Archive for the 'Politics' Category

(H/T Drudge Report)

This post will require a bit of set up, so a little patience, please.

Historically, political polling originated as a means for the public to gauge which candidate was winning at various stages of a political race.   These early polls were crude efforts at asking gathered crowds which candidate they preferred with predictably poor results.   The consensus seems to be that modern polling started with George Gallup in 1935 as an effort to apply a more scientific approach with random sampling involving personal interviews with voters in 300 cities.   Because of the cost involved, newspapers and politicians did not conduct their own polls but relied upon the polling companies to inform them of public opinion.  In other words, the purpose of the polls, according to Gallup himself, was to help politicians figure out what the public wanted in order to be more responsive representatives.

This approach continued until a major shift to the use of telephone polling in the 1950’s.    The drastically reduced cost of telephone polling (which has its own inherent bias problems) enabled newspapers and politicians to conduct their own polls.   It did not take long until the purpose of polling in the hands of the media and politicians evolved into an attempt to influence the attitudes and opinions of the public.

With this background in mind, consider the explosion of political opinion polls.   The list of polling organizations– private, public and partisan– is long indeed.  With this plethora of polling groups there is a similar variety of methods used to garner opinion:  general adult population, registered voters, likely voters, sampling by partisan affiliation, automated polling, land-line polling, cell phone polling, internet polling, personal survey, and so on.   The decision by the pollster on which methods to employ, the framing of the questions, the order of the questions, the choices in the demographics and sampling size… all of these and more factors can greatly affect the results of any given poll.

So last week we had a poll released by NBC/Wall Street Journal that purported to show President Obama with a six percentage point lead over Romney in the general election.   Shortly after the poll was released, several bloggers did the necessary work to examine the choices that the pollsters made and how that affected the results.    Here is just one of those take-downs from Hot Air:

The 2008 national exit poll sample, taken when Hopenchange fever was at its zenith, was 39D/32R/29I, or D+7. This one, after three years of Obamanomics dreck, is somehow D+11 if you include leaners and D+12(!) if you don’t. Anyone feel like taking these results seriously?

In other words, the pollsters decided to radically over-sample Democrats in their poll for no, apparent good reason.   By comparison, the national party registration for Democrats and Republicans is now about even or slightly favoring Republicans.   Add to that the recent Gallup poll that found a huge lead for Republicans in voter enthusiasm which would drive proportionately more Republicans to the polls and you can only conclude that this is a poll designed to influence public opinion rather than report it.

And this is not the only, such skewed poll.   If you look at most of the polling being featured at Real Clear Politics (a purportedly neutral website for conservative and liberal news/opinion), most of the polls feature a similar, biased party sample, or sample only the general population or registered voters rather than likely voters.   All of these polls show Obama and Romney either at a dead heat or Obama with a small lead.

Add to this a report in The Weekly Standard from last week that the Obama Campaign spent over $2.6 million on polling just in the month of June (compared with just $460,000 in April) and a pattern seems to be emerging:  Obama is losing the voters and losing them badly.   Unless he takes some dramatic action or events intercede to change public opinion, he is headed toward a sizable, electoral collapse.

Despite everything that most pundits– conservative and liberal— are telling you, I believe that Obama is headed for a resounding defeat.   The spending by Obama’s campaign on polling is the result of panic.   They cannot believe the numbers they are getting and they are polling and re-polling for any and every conceivable angle that would turn opinion in favor of El Presidente.   Nothing is working, so far.

The hyper-skewed polling by NBC/WSJ is also telling.   Clearly this poll was designed to push public opinion in the direction of Obama by giving the impression that he is pulling away from Romney in voter preference.  This is not surprising in itself.  What is shocking is that NBC/WSJ had to resort to a sampling that favors Democrats by 12 points over Republicans in order to get the numbers that they wanted.

Contrast this with the daily tracking polls of likely voters from Rasmussen Reports that had Romney ahead of Obama by 5% last week.   For an incumbent like Obama to be trailing the challenger at this point in the election– before the public has focused on the race and before the convention and debates– is an indication that Obama is getting all the support he is going to get.   He is already maxed out and there is nowhere to go but down.

Obama’s only hope right now is to conceal his tenuous position from the public in order to avoid the “Bandwagon Effect.”     This is a well-known phenomenon in polling in which voters who have not yet decided or are not strongly committed to either candidate are strongly influenced by polling which indicates that one of the candidates is pulling far ahead in the race.   These voters want to be part of the winning team, so to speak, and throw their vote in with the majority.   So long as Obama and his allies in the Statist Media can manipulate the polling to maintain the appearance of viability, they can hope for a Romney implosion or some, other intervening event to save the election.

