is Mexican-American, appeals to the GOP base with her financially prudent approach and her down-home style (she enjoys going shooting and is a terrific shot, for instance. )

POTENTIAL LIABILITIES: She lacks formal foreign policy experience and seasoning on a national stage, but her likable husband Chuck will be a tremendous asset on the trail.

Bob McDonnell Governor of Virginia

WHY WE CHOSE: Inherited a budget deficit in Virginia and turned it into a surplus while attracting business to help Virginia better weather the economic downturn.

BRINGS: McDonnell appeals to evangelical and independent swing voters and minorities in key areas such as Northern Virginia and in perhaps the most critical swing state in the general election: Virginia. He served in the Army, as did his daughter, adding military credentials to a ticket that may be in need of some.

POTENTIAL LIABILITIES: His infamous graduate thesis in which Democrats thought he was unduly harsh on women. But, notably, in the 2009 election cycle in which the thesis was an issue, McDonnell gained more votes from women than his opponent did. Also, many see McDonnell as an evangelical version of Romney and having two manager-type candidates on a ticket may be too vanilla.

Bobby Jindal Governor of Louisiana

WHY WE CHOSE: Jindal has cleaned up the notoriously nasty Louisiana political scene, which is a tremendous asset in a cycle in which there is bipartisan revulsion at crony capitalism and other aspects of “us/them” politics in America today. Jindal has also been a party builder, accelerating Republican domination in Louisiana.

BRINGS: While lacking the showmanship of a Christie, Jindal would excite many conservatives who are not sold on a Romney candidacy. He would also help Romney with swing voters, and minorities.

POTENTIAL LIABILITIES: He botched his response to Obama’s 2009 address to a joint session of Congress and some voters may forever see him as someone akin to the Kenneth the Page character from the television show “30 Rock.”

Also worthy of consideration

Mitch Daniels Governor of Indiana

WHY WE CHOSE: Daniels gave an impressive response on January 24 to President Obama’s State of the Union address. He has a track record of attracting a successful coalition of support in Indiana for programs such as health savings accounts. He inherited a deficit and turned it into a surplus and, just recently, signed a right-to-work bill, the first of its kind in the industrial Midwest states.

BRINGS: Daniels has been a leader in making the case that the national debt is a national security threat. He’s popular in Midwest swing states.

POTENTIAL LIABILITIES: Some say he lacks the sizzle Romney needs. Many conservatives do not like his having called for a “truce” on social issues to win the 2010 elections and his openness to a VAT (value-added tax). Others may associate him with the Bush administration’s reckless domestic spending priorities, because he was OMB head.

Rob Portman Junior Senator from Ohio

WHY WE CHOSE: Experience in domestic and foreign affairs; known for being affable and working with others with differing views to pass programs.

BRINGS: Would help a newbie like Romney navigate Washington. He’s popular in Midwest swing states.

POTENTIAL LIABILITIES: He could help Romney in Ohio, but his popularity reach is fairly limited.

Paul Ryan Congressman from Wisconsin

WHY WE CHOSE: Ryan, HUMAN EVENTS’ most recent “Conservative of the Year,” is bold, wonkish, from the swing state of Wisconsin, and won a district that, on paper, does not seem favorable to Republicans. He is an outspoken advocate of entitlement reform and for free markets as the best way to expand the economic pie for all.

BRINGS: Could help Romney articulate the need for entitlement reform and help defend Romney and Republicans from Democratic demagoguing on issues such as Social Security and Medicare reform. He’s popular in industrial and Midwest swing states.

POTENTIAL LIABILITIES: Democrats could falsely demonize Ryan and his policies as hurting the elderly, and, unfortunately, this could hurt Republicans with older adult voters.

Pat Toomey Junior Senator from Pennsylvania

WHY WE CHOSE: Toomey, a darling of fiscal conservatives who articulately defends the free market system, also happens to be from a swing state.

BRINGS: He can excite fiscal conservatives without turning off social conservatives.

POTENTIAL LIABILITIES: Toomey’s sizzle may not reach far beyond Pennsylvania.

John Thune Junior Senator from South Dakota

WHY WE CHOSE: If Romney’s the candidate, he can help build consensus within Washington.

BRINGS: The graduate of Biola University will also help him with evangelicals without turning off swing voters. Plays well in Iowa and across the Heartland.

POTENTIAL LIABILITIES: Reinforces Romney’s more establishment image, is a bit bland and Thune’s support of the federal bailouts may give Romney or Gingrich some messaging problems.