Along, then, comes an article in The Hill that attempts to do this very thing.   Using the ridiculously skewed demographics, the article makes use of the NBC/WSJ poll as follows:

Despite voters’ worries about the economy, they continue to give Obama the edge on personal popularity. In a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Obama led Romney by 20 points on the question of whether voters liked each of them on an individual level. Two thirds said they liked Obama, whether or not they disagreed with his policies, while just 47 percent said the same about Romney.

Just 35 percent of voters held a positive opinion of Romney overall, with 40 percent negative, while 49 percent had positive opinions of Obama and 43 percent felt negatively about him. Both candidates saw slight upticks in their negative numbers since the ad onslaught began.

The article also mentions the Real Clear Politics average of polls for the idea that the candidates are locked in a statistical tie, a tie that is only made possible by the inclusion of polls that use unreliable or skewed data to give Obama a lead.

But even these partisan polls can only mask the reality for a limited amount of time.    If Obama’s numbers continue to slide and it becomes too obvious to skew the numbers in order to make the race look competitive, expect to see even Leftist polling groups grudgingly showing a Romney lead.   My personal prediction is that by September, absent an unlikely implosion by Romney, we will start to see a snow-balling of public opinion where the public has finally tuned in to the race and begins breaking for Romney.   Once that starts to happen the Bandwagon Effect will take hold and the bottom for Obama will fall out with only the hard-core, 35% of Democrats voting for him.  At that point we could be looking at a rout similar to the 2010 Elections, thus ending our national experiment in Mass Insanity.

My apologies to all those Republican stalwarts out there, but I stopped identifying with the G.O.P. some time ago and now count myself primarily as a Conservative.

And when I see posts like this on Hot Air, I feel amply justified.

A couple key bits:

The congressional Super Committee is long gone, but the consequences of its failure will be felt by millions of Americans unless Congress addresses mandatory cuts that take effect Jan. 2, 2013.

A new study released today by economist Stephen S. Fuller of George Mason University and the Aerospace Industries Association estimates that 2.14 million U.S. jobs will disappear as a result of the Budget Control Act’s sequestration mandate. That would push the nation’s unemployment rate above 9 percent.

Automatic cuts totaling $1.2 trillion will hit the defense industry particularly hard. Defense-related jobs makes up about half of the lost jobs, according to the study. The report estimates losses for other sectors of the economy as well: 48,059 jobs in healthcare, 98,953 in construction, 473,250 in manufacturing. California, Virginia and Texas will fare worst.

And just who was it that agreed to the genius idea of a “Super Committee” and the “draconian” sequestration in the (all too predictable) event that the Super Committee failed to reach agreement?  Yep, those guys in leadership like John Boehner and Mitch McConnell.  Someone please remind me just why it was so clever of Boehner and McConnell to agree to this deal with the Democrats?  A deal that these very same people are now scrambling to escape and avoid like kids caught stealing from a candy store.   “Yeah, we did it, but we didn’t think we’d actually get punished for it or anything!”

And if the whole sequestration idea wasn’t bad enough, the particulars of the deal are just, downright horrible:

Cuts to America’s military are particularly alarming. The across-the-board cut of more than $500 billion over the next decade comes in addition to the $487 billion in cuts already proposed by President Obama for the Department of Defense. The Budget Control Act hits the military hardest.

Chart produced by The Heritage Foundation based upon figures from the Congressional Budget Office.

These nitwit Republicans agreed to drastic spending cuts that barely touch the Entitlement Monster that is breaking the U.S. Treasury.

And why did the G.O.P. leadership do this?  Because they were afraid of forcing real and immediate spending cuts in 2011 as part of the debt ceiling “crisis.”

Anyone for a Conservative Party?   I don’t think America can afford the Stupid Party much longer.

We may observe that in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, for those searching for scholarly and learned legal analyses of the Affordable Health Care Act (“Obamacare”), the ruling by Judge Roger Vinson remains to this day the best there is.  A careful study of his opinion is all you need to know about the unconstitutional power grab by Congress we call Obamacare.  And practically speaking, the acceptance of the Congressional act and the associated SCOTUS ruling on the grounds that the American health care system is broken and in dire need of repair is ill informed.  The American health care system, while not perfect, is the greatest on the planet, which is why people come to America for health care from around the world.

Justice Roberts, who is now known to have changed his opinion during deliberations with his colleagues, was apparently concerned about the legitimacy of the Supreme Court if it struck down the act in part or in whole.  Professor Randy Barnett, who I respect a great deal, sees a silver lining in the cloud.  But the problem with all of this talk about recalibrating the Supreme Court of the future with a more federalist vision only goes so far as other (liberal) justices respect the doctrine of stare decisis.  With Ruth Bader Ginsburg, for example, this isn’t very far.  She sees reversal of D.C. versus Heller on the horizon with a “future, wiser court.”  So I see no silver lining in the cloud.  As one of my sons put it, Roberts was breaking a horse, and instead of bucking the horse out, he simply got off.  He gave up on his job.