Scott Walker Governor of Wisconsin

WHY WE CHOSE: The governor of Wisconsin has courageously led the fight against public sector unions and entitlement reform and would galvanize conservatives.

BRINGS: Appeals to conservative activists, especially in Wisconsin.

POTENTIAL LIABILITIES: Lack of foreign policy experience; an image with some as too polarizing a figure.

Dark Horses

Condolezza Rice Secretary of State for President George W. Bush

WHY WE CHOSE: Though Rice would probably decline if asked, she is the dream candidate of many establishment Republicans who believe she can help balance a Romney candidacy because they think Romney will be portrayed as the “white, country club” candidate.

BRINGS: Provides foreign policy gravitas and helps among women and black voters.

POTENTIAL LIABILITIES: To many conservatives, Rice is a liberal establishment Republican and will not excite or galvanize
them.

Mike Huckabee Former Governor of Arkansas

WHY WE CHOSE: An exciting and compassionate speaker who can appeal to Main Street, blue-collar voters.

BRINGS: Huckabee would excite evangelical voters and would also help soften Romney’s image as someone who does not care about the poor.

POTENTIAL LIABILITIES: While governor of Arkansas, Huckabee granted clemency to Maurice Clemmons, who was later shot and killed by Seattle police after Clemmons killed four police officers. Other conservatives do not trust Huckabee’s questionable fiscal conservative credentials.

Cathy McMorris Rodgers Congresswoman from Washington

WHY WE CHOSE: Her work on issues concerning energy independence and balanced budgets can thematically help Romney with these critical issues.

BRINGS: Connects with women and fiscally conservative voters.

POTENTIAL LIABILITIES: May be too bland to help with Romney’s liabilities.

Jim DeMint Senator from South Carolina

WHY WE CHOSE: The 2010 HUMAN EVENTS “Conservative of the Year” has been a fiscally conservative thorn in the side of the Washington establishment in an anti-establishment cycle.

BRINGS: Excites tea partiers and evangelicals. And, he and Romney have an established, friendly relationship. DeMint endorsed Romney in 2008.

POTENTIAL LIABILITIES: May have too many enemies within the establishment and his past support of earmarks, which opposition researchers will be sure to highlight and exploit.

Tim Scott Congressman from South Carolina

WHY WE CHOSE: Few Republicans helped themselves more during the primary season than Tim Scott. An African-American tea party conservative who appeals to evangelicals from South Carolina, Scott has demonstrated that Republicans can get support from minority communities without having to moderate on issues.

BRINGS: He can help the nominee with tea partiers and potentially blunt the enthusiasm of African Americans for Obama. Further, for Romney he would mitigate the mainstream media’s focus on the Mormon church’s exclusionary history.

POTENTIAL LIABILITIES: Lack of experience on the national stage is the obvious drawback.

SOURCE:  http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=49532

The issue bears attention. This week Team Obama had to return over $200,000 in campaign funds bundled by two American brothers of Pepe Cardona, a casino mogul in Mexico. Cardona, born in Iowa of Mexican parents, jumped bail in 1994 to avoid drug and fraud charges against him. Ever since, he and his family have been seeking special treatment that would allow him to return to the U.S.

The New York Times reports that as recently as January 2011, the former chairman of the Iowa Democratic party approached outgoing Iowa Democratic governor Chet Culver for a pardon for Cardona on state charges. No pardon was granted.

Small wonder. In 2009, a State Department cable that was made public as part of the WikiLeaks revelations noted that Cardona was suspected of orchestrating the assassination of a business competitor and of making $5 million in illegal campaign donations to Mexican officials in 2006.

But Cardona’s U.S. relatives, especially brothers Alberto and Carlos Cardona, have been unstinting in their efforts to help Pepe. Since they have no prior history of political giving, a natural question arises as to why the two brothers would now become major “bundlers” for Obama. Cynical minds will recall that in 2001, President Bill Clintonissued 140 pardons as well as several commutations on his last day in office, including ones for infamous financier Marc Rich, Clinton’s former Whitewater business associate Susan MacDougal, and his half-brother Roger Clinton, who was accused of using his access to the president to lobby for the pardons of others.

Sarah Westfall, who is married to Gabriel Cardona, one of Pepe’s brothers, says that explaining the civic-mindedness of her brothers-in-law is easy: They were active in the Latino community and enthusiastically supported Obama. She assured the Times that “there were no other reasons beyond those.” As for Pepe, she acknowledged a soft spot about his record: “I understand that it looks real bad. But the rest of the family are really good people. Pepe is actually a good person too.”