Hopefully the monstrosity of Obamacare will be repealed in Congress, or at least, defunded by “future, wiser” Congressmen than the ones who voted in favor of it.  I suspect that the financial straits from which America suffers will make the decision for us all.  The entitlement system cannot long exist in its present state, and that which cannot continue, doesn’t.  But regardless of what the future holds for this monstrosity, it is important to understand more about it than the political machinations that brought it into being.

My own seminary professor, Dr. C. Gregg Singer, made the following observations on the social gospel (“A Theological Interpretation of American History,” pages 148 – 149):

The roots of the social gospel were theological in nature; it was essentially a new revolt against Calvinism and the evangelical position.  Its roots can ultimately be traced back to those developments which took place in European theology as a result of the rise of Hegelian Idealism, to the theologies of Ritschl and Schleiermacher in Germany which attempted to refashion Christian thought according to the prevailing philosophical currents and the attacks of German Higher Criticism on the inspiration and authority of the Scriptures.  The more immediate background for the new theology is to be found in Transcendentalism, the New England theology and writings of Nathaniel Taylor and Horace Bushnell, and the Oberlin theology popularized by Charles G. Finey …

These theologies not only seriously modified the doctrine of total depravity, but they presented a plan of redemption which was, in varying degrees, synergistic.  This synergism, giving to man some merit and some ability to accomplish his own eternal salvation, almost inevitably led to a view than man also has both the power and the mandate to make a heaven out of this earth and to transform it into a kind of Garden of Eden …

Regeneration was all too often regarded as little more than a willingness to join in a crusade for the realization of the Kingdom of God on earth … for the introduction of some kind of socialism into American society.

And this sort of thinking was prevalent among its adherents, especially Mr. Obama.  Do you doubt it?  Consider Mr. Obama’s own words in 2006 prior to his election.

Our failure as progressives to tap into the moral underpinnings of the nation is not just rhetorical, though. Our fear of getting “preachy” may also lead us to discount the role that values and culture play in some of our most urgent social problems.

After all, the problems of poverty and racism, the uninsured and the unemployed, are not simply technical problems in search of the perfect ten point plan. They are rooted in both societal indifference and individual callousness – in the imperfections of man.

Solving these problems will require changes in government policy …

Mr. Obama goes on to say that he believes in keeping guns out of inner cities (foretelling the Supreme Court dissent in Heller v. D.C. and McDonald v. Chicago, and the appointment of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court), and appears to blame the “gun manufacturers’ lobby” for the moral failings of inner city violence.  Thus does Mr. Obama’s policy decisions have a theological basis in the social gospel, but more specifically, liberation theology of the brand that was popularized in Central and South America in the mid-twentieth century.

On this view, religious commitment and the correction of the fallen state of mankind lies in the state and changes to laws regulations and policy.  Make sure to read again Obama’s view: the problems of poverty and lack of insurance are rooted in “individual callousness,” in the “imperfections of man,” and require “changes in government policy.”  Salvation and regeneration are corporate, or applicable to groups of people, not to be seen as a forensic phenomenon between God and individual men.

But health care should be seen as a commodity as much as, say, transportation, housing and food are commodities.  A person cannot survive (very well) without all of the above.  At one point in time these commodities were administered by Church deacons, with responsibility and accountability ensured so as not to encourage sloth and irresponsibility.  And giving was voluntary, not enforced by the power of a badge and gun.

But if health care is a commodity, then there is no prima facie reason to dissect it and severe it from the other commodities.  Any argument for forced provision of health care to other families by one with more means is disingenuous and hypocritical if it doesn’t include the same justification for the forced, shared provision of transportation, housing and food between families.  And such an argument should consider the history of socialism across the globe and the necessary questions it poses.  Does it share wealth or simply destroy it?  What role do families and the church play in such a schema if the state is responsible for cradle to grave security, and does this sort of thing usurp the authority of families and church?

In the end, regardless of the answers to the questions above, there is no question that there are theological underpinnings to Obamacare.  These underpinnings are to be found in liberation theology, the social gospel and ultimately in Hegelianism and Marxism.  The charge is reflexively leveled at conservatives and traditionalists that we mix church state.  But it’s just as easy to dismiss this charge on the grounds that one doesn’t have to be a member of any church to vote his or her conscience in the voting booth.  All laws are legislated morality.

But while this charge against conservatives is common, it isn’t nearly as common to admit or even see the religious foundations for progressivism.  It’s there nonetheless.  And as the savior said, and to the progressives I repeat, extract the log in your own eye before you go on any scavenger hunt for the spec in my eye.  Seriously study the religious foundations for your own views before we embark on a discussion of my own.  That includes Mr. Obama’s social gospel, Mill’s utilitarianism, or any other -ism or world view that presumes to inform me what I should be doing.

Sure, it’s only one state and it was a small, 200-person sample.