One of the (not always true) facts of life is that almost everyone thinks of themselves as a good person, and this view is usually shared by their close friends and relatives. For this reason, presidential campaigns have learned to “verify, then trust” the bona fides of the high-flying bundlers who officially represent their campaigns. Not doing so in the modern political era suggests a sloppiness that can border on recklessness.

In 2004, the campaigns of both President Bush and Democrat John Kerry carefully vetted their bundlers. “We had over 1,000 people who wanted to be bundlers, but many didn’t make the cut,” one top Bush fundraiser told me. “We had to turn down friends of the president just because they had two DUI’s or were having a home foreclosed.”

“It’s incumbent on a campaign to vet their bundlers,” Ed Gillespie, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee, told me. “They have been chosen by the campaign to represent and even speak on behalf of the campaign and it’s important to avoid embarrassment.” Even with scrutiny, mistakes were made. Jack Abramoff, whose lobbying empire collapsed in 2006, was a minor bundler for President Bush’s 2004 campaign, bringing in a little less than $50,000 from his friends and associates.

Other campaigns have stumbled in more spectacular ways. In 2007, it was found that Norman Hsu, a prodigious fundraiser for Hillary Clinton, had pleaded no contest to grand theft and was illegally reimbursing donors for campaign checks they wrote to Clinton. Geoffrey Fieger, a flamboyant trial lawyer from Michigan, was indicted on charges that he similarly reimbursed his firm’s employees for donations they made to the 2004 campaign of John Edwards. He was subsequently acquitted, but no one has been eager to use his services since.

After the Norman Hsu debacle, Hillary Clinton’s campaign vowed to conduct background checks on all of its bundlers, as did the John Edwards campaign. But the Obama campaign was more circumspect. U.S. News & World Report said campaign officials promised to be “as diligent as possible in vetting donors and bundlers but will not elaborate.”

In the aftermath of the Cardona brothers scandal, Obama strategist David Axelrod had to admit to MSNBC that “the vet[ting] didn’t go deep enough, obviously. . . . There are going to be holes and when there are, you know, we’re going to act quickly and that’s what we did here.” He also continues to insist that Team Obama “believes deeply in disclosure,” noting that the Obama campaign has released the names of all its bundlers.

But the Cardona incident should remind the media that Team Obama’s commitment to disclosure goes only so far. In 2008, John McCain’s campaign publicly identified its entire donor base, including those contributing under $200, whose names are not legally required to be disclosed. But it was a different story with Team Obama. “We asked both campaigns for more information on small donors,” Massie Ritsch, a spokesman for the liberal Center for Responsive Politics, told Newsmax. “The Obama campaign never responded.”

Perhaps the campaign was worried that some of those “holes” Axelrod mentioned this month would turn up. Because of its large number of small donations, the Obama campaign wound up not disclosing the givers of about half of the $800 million it raised in 2008. Indeed, the Washington Post reported that it went so far has to turn off the Address Verification System at its website. That program should have stopped the campaign from accepting contributions from citizens of foreign countries — a violation of federal law. The decision to abandon filters had consequences — the campaign was forced to refund $33,000 to two Palestinian brothers in the Gaza Strip who had bought T-shirts from the campaign’s online stores in small increments.

It was the Federal Election Commission, which did receive a complete list of Obama donors, that flagged the egregious case of the Palestinian brothers. At the time, FEC officials privately conceded that the full list might include many more small donors contributing illegally from foreign countries. The FEC declined to make a federal case out of the smaller fry in the Obama net, but at least one FEC auditor expressed concern about the “sloppiness” of Team Obama’s approach.

The Cardona scandal should serve as a reminder to the media that for all their fixation on campaign-finance issues, they largely gave the 2008 Obama campaign a pass. Now the Cardona red flag from Obama’s 2012 campaign has already been submerged by other news. The media can’t depend on the FEC catching any lapses. It will have to do the job itself.

The FEC usually takes three to four years to finish any probe. If there are irregularities in the 2012 Obama campaign, or that of any other candidate, the full extent of them will be known about the time whoever is elected this year finishes their term. Here’s hoping the media learns from the Cardona case that any campaign can say they believe in “disclosure” and “vetting,” but it doesn’t mean they always practice it.

SOURCE:  http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/290722/bungling-bundlers-john-fund

Okay, I give up.  About a week ago, I wrote a column making a case for Mitt Romney as the GOP nominee. My argument was aimed at fellow conservatives who just can’t get their minds — or at least their hearts — around a Romney candidacy. The details aren’t important right now (and they’re easy enough to find with the interwebs these days).