At least that’s what the Obama Campaign must be telling themselves at this point.

According to this article in Business Insider on June 12, 2012, support for Obama’s reelection among black voters in North Carolina is at an unprecedented low of 77% while support for Mitt Romney has climbed to 20%.   In a state that Obama won against John McCain in 2008 by only 12,000 votes these numbers are not a warning light, they are a death knell.

President Barack Obama is rapidly losing support among African-American voters in North Carolina, a new poll out today from the Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling shows.

The poll finds that Mitt Romney would get 20 percent of the African-American vote if the election were held today, compared with 76 percent for Obama. Overall, Romney has a 48 percent to 46 percent lead on Obama in the crucial swing state.

Obama received 95 percent of the support from African-Americans in North Carolina in the 2008 election, compared with just 5 percent for Republican nominee John McCain.

Besides the obvious headlines here, it is worth noting a couple things.

First, plunging support for Obama among the black community is extremely encouraging in terms of race relations for this country because it reflects the reality of Obama’s job performance. I do not care who the person occupying the White House may be– George Washington, Abe Lincoln, Ronald Reagan– no one should be getting an unwavering 95% block of support from any racial group in this country.

In other words, if race is not a primary factor, it is difficult to fathom how black voters can monolithically line up to support President Obama in the face of the highest black unemployment ever; the defiant opposition of Obama to school choice for low income black families; support for gay marriage, and; policies that have driven up the price of every staple that disproportionately affects black families.   Maybe this is controversial.  I hope not.   Barack Obama has been a disaster for the black community and party identification alone simply cannot explain support in the 95% range.   So these numbers from North Carolina may indicate that black voters may be starting to dispense with racial identity politics and look at Obama’s policies.

Imagine the real, racial healing that could occur if candidates could finally be evaluated without regard to their skin color and solely according to their policies and principles?  If the Democrats were forced to actually compete for the votes of blacks rather than simply own them outright, there would be a major shift to the right in Democrat candidates and, thus, far more consensus politically.   Even more tantalizing is the prospect that the Race Hustling Industry (run by the likes of Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton) would no longer find an audience for their hate mongering.

The second major point I take away from this article is the possible consequences of even 20% of the black community voting for even a quasi-conservative Republican like Romney.

The Democrat Party knows that they have no shot at retaining or regaining power without the monolithic support of the black community.   If even 25-30% of the black vote goes to Republicans it is over for any Democrat candidate.  As a result, Democrats pull out all the stops when it comes to keeping the black voter in line.   That includes hurling racial epithets at any black, Republican candidate that dares run for office, shaming any person of color who votes Republican as an “Uncle Tom,” and continually fomenting racial hatred and fears as we have seen so clearly with the Trayvon Martin case in Florida.

If, however, even 20% of black voters pull the lever for Romney, the spell may be broken.   Twenty percent is alot of voters.  Far too many for the Democrats to stigmatize as “traitors” or Uncle Toms as a whole.  Suddenly, the cultural norm of automatically voting Democrat is fatally weakened.  Once the stigma of voting Republican is tempered, it is game over.

One of the best kept secrets, repeatedly suppressed by Democrats, is that the black vote typically went to the Republican Party– the party of Lincoln, afterall– until the 1960’s.    How many people know, for example, that Martin Luther King, Jr. was a registered Republican?   How many black voters know that it was the Republicans in Congress that broke the Democrat opposition to the first Civil Rights Act?

It may be the greatest irony of the 21st Century that the first, black President may be the one who loses the black vote forever.

Professor Jacobson has lost the love for Dick Lugar.

I’ve been traveling without a computer this weekend but this story at IndyStar is worth a PDA post, so excuse some formatting issues like no embedded links.

The inclination I’ve had to feel sorry for Dick Lugar that his career may reach an inglorious end is rapidly dissipating. Lugar demonstrates daily why it is time to defeat him.

Lugar still refuses to say he will support Mourdock, still seeks to have non-Republicans decide the Republican primary, and feeds the left-wing narrative that the Tea Party just shouts.

Lugar is insulting and arrogant.

Check out the article.  I never did have any respect for Lugar.  This silly Washington Post commentary by Dana Milbank is a good example why.

For years Dick Lugar has been the leading Senate Republican on foreign policy, shaping post-Cold War strategy, securing sanctions to end South African apartheid and bringing democracy to the Philippines, among other things. His signature achievement, drafted with Democrat Sam Nunn, was the 1992 Nunn-Lugar Act, which has disarmed thousands of Soviet nuclear warheads once aimed at the United States.

Enter Richard Mourdock, a tea party hothead attempting to defeat Lugar in the GOP primary. A cornerstone of his effort to oust Lugar is the six-term senator’s bad habit of bipartisanship — never mind that Lugar’s bipartisanship was in the service of protecting millions of Americans from nuclear, chemical and biological terrorism.