The reason I wrote the column in the first place was that I felt the cold steel barrel of reality’s revolver pressing up against the back of my head, saying “write it.”

Romney’s going to be the nominee. He’s vastly preferable to Obama. If he’s the inevitable nominee, then better for conservatives to make peace with the idea.

And then, lo and behold, Rick Santorum bursts into the motel room, knocks the gun from reality’s hands and puts reality in a chokehold. “Not so fast.”

Even if Romney becomes the nominee, it’s difficult to exaggerate the significance of Santorum’s trifecta this week in Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado. In 2008, Romney won Minnesota by a mile (if you define a mile as 19 percentage points), winning more than half the counties. On Tuesday, he lost every county and came in third place. In Missouri, he lost every county, and Santorum won every county. In Colorado, where Romney was the heavy favorite, he lost by 5 percentage points, 40- 35. In 2008, Romney won Colorado with 60 percent of the vote; he won 56 counties out of 64. On Tuesday, he captured a mere 16 counties in Colorado.

The lamentations of Team Romney count for little. They prattle about low turnout, as if the “front-runner’s” failure to excite the base is an asset. They mutter that these were beauty contests and non-binding votes where no delegates were awarded.

True enough. But no delegates were awarded in the Iowa Caucuses either. Romney seemed to think those mattered. More important, these three states offered a huge referendum on Romney, and the crowd rose up to say, “Meh.”

Team Santorum understandably wants everyone to believe that this was a huge endorsement of their guy’s message and candidacy. “I don’t stand here to claim to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney,” Santorum proclaimed Tuesday night in Missouri. “I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama.”

I’m sure he’s sincere. Indeed, that’s one of the things people genuinely admire about Santorum: He doesn’t need to fake his sincerity about anything.

But I don’t really buy it. The single biggest factor in this campaign remains the fact that the base of the GOP is uncomfortable with Romney and refuses to believe that it can’t do better than the guy who invented Romneycare and talks to conservatives like he’s reading from a right-wing Berlitz phrasebook. He rails about “Washington politicians” –— which looks great on paper but sounds somewhat ridiculous coming from Romney, given that he seems more like a Washington politician than any of the Republican opponents left in the field.

The irony is that, in a weird way, Santorum has many of the same problems Romney has. Superficially, he looks like an anti-Romney when it comes to personality. Romney often sounds like HAL refusing to open the pod-bay doors in 2001: A Space Odyssey, while Santorum overflows with passion and emotion.

But simply having an authentic personally doesn’t necessarily mean you have a presidential one. All too often, Santorum looks like he has a thumbtack in his shoe that he presses down on to fool the polygraph. He can be dour and resentful.

Likewise, on substance, if you were going to design a GOP candidate to fit the moment, it wouldn’t be Santorum. The difference between him and George W. Bush: Santorum’s deadly serious about compassionate conservatism. He is honestly and forthrightly committed to using government to realize his moral vision for America. That’s his prerogative, and he has many good (and some very bad) arguments on his side.

But, suffice it to say, he is not the one the tea partiers have been waiting for.

Now, the race is just a mess. I feel like the revolver in reality’s hand is full of blanks, and anyone who thinks they know what happens next is stabbing in the dark. I could live with either man being the nominee. And while I would happily vote for either in a contest against Obama, I honestly have no idea who would be more electable. Frankly, I find the prospect of any of them becoming the nominee worrisome and hard to imagine. A brokered convention seems ever more plausible –— and desirable.

SOURCE:  http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/290686/gop-race-gets-messy-jonah-goldberg

“Tonight, we had an opportunity to see what a campaign looks like when one candidate isn’t outspent 5- or 10-to-1 by negative ads impugning their integrity and distorting their record. This is a more accurate representation, frankly, of what the fall race will look like,” Santorum told a cheering crowd in St. Charles, Mo., Tuesday night.

In Colorado, Santorum took 40 percent of the vote to Mitt Romney’s 35 percent. (Newt Gringrich and Ron Paul took 13 percent and 12 percent, respectively.)

In Minnesota, Santorum took 45 percent, followed by Ron Paul with 27 percent, Romney with only 17 percent, and Gringrich with 11 percent.

In Missouri’s nonbinding primary, where Gingrich was not on the ballot and Santorum was expected to do well, Santorum won with a whopping 55 percent of the vote to 25 percent for Romney and 12 percent for Paul.