Oh stop it.  Just stop it.  The START treaty (and New START) did nothing of the sort.  Russia had become essentially economically incapable of maintaining their nuclear arsenal, and as a good excuse for cutting back on ours and spending the money on entitlement programs – and even disparaging the Reliable Replacement Warhead program, something that even the DoD says that we need – we pursued a strategy with Russia which allowed them to maintain approximate parity with the U.S. by investing absolutely nothing in their defense.

Look around you.  Everyone alive knows one, or two, or three or even more men who are alive today, or who have lived and died and been loved by their families and friends, as a consequence of nuclear weapons.  Nothing has contributed more to world peace in the second half of the twentieth century than the existence of nuclear weapons.  Thank God for them.  Their existence has saved untold lives and prevented untold suffering.

Left to Dick Lugar, who wants to cement his reputation (I suppose for his obituary one day to show that he was a good man or something), we wouldn’t have had this wonderful deterrent.

Yea.  It’s time for him to go alright.

Do yourself and the Republic a favor: find the time to watch the whole thing.

The Vote Pump

Beyond the overall point that Bill Whittle makes about the power of deficit spending to buy votes and ensure reelection of spendthrift politicians, this video by Whittle has a other worthwhile attributes:

1.  The video is an instant source of expertise on exactly what the numbers are in the Federal Budget, how much is being spent both in real dollars and as a percentage of the overall Budget.   We need this information as citizens and need to spread this information far and wide so the politicians have nowhere to hide.   These numbers are easily understood and give one of the best visualizations of the enormity of the debt problem we are facing.   The politicians in both parties are perversely determined to avoid making the spending cuts necessary because this video makes it abundantly clear that the size of the necessary cuts will be painful to many, many people.

2.  This video demonstrates the enormity of the Entitlement State. Notice that the actual dollars being spent on the so-called “discretionary” items in the Budget are relatively small compared to the enormous amounts needed to keep the Entitlement State (the so-called “mandatory spending”) afloat.    This is the A-1, Certified, Gargantuan, 16 trillion pound Gorilla in the room.   Democrats and Republicans can talk all they like about eliminating the Department of Education or cite the dollars spent on the Defense Department and foreign wars, but it is immediately obvious from this video that the real culprit in our insane Deficit spending is Entitlements.   The U.S. is borrowing over 40 cents of every dollar it spends and over 70% of that spending is going to Entitlements.

Yes, Federal agencies and departments need to be eliminated or severely cut back but those cuts will never be enough to take care of the Deficit problem.  Entitlements must be cut.

Note, too, that the cuts will have to occur now.   As much as I dislike Ron Paul’s rambling wreck of a foreign policy and his crazy, blame-America rants, he is one of the only politicians that is openly talking about reducing spending immediately in large amounts.   (Ron Paul falls off the rails, however, because he primarily talks as if cutting Defense spending will solve the problem whereas the video makes it clear that such spending is less than 20% of the total Budget).

If you listen carefully to every, other politician (including some of my favorites such as Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin), they are all talking about cuts of $1 Trillion over ten years or more. That is only $100 billion each year.   Check the video and you will see that $100 billion is relative chicken feed against the enormity of the spending.  The U.S. literally cannot afford to take ten years to reduce this deficit.

This will require a fundamental change in the way Americans view the Federal government.   The vision of Franklin Roosevelt and JFK and Lyndon Johnson and, yes, George W. “Compassionate Conservatism” Bush has to be chucked in favor of States taking the primary responsibility for the welfare of their own citizens.   Such a change will require leaders who can give the public the truth about the nightmare we are facing.

3. This video shows how little it takes to actually run the Federal government. Take a look at the actual numbers cited by Whittle in the pie charts for Federal revenues.   He cites the total amount spent in Fiscal Year 2011 for the General Services Administration which is responsible for the assets and logistics of the Federal government.   That number is $700 million or 1/10th of 1% of the total Budget.   Until the last 100 years, the Federal government was able to function quite well without any personal income tax because the scope of the Federal government was something like 1/10th of 1% of what it is today.

The growth and increase in Federal programs, agencies, departments, jurisdiction and oversight in just 100 years is almost unimaginable.  Americans have been sold a bill of goods promising a utopian society where a big, central government could makes everyone happy, healthy, wealthy and wise.   It has taken 100 years to come to the realization that those promises were, however well intentioned, dangerous lies.

From the Desmoines Register:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry vowed today that if he is elected president he will only appoint U.S. Supreme Court justices who support the Second Amendment rights of gun owners.

Asked his stance on the issue during a town hall meeting with about 60 people at a Pizza Ranch in Manchester, Perry said he has a “real clear” position in favor of gun owners, and he used the occasion to attack President Barack Obama. The man who asked the question was wearing a National Rifle Association baseball cap.

“When I look at some of the issues that this administration is dealing with, it’s clearly in conflict with what most Americans believe in from the standpoint of what our Founding Fathers meant when they wrote the Constitution,” Perry said. “This isn’t about a militia. This is about the private citizens of this country.

“I happen to believe it’s our constitutional right and I will put Americans on the Supreme Court who will understand the strict construction that says Americans have the right to bear arms, and may it always be so,” Perry said.

This is a very basic expression of his view of the second amendment, and it dovetails with his previous sentiments.  However, I prefer basic and solid to pedantic and vacillating.  See Mitt Romney’s views on the second amendment in Mitt Romney on Gun Control.

Esteemed political consultant and columnist Michael Barone pens a piece for Human Events that covers a recent speech by Governor Mitch Daniels:

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels did not attract as large a crowd when he spoke at American Enterprise Institute (where I am a resident fellow) earlier this week as he did when several months ago, before he disappointed admirers by announcing that he wouldn’t run for president.

I saw no political reporters there — though a few may have been lurking in the back — and he got only one question (from me) about presidential politics. No, he said, he isn’t reconsidering his decision not to run, and doesn’t think that Chris Christie is, either.

But Daniels’ message, based on his new book “Keeping the Republic,” was important — one that every presidential candidate should heed — because it was about a looming issue that Barack Obama has so far decided to duck but that one of them, if he is elected, may have to confront.

We face, Daniels said, “a survival-level threat to the America we have known.” The problem can be summed up as debt. The Obama Democrats have put us on the path to double the national debt as a percentage of gross domestic product, bringing it to levels that, as economists Kenneth Rogoff​ and Carmen Reinhart have written in “This Time Is Different,” have always proved unsustainable.

Daniels put it this way. Debt service will permanently stunt the growth of the economy. And that will be followed by a loss of leadership in the world, because “nobody follows a pauper.”

That growth in debt will continue to be driven by growth in programs labeled entitlements — though Daniels objects to that term. Congress, after all, can vote to cancel entitlement programs and deny promised benefits any time it wants, as the Supreme Court ruled in Flemming v. Nestor in 1960.

OK, fine, Mitch.   You have nicely summed up the problem and its catastrophic proportions.  Now just stop there before you get yourself into trouble.

But Mitch could not resist, apparently:

This is quite a contrast with the Republicans out there running for president, who have had little to say about the problem of entitlements, in debates or in their platforms. Mitt Romney​ raises the problem but hesitates to advance solutions, and then attacks Rick Perry for intemperate comments about Social Security in his book “Fed Up!”

On defense, Perry points out the success of public employee pension plans in three Texas counties that outperform Social Security. But these programs are impossible to scale up in a society where most employment is in the private sector, where most people will hold multiple jobs over their working lifetimes and where many people move from state to state (often, as Perry points out, to Texas).

Daniels laments that the candidates “have not yet stepped out on these issues.” He says that he is “a little concerned that our nominee might decide, ‘I’ll just play it safe and get elected as the default option'” to an incumbent discredited by obvious policy failures.

“My question then is what matters — winning or establishing the base that enables you to make big gains?”

(Emphasis added)

Maybe this is just a personal quirk of mine, but I find it extremely irritating (to say the least) that Mitch Daniels can stand up at a podium and promote his new book, declaring that we are in national “survival-level” mode, and then criticize the GOP presidential candidates for not taking the risk of establishing a policy position on the debt and entitlement spending.

Why?

Because he did not have the spine to run for president himself.   If he doesn’t like the present candidates’ lack of nerve, he should just shut the heck up or throw his hat in the ring.   Oh, wait.  I forgot.  His wife didn’t want him to run.   Cry me a river, fella.  Don’t go talking about national “survival-level” and then say you can’t run for president because your wife is not on board.   Maybe this is a telling sign of what passes for “leadership” in America today.  Or, rather, the absence of it.   If you truly believe that the times are perilous and our future is at stake (and, in the case of Daniels, you have the long record of experience, political connections and positioning to make a serious run at the presidency— especially when clowns like Ron Paul are running!) then either step up to the plate or shut the fat up.

To some extent, this same criticism can be leveled at Rep. Paul Ryan and Senator Marco Rubio, both of whom I admire very much.   When they rightly and persuasively talk about the grave crises that we face as a nation, I say, “Fine.  Run for president where you can do the most good.”   It disgusts me that these otherwise fine men would decline to run simply because they do not feel that the time is right or some, other political calculation.   These are not normal times.   2012 is not a normal election.   We need every viable candidate on deck, contributing their insights and persuasion to the national debate.   I defy Ryan, Rubio or Daniels to make a convincing case that the nation is better served by their refusal to run than to have them in the race.