“I don’t stand here to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, I stand here to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama,” Santorum said. On health care, cap-and-trade, and the Wall Street bailout, “Mitt Romney has the same positions as Barack Obama,” Santorum said.

“This was a good night for Rick Santorum,” Romney told supporters in Denver on Tuesday night. “We’ll keep on campaigning down the road, but I expect to become our nominee with your help.” Romney added, “When this primary season is over, we’re going to stand united as a party behind our nominee to defeat Barack Obama.”

Romney’s camp began downplaying the results hours before the voting began. Rich Beeson, his political director, released a memo earlier in the day noting that Sen. John McCain lost 19 states on the way to capturing the GOP presidential nomination in 2008. McCain, of course, went on to lose the election to Barack Obama.

Conservative voters remain wary of Romney, who has the support of many establishment Republicans and is considered more moderate than conservative on the issues.  Many conservatives also have been turned off by Romney and Gingrich tearing each other apart.

“These caucuses matter,” Santorum told Fox News Tuesday night, before learned he’d won Colorado as well as Minnesota and Missouri. “I think you’re going to see our campaign get a real shot of energy coming out of this Tuesday.”

Santorum said he expects to do “very, very well” in Ohio, Michigan and in the south.

“I think we have a message that’s going to play well all across this country,” he told Fox News.

Santorum said the nominating contests in the first five states were “pre-set for a long time,” allowing some of the candidates to spend huge amounts of money.

“So the Romney campaign had a huge leg-up on those first five states. They don’t going forward. They just haven’t run the kind of campaigns in the rest of the country that they ran in those five states this time,” Santorum said.

“So it’s a whole new playing field.”

Santorum said he believes he can beat Romney one-on-one, and he said Republicans have a “much higher probability of losing” if Romney or Gingrich run against Barack Obama in the general election.

SOURCE:  http://cnsnews.com/news/article/come-behind-santorum-wins-all-three-whole-new-playing-field

Did Tuesday’s results matter? Nowhere near as much as the results from Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida mattered. But primary campaigns rarely reach stasis; momentum shifts, ebbs, and flows, and the trio of contests yesterday offered a few hints that the storyline will change once again.

Rick Santorum is on the verge of overtaking Newt Gingrich as the anti-Romney alternative.

Santorum began this contest as the man of the hour, the little engine that could in a sweater-vest who challenged and beat the much-better-funded Mitt Romney . . . and yet he has, at the moment, an entire three delegates committed to him. (Iowa’s delegates to the national convention will formally be selected at a state convention on June 16.)

Santorum won no more than 17 percent in any of the subsequent contests, until last night, and he finished with a disappointing 10 percent in Nevada’s caucuses Saturday. Gingrich has declared, with increasing loudness and insistence, that the former Pennsylvania senator should leave the race to unite conservatives behind his candidacy.

Thirty-five days after the Iowa caucuses, Rick Santorum needed a win — even a purely symbolic win — to remind Republicans nationwide that he was still a serious contender. Tuesday night, he got it. Missouri was called for him first, shortly thereafter Minnesota followed, and in Colorado he looked likely to finish no worse than a close second. His two wins were landslides.

For conservatives hoping to unite behind one Romney rival, Missouri offered a tantalizing look at what the race would be like if Gingrich and Santorum were not splitting that segment of the GOP electorate.

Gingrich was not listed on the Missouri ballot; he and his campaign said that they did not bother to qualify for it because they deemed the nonbinding contest irrelevant. Cynics may notice the Gingrich campaign’s inability to qualify for the ballot in Virginia and wonder just how deliberate their approach to Missouri was.

In the reduced field, Santorum didn’t just win, he thrashed Romney. With 90 percent of precincts reporting, Santorum led in every Missouri county that was reporting results.

Rick Santorum adviser John Brabender told CNBC’s John Harwood: “Missouri tells me that in a clean one-on-one against Romney, we beat him.” Expect to hear a lot of this argument from Santorum and his supporters. You’ll also hear quite a few assertions that Santorum has won three contests to Gingrich’s one; the former speaker and his backers will furiously dispute that any of tonight’s results count as legitimate wins.

“We doubled him up in Missouri and Minnesota!” Santorum exulted in his victory speech last night. He added, “In Massachusetts, your votes were particularly loud tonight!”

Of course, it seems hard to imagine Gingrich voluntarily leaving the race; last night, he told Wolf Blitzer: “I’m certainly in it all the way to the convention.”