And I suppose my ire is fueled all the more as I see the GOP field self-destruct.   Perry seems clueless when it comes to illegal immigration.   Romney cannot bring himself to disavow his government-mandated healthcare scheme that inspired at least part of the godawful Obamacare.   Herman Cain is appealing at a certain level but I have yet to hear him articulate anything like a foreign policy perspective that would make anyone take him seriously– deferring to his advisors is not going to cut it.    The rest of the pack are in the single-digits.   At least Newt Gingrich seems intent to enrich the debate.    And at least Rubio, Ryan and Daniels could do that much.

How can it be that the Revolutionary War produced so many amazing leaders?   Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, Franklin and the host of others seemed to spontaneously rise to the occasion that demanded it.   Has America sunk so low that the 2012 Election– an occasion that everyone agrees is a momentous point in U.S. history — can call forth no one better than the current, blighted crop of Republicans and those too timid to run themselves but bold enough to snipe from the gallery?

Not good, my friends.  Not good.

I hadn’t watched the previous GOP debates, and only watched about two minutes of this one.  I turned the channel after Santorum’s answer on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

It went something like this (I tuned in late the Bret Baier’s question).  Suppose that the insurgency within Pakistan combines with sympathetic elements of the Army and ISI to take over Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.  What would you do?

Rick Perry answered something like this.  Working with allies in the region is very important, and our recent refusal to sell more fighters to India is problematic.  Our allies need to know that we are there and will be there is a crisis – and also that we might need them in a crisis.

Okay, but incomplete and not quite adequate as I’ll discuss in a moment.  Then Santorum weighs in and issues a rebuke (of sorts) to Perry, saying something like:

“I’ll answer the question on Pakistan since (voice raised slightly and talking sternly at this point) I’m not sure that it was answered before.  Working with allies won’t do it.  We must work with elements within Pakistan and those who might be our friend, such as Pervez Mucharraf, to turn back the insurrection.”

If Perry’s answer is inadequate, Santorum’s answer was dense and doltish.  Note well.  Musharraf was sacked by the Pakistani people in August of 2008.  He left office with the Parliament hating him, and frankly with most of Pakistan hating him.  The Islamists had good reason, since he was seen by them as an apparatchik of the U.S. (he clearly was not, from our own perspective), and the balance of Pakistan hated him because the Pakistan economy had sunk to depths of despair.  It hasn’t really gotten any better since then, but that doesn’t matter for the attitude and atmosphere in 2008.  The Pakistani people wanted change, and they got it by sacking Musharraf.

In an event in which the Pakistani Army cannot turn back an insurrection, or is participating in it, Santorum wants to turn to … Musharraf … hated and sacked by his own people!  What’s Musharraf going to do?  Stand in the road to Islamabad with a gun and threaten the ISI and Haqqani’s fighters as they come to take over the center of power?

It is a salient question whether Pakistan is an ally or enemy in the regional war.  The uninterested public is just now hearing about Haqqani’s fighters and their help in the recent attack on the U.S. embassy.  I have been tracking the Tehrik-i-Taliban, the LeT, the various Kashmiri insurgent offshoot groups, Haqqani’s organization and so on for years now.

I have watched when, as I forecast, the Khyber and Chaman passes became almost too dangerous to transport fuel and materiel, leading me to beg and plead with the strategists and policy-makers to engage the Caucasus region for  alternate logistics routes.  The strategists listened, but not well enough.  Steve Schippert and I have held long conversations trying to ascertain ways to use India as a logistics route (as well as other ways to engage them in Afghanistan).  It has the ports, it has the rail and road system, and it is sympathetic to our cause.  The only problem is that we would have to traverse across parts of Pakistani controlled Kashmir to get to Kabul.

Do we overtly treat Pakistan as the enemy in the campaign that they are, duplicitous as they have been, or do we go on pretending that the Durand line actually means anything and that Pakistan is on our side?  We covertly treat them as the enemy, viz., the secrecy surrounding the UBL raid.  How overt do we go with this?

This I know.  Steve and I agree that India is a much more natural ally in the global war on terror than is Pakistan.  Michael Yon agrees:

After much travels through India, I believe we are natural allies. We have much to learn and gain from each other. India and the United States should do what is natural. We should deepen our ties. Our relationship must be sincere and bonded.

And maybe that’s what Rick Perry is saying.  If an insurrection happens in Pakistan and their nuclear assets are in jeopardy, it will take much more than Musharraf to secure them.  This exigency needs to be war-gamed well in advance, and if the Pentagon hasn’t already done this … oh well, be sure, they have already done this.

Securing the nuclear assets will take not only the combined forces of SEALs teams and Delta Force, but several companies of Marines and Rangers to provide force protection while the operation occurred.  It will require significant support from air assets, transport, and good intelligence.  Even then, it’s likely only to be partially to moderately successful and we will sustain high casualties.

But to believe that we could operate with the assistance or help of the Pakistanis themselves is to believe that we could have done the UBL raid by informing Pakistan first.  One would also have to believe that Pakistan didn’t really show the remains of our air assets to the Chinese.

This is why I hate the debates and don’t watch them.  They are like political versions of Jeopardy.  You have seconds to tell us the “right” answer to our question (what’s right will be up to a vote), when in reality, no President is going to issue orders for securing Pakistan’s nuclear assets without reference to the Pentagon’s war-gaming.  And no President is going to call Musharraf.

The debates are set up for sound bite, turn-the-channel, laugh-a-minute night time America.  For really understanding anything about a candidate, they are literally useless.

Prior: The Feeble Superhero: Pakistan Freely Tugs on Superman’s Cape

From Marc Thiessen:

Rick Perry may have jumped to the front of the GOP pack in national polls, but here in first-in-the-nation New Hampshire Mitt Romney still holds an 18-point lead. When I asked Romney about Perry during a recent campaign swing through the Granite State, he replied, “I don’t know what all of his positions are, you’ll have to ask him . . . I don’t spend a lot of time looking at [other candidates’] positions.”

That may be, but Romney’s campaign strategists are certainly spending a lot of time poring over Perry’s positions — and developing a plan to stop the surging Texas governor.

Romney has been criticized for refusing to engage Perry, but his campaign advisers see no need to do so now. They point out that the Democratic National Committee is going after Perry, hundreds of reporters hoping to make names for themselves are scouring his life and record, and other candidates that Perry has passed in the polls are determined to take him down. Why should Romney attack Perry directly when the Democrats, the liberal media and Michele Bachmann will do it for him? Romney’s strategists note that Perry will have to survive five debates in six weeks — ample opportunity for Bachmann to “rip his eyes out” (as she did to Tim Pawlenty) or for Perry to blow himself up.

If Perry fails to implode and continues to surge in the polls, Romney eventually will have to go on the attack — an assault his advisers say will commence “at a time of our choosing.” Romney strategists are quick to note that in his book, “Fed Up!,” Perry writes that “By any measure, Social Security is a failure” and calls the program “something we have been forced to accept for more than 70 years now” that was created “at the expense of respect for the Constitution and limited government.”

Look at what happened to Paul Ryan when he proposed a plan to save Medicare, they say. Romney’s campaign will argue that Perry is against the very idea of Social Security and Medicare, and that he will use Perry’s book to scare seniors in early-primary states with large retiree populations, such as Florida and South Carolina.

Very bad idea.  South Carolina is currently Perry country, but that’s not because Perry is untested, or Romney  hasn’t yet gone on the attack, or the fact that Rick Perry has a Southern accent.  These ideas are far too dumbed down to do S.C. and its people justice.

Governor Pawlenty dropped in the polls when he went on the attack against  Michele Bachmann, Senator Santorum is still tanking even as he attacks Perry, and Huntsman’s attacks against Perry brought him absolutely no benefit (but to be honest, he wasn’t a serious contender anyway).  Romney will drop in the polls when he goes on the attack against a fellow Republican.  Watch it happen and remember that I predicted it.

I know something about S.C.  When Romney swept into S.C. for the 2008 campaign he made some fatal mistakes.  But first, let’s discuss Jim Anthony.   Jim Anthony is a developer who promised the world and delivered problems to the people of S.C.  He purchased huge tracts of land in the upper part of the state with borrowed money, gated it off to the people of S.C., and sold it to very wealthy people – people like Oprah Winfrey who is never there.  This land was and is pristine, with flora and fauna not to be found anywhere else on earth.  The people of S.C. used it for hiking, camping, hunting, shooting, and just about everything imaginable (without destroying or significantly altering the land).  After Jim Anthony they will never see this land again.  Jim Anthony is seen in S.C. as a robber baron.  Just ask anyone in S.C.

Yet Mitt Romney’s sense of things brought him into S.C. and into a relationship with big money, and … you guessed it … Jim Anthony.  While McCain shook hands with just about every veteran in S.C., Romney was seen across every TV screen in the state with Jim Anthony.  Today Jim Anthony faces foreclosure on much of his property, and is now suing his bank and partners.

But whether Romney has the bad sense of things to hook up with Jim Anthony again, he did so in the beginning because he is a big money man.  South Carolinians aren’t impressed with this.  In fact, the strategy of invoking a government program is a bad, bad sign of his continued intransigence regarding his understanding of the South in general.  If Romney is down in the polls enough that he has to go into S.C. with big government proposals, he is doomed.

In fact, Romney cannot win in S.C.  It is impossible.  And if Romney temporarily surges when he begins campaigning in S.C.,  all Governor Perry has to do is show up at the shooting range in Pickens County, S.C., where I often shoot, carry along some reporters with him, and then inform his fellow shooters that Governor Romney signed an assault weapons ban in Massachusetts (and would do so again).

Romney will be seen as a big government republican who opposes guns, and he won’t have the libertarian vote.  He cannot win in S.C.  Remember that I told you so.