Santorum’s support surged dramatically in the final days before the Iowa caucuses, as polling indicated the former senator had a chance to win and would not be regarded as a “wasted vote.” Perhaps the largest obstacle to Santorum’s campaign is clearing that psychological threshold nationally; if so, last night and its consequent surge of funds and volunteers should go a long way.

The next binding, delegate-determining, real contests come February 28 in Michigan and Arizona. While both states will receive intense attention from the remaining campaigns, expect Gingrich and Santorum to go toe-to-toe in Arizona.

The RNC’s efforts to clean up the primary calendar seem only to have muddied things further.

In 2008, Iowa held its caucuses on January 3, a wildly early date. Previous primaries had been held no earlier than January 19 (2004, 1976), and the primary was held in February from 1984 through 1996. In response to the perception that the nomination process began way too early, and to prevent too many states from frontloading it, the RNC ruled that states that held their contests before March 6 would lose half their delegates. (Iowa managed to avoid losing delegates because its caucus was not officially binding; as noted above, the delegates will be picked at the state convention on June 16.)

Five states decided that an early calendar slot was worth losing half their delegates: New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida, Arizona, and Michigan.

Colorado and Minnesota emulated Iowa by exploiting the loophole in the RNC’s rule. The penalty applied only to states that selected delegates to the convention. Any state could hold two contests — one, a “beauty contest,” before the March 6 threshold, and a second that selected the actual delegates after it.

The result is confusing and, in the eyes of many, wasteful. Colorado’s actual delegates to the Republicannominating convention will be selected at the state convention April 14; Minnesota will select its delegates on the weekend of May 4–5.

Why did Missouri taxpayers pay $7 million for a non-binding primary? In part because the state’s presidential-primary day is decreed under state law to be the first Tuesday in February.

Last year, Democratic governor Jay Nixon vetoed a bill that would have moved back the primary date. He said he had no objection to changing the primary but refused to accept a provision of the legislation that would have stripped his power to make appointments to fill vacancies in the U.S. Senate and other statewide offices. In the end, lawmakers could not pass a second bill before the RNC’s October 1 deadline to set primary dates.

With the confusion, it’s an open question whether those who voted on Tuesday will participate in the state’s caucus, which does count, on March 17.

The turnout engine continues to rattle unnervingly.

Perhaps it’s hard to measure turnout for nonbinding contests, and turnout in Colorado was complicated by bad weather.  But Tuesday offered nothing to dispel a sinking fear that this crop of candidates cannot generate widespread excitement among Republicans.

One polling place in Missouri had about 10 percent of the normal turnout for a primary in the early hours.

Turnout in 2008’s binding Republican primary in Missouri was 588,720. Turnout last night was lower than 250,000. Binding or not, if Show-Me State Republicans felt passionate about their candidates, they would have turned out in greater numbers to give their man a little boost, even if only a symbolic one. (With more than 135,000 votes in Missouri last night, Santorum can argue he’s coming closest to catching fire, at least at this moment.)

Republican turnout increased slightly in Iowa and New Hampshire over 2008, but much of that appears to have been driven by Ron Paul supporters who may or may not be inclined to support the Republican nominee in November. GOP turnout surged in South Carolina, but then slipped below 2008’s level in Florida, and then plummeted in Nevada this weekend.

The Las Vegas Sun tallied up the depressing numbers: “More than 10,000 fewer Republican voters made it to Saturday morning’s much-trumpeted caucuses than turned out for the underpublicized caucuses of 2008. To put it differently: about 8 percent of the party’s active voter base participated this time, compared with about 11 percent four years ago.”

“They totally embarrassed themselves,” lamented a Republican strategist who worked on one of the statewide races in Nevada last cycle. “I’m surprised by how late candidates focused on it. There was no leadership from the top.  Nevada Republicans were handed a gift with a primary this early and they still received almost no attention. . . . Plus there’s a fight that is still to come. The Ron Paul folks smell fraud and conspiracy [in the results, which were not fully counted until Monday morning,] and are freaking out.”

For what it’s worth, the Republican National Committee is tracking those who do turn out in these early contests and planning to use that information for the general-election battle.

“We are watching the early contests and using our mobile campaign and social media in particular to reach out to primary voters to get ready for the general election,” said Sean Spicer, RNC communications director. “We’re also getting ready for the day we have a nominee and unifying as a party to put us in the best position to accomplish that.”

SOURCE: http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/290492/three-lessons-beauty-contests-jim-geraghty

With Nevada’s 28 delegates set to be awarded proportionally, it looks like Romney will collect 12 delegates, while Gingrich will take 7, Ron Paul 5, and Rick Santorum will get 4.  That’s a tiny fraction of the delegates needed to win the nomination, so this primary remains far from over.

Still, Gingrich knows this is the second big defeat in a row Romney has handed him, and he needed to take a hand in shaping the narrative of this election.  He made use of some interesting tactics.

Right off the bat, he got the important part out of the way, shooting down rumors that he might be thinking of throwing in the towel – rumors he later attributed to Romney campaign operatives indulging their “greatest fantasy.”

“I am a candidate for President of the United States,” Gingrich declared.  “I will be the candidate for President of the United States.  We will go to Tampa.”  He went on to tout the strength of his donor base, and outline his plans to visit Denver, Minneapolis, and Ohio in advance of their primaries.  With this electoral table set, he said “everyone could relax.”

Gingrich wasted no time punching Mitt Romney’s self-inflicted wound from a televised gaffe earlier this week: “Unlike Governor Romney, I care very deeply about helping the poorest Americans.  I believe that the Declaration of Independence’s commitment that our Creator endowed us with the right to pursue happiness extends to the poorest of Americans, and I believe one of the great challenges to conservatism is to turn the safety net into a trampoline, to give people an opportunity to achieve real status – earning a living, buying a house, having a decent future… so I’m not comfortable, as Governor Romney said he was, to allow people to languish in the safety net.”

He went on to take exception with Romney’s professed support for a “capricious” increase in the minimum wage, saying it would increase unemployment – particularly given the currently high rates of teenage and black teenage unemployment.

Gingrich described Romney as a “Massachusetts moderate” who should be of limited interest to “the vast majority of Republicans across the country,” given that Romney has been “pro-abortion, pro-gun-control, and pro-tax increase” during his career, and furthermore “ranked third from the bottom in creating jobs during the four years he was Governor.”  He warned that Republicans would experience the same disappointment they endured in 2008 if they sent another “moderate” up against Obama in 2012.

Also, Gingrich said leftist super-villain George Soros likes Romney, and thinks there would be little practical difference between him and Barack Obama, beyond “a change of personality.”  Gingrich himself strongly rejects that view, saying that if the choice is between Romney and Obama, then “it’s really no choice at all.”

Undaunted by his recent reversals of fortune, Gingrich predicted that he’d be leading his troops to a series of victories culminating in the Texas primary… which will probably be sometime in April, although at the moment only God knows when, because they’ve been trying to reschedule it.  Gingrich made it clear he’s got his hatches battened down for a tough February, but is looking forward to Super Tuesday as the kickoff to a comeback in March.  By the time the Texas primary rolls around, he expects to be the front-runner again.

With an eye on the Nevada votes, which were still being tallied as he spoke at 8:20 PM Pacific time, he allowed that Romney would do “reasonably well” in the caucuses… in no small part because Nevada is “a very heavily Mormon state,” which Romney won in 2008.

Oh yes, he went there.

Furthermore, Gingrich opined that he got creamed in Nevada because it’s a caucus state, and Dr. Paul has a substantial advantage in caucuses.  It must have been tough for anyone else to get past the highly organized platoons of Mormons and Ron Paul supporters to vote in those caucuses.  On the bright side, Gingrich was looking forward to doing better in Nevada than John McCain did in 2008, which is something of a consolation prize.

Gingrich was in high spirits throughout the press conference, joshing with reporters and pronouncing himself pleased with his current position in the primary.  He’s less happy with the “Republican establishment,” which he portrayed as “desperate over the prospect of a Gingrich presidency,” to a degree that surprised even the battle-scarred former Speaker of the House.  He was dismayed to see that in their desperation, the Establishment has drunk deep from the bitter dregs of negative campaigning.

Gingrich said he views one of his major challenges as “cutting through the clutter” and getting his message to the American people.  He placed much of the blame for his electoral losses thus far to massive Romney campaign spending.  “When it was an entirely positive campaign, up through mid-December,” he recalled fondly, “I was up by 12 points in Gallup.”

Hopefully he doesn’t think any of that has the slightest relevance to the general election campaign, which Team Obama most certainly will not be waging in anything resembling a “positive” manner.  He made a good point when he said Romney would not enjoy such a lopsided campaign funding advantage over Barack Obama.  Left unsaid is that Obama wouldhave such an advantage over Newt Gingrich, unless he wins the kind of primary campaign victory that opens up the campaign donation floodgates.

A reporter obligingly tossed Gingrich a softball about House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s idiotic comment that she’s going to “stick with her fellow Catholics in supporting the Administration” on forcing Catholic religious organizations to provide their employees with contraception benefits in their health insurance, despite the unified denouncement of the Catholic hierarchy, which of course does not understand their religious beliefs as well as Nancy Pelosi does.  Gingrich addressed this with the same facial expression Robert DeNiro used during his famed “Are you talkin’ to me?” rant in Taxi Driver.

That Pelosi question was an even better consolation prize than surpassing John McCain’s 2008 performance in Nevada.  It was such an inviting target that Gingrich went into reverse and backed his rhetorical steamroller over it again, declaring, “The Obama Administration has declared war on religious freedom in this country.”  He went on to call the decision “totally outrageous” and “an illustration of radical secular ideology,” because it involved the government of the United States telling a religious institution to give up its beliefs.

No matter how much electoral disappointment he’s had to digest in the last couple of races, Newt Gingrich still doesn’t give boring press conferences.

SOURCE:  http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=49313

The best anti-poverty program is the one that creates jobs. The answer to large budget deficits? Grow the economy, create jobs, watch incomes rise, and let the tax revenues come rolling in.

Partly from Jack Kemp’s work, and partly from his own experience, Ronald Reagan believed the same thing. He knew that growth is the single best solution for our economic ailments. And neither Reagan nor Kemp saw the world in terms of specific income classes or categories. They looked at the whole economy and realized that everyone is tied together. Dragging down the top earners will not help the middle class. And providing an ever larger safety net will not solve poverty. Reagan believed in the safety net, and maintained it. But he knew it was a stop-gap, not a solution.

Does Mitt Romney understand this?

The worry stems from Romney’s ill-advised statement this week. He said, “I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs repair, I’ll fix it.” That raises doubts as to whether he understands the Reagan-Kemp model. Perhaps he does. But he will have to tell us more.

Incidentally, the safety net has been expanding at an alarming pace. Transfer-program spending has been soaring. It’s up $600 billion, or about 35 percent, in the last three years. Medicaid, food stamps, and unemployment insurance have seen benefit levels rise and eligibility expand. This is a huge drag on the economy. We are paying too much to not work, and rewarding too little to work.

Welfarism is not compassionate. Opportunity is.

But now it’s up to Romney to propose moving the very poor out of the poverty trap by making it pay more after tax to work rather than not work. And he must persuade the electorate with a clear and detailed prescriptive agenda.

Part of the solution is tax reform, especially getting rid of the 10 percent bottom tax rate. Another part of the solution is education reform: Revive real choice and competition; spread merit pay and performance to judge the schools; and insist on high-school diplomas or associate degrees or streamlined training programs to bring the unemployed into the high tech age.

In his Florida victory speech, Romney said, “If this election is a bidding war for who can promise more benefits, then I’m not your president.” Good. But he must build on that. He has to make it clear that when the unemployed return to work they will not face huge marginal tax rates. In other words, there must be an incentive to leave government dependency and move into the productive economy.

That’s why a bold tax-reform plan is so important. The unemployed face a 10 percent bottom tax rate. But the middle class faces 25, 28, and 33 percent tax rates. That’s way too much. Why not flatten the code to just two rates, say 15 and 25 percent, and then simplify by getting rid of the other brackets and wiping out the unnecessary deductions, credits, and carve-outs?

Such tax reform will not only provide growth incentives, it will provide anti-poverty incentives as well. Job creation for everyone.

People know Romney is a successful business man. And I suspect most folks think he understands the free-enterprise economy better than Obama. But they’re not sure he has a specific plan that will translate his experience into real economic improvement for the whole country.

The same is true for the budget mess. Back in November, Romney put out an excellent statement on reforming entitlements, cutting $500 billion out of the budget by 2015, and getting spending down to 20 percent of GDP. It’s time he hit the reset button and started selling that plan all over again.

Railing against the Obama economy will not be enough to win. The latest jobs report shows a quickening pace of recovery: 243,000 nonfarm payrolls, 847,000 new jobs in the small-business household survey, and an 8.3 percent unemployment rate. Combine that with other strong readings on the manufacturing and non-manufacturing sectors (the ISM reports), car sales, chain-store sales, and jobless claims, and you have a 3 percent economy with good momentum.

Of course, coming from a very deep recession, growth and jobs should be better. The Reagan recovery was far stronger. But there’s no double-dip out there, and unemployment is not going back to 10 percent. So the trick for Mitt Romney is to show folks he has a detailed plan to make the economy and the budget better.

He needs to prove to people that he knows what to do and how to do it.

SOURCE:  http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/290150/message-mitt-larry-kudlow