Paul Zummo
Pope Tony Excommunicates Santorum
Well that’s certainly how I read this screed by Morning’s Minion. It seems that Rick has offended the Magisterium of Vox Nova.
I get annoyed by silly media talk of Santorum’s connections to Opus Dei, everybody’s favorite dark and sinister Catholic cloak-and-dagger society.
Such a promising beginning. Then it unravels.
The underlying assumption is that Santorum is a deeply orthodox Catholic, with a whiff of old-school authoritarianism about him. But this is nonsense. Opus Dei is a traditionalist Catholic group, heavily influenced by Spanish spirituality. It’s not my cup of tea, but it puts strong emphasis on fidelity to Church teachings, and I assume that means all Church teachings. Santorum, on the other hand, is a classic American right-wing liberal, picking and choosing his Church teachings, and with a spirituality that seems far more evangelical than Catholic. It is no accident that Santorum’s core support comes from right-wing evangelicals, not Catholics. Opus Dei has a vaguely “foreign” feel in the United States. Nobody could possibly say that about Santorum!
Goodness gracious. My favorite part is where MM describe Santorum’s spirituality as “Evangelical,” whatever that means. It’s the usual litany of cliches from Tony: right-wing liberals, scary Evangelical bogeymen, accusations of cafeteria Catholicism. Honestly at this point you can play the Morning’s Minion drinking game and you’d be drunk by the second paragraph. As for the astute observation that Santorum polls better with Evangelicals than with Catholics – well, I’m not sure if that fact reflects poorly on Santorum or on other Catholics. Considering that many Catholics share Minion’s, umm, unique perspective on the faith it’s not surprising that Santorum is not doing so well with his co-religionists.
As for the specific charges that Morning’s Minion lays out against Santorum, I’ll link to Lisa Graas’s blog post here, and paste her responses after the jump. She does a good job dismantling every claim laid against Santorum, and so I have nothing else to add.
Don’t Know Much About History
No, seriously, our Vice President knows next to nothing about history. Speaking about the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, ole Joe said:
“You can go back 500 years. You cannot find a more audacious plan. Never knowing for certain. We never had more than a 48 percent probability that he was there.”
William Tecumseh Sherman, George Washington, Robert E. Lee, Dwight Eisenhower, Napoleon Bonaparte, Winston Churchill, and Ulysses S. Grant could not be reached for comment, but surely they would have agreed.
Sure was a good thing we didn’t elect that idiot Sarah Palin, or else we would have had a Vice President who continuously made completely idiotic remarks.
The Ballad of Jennifer Rubin
Jennifer Rubin sent a strong message today. She wants Mitt Romney to know that she’s got his back every bit as much as Ann Coulter.
Rubin makes a lot of hay over the fact that Rick Santorum never visited Afghanistan, and has not said that he would go to Afghanistan were he the nominee, a promise that Mitt Romney made a few days ago. Santorum made a pretty compelling case as to why:
And I’m not too sure making the trip Afghanistan is necessarily anything other than what it looks like: a show. And what I’m looking at is trying to, you know, make sure that we successfully win this nomination
Sounds right to me. There is nothing to be gained for anyone by the candidates flying to Afghanistan for some pr stunt. But that’s not how Rubin sees it. Continue reading
A Few Thoughts About Last Night
As was tweeted by a few individuals, it is remarkable that a conservative, Catholic, Republican – who largely rejects JFK’s sentiments on religion in the public square to boot – won primaries in Alabama and Mississippi. It’s also becoming evident that exit polling means squat with regards to Rick Santorum.
Mitt Romney continues to be the weakest front-runner imaginable. It was funny to listen to John Batchelor and his parade of insiders smugly dismiss Santorum’s victories and chat away about the inevitability of Romney’s nomination while Santorum was winning two southern states in which Romney finished third. Yes, Romney still has an edge, and with victories in American Samoa and Hawaii Santorum’s delegate edge last night was minimal. But Romney has far from sealed the deal.
Speaking of Romney, his gaggle of supporters truly marked themselves by their utter gracelessness in defeat. As Mark Levin said, Romney supporters are quickly becoming as obnoxious as Ron Paul supporters. It’s true that partisans of all of the candidates can be particularly blind to their own candidate’s faults and to exaggerate the foibles of the others, but Romney supporters in all corners of the internet have been particularly bitter and have done little to actually sway others to their side. What might explain this phenomenon is that unlike the others, Romney voters aren’t particularly enamored with their candidate and are instead motivated by either dislike of the other candidates and/or fear that any other candidate would lose the general election. So they don’t really have any convincing arguments to make on behalf of Romney, but instead they kick and stomp their feet every time Romney fails to win a primary. I would suggest that calling those of us who don’t vote for Romney a bunch of hayseed hicks, and suggesting that social cons be banished from consideration this election might just not be a winning strategy. Just saying.
As for Newt, there is absolutely no compelling reason for him to stay in this race. He won his home state, the state neighboring his home state, and has otherwise been a distant consideration save for the states he lost last night in the south. Rick Santorum already had a slight lead in Louisiana, and I think that last night’s victories just about clinches the state for him (though that’s a rather dangerous prediction considering the wildness of this primary season thus far). That being said, his reasoning for staying in is not all that outrageous. He suggested that he didn’t want Romney to concentrate all of his fire on Santorum, something I said not that long ago. And while he has no realistic shot to win the nomination before or even during the Republican convention – is a brokered convention really going to nominate the guy with the third most delegates coming in? – he might be able to prevent Romney from securing the necessary number of delegates, and that seems to be his primary goal. After all, not all of his supporters will switch to Santorum. By staying in the race he is hurting Santorum, but he’s also hurting Romney by picking off a few delegates. Take away Gingrich from last night, and both Santorum and Romney would have won more delegates. That would have inched Romney closer to the nomination.
On the other hand, I don’t suppose Gingrich contributors are going to be all that enthused to continue propping up a candidate who has no intention of actually winning, and is instead motivated by nothing more than spite. Also, as was discussed last night, even if Romney fails to secure the precious 1,044 delegates by the time Tampa rolls around, he’ll still be the favorite at a brokered convention if he is significantly ahead of Santorum. There is no magical candidate that will emerge from the ashes of a brokered convention. It’s either going to be Romney or it’s going to be Santorum. Every delegate that Santorum doesn’t win from here until the convention is just as good as a delegate for Romney under a brokered convention scenario. If Santorum remains fairly close in the delegate count while neither candidate has the necessary majority, then Gingrich can play kingmaker at the convention. He would be well-advised to drop out sooner than later if he wants to achieve his twin objection of derailing Romney and having a hand in deciding the eventual nominee.
The New First Amendment
Jane Fonda, Robin Morgan, and Gloria Steinem have written an op-ed in which they call upon the FCC to revoke the licences of radio stations that carry the Rush Limbaugh show.
That makes this a fitting time to inquire of his syndicator, Clear Channel Communications, whether it intends to continue supporting someone who addicts his audience to regular doses of hate speech. Clear Channel’s Premiere Radio Networks Inc., which hosts Limbaugh’s program, has defended his recent comments.
If Clear Channel won’t clean up its airways, then surely it’s time for the public to ask the FCC a basic question: Are the stations carrying Limbaugh’s show in fact using their licenses “in the public interest?”
Spectrum is a scarce government resource. Radio broadcasters are obligated to act in the public interest and serve their respective communities of license. In keeping with this obligation, individual radio listeners may complain to the FCC that Limbaugh’s radio station (and those syndicating his show) are not acting in the public interest or serving their respective communities of license by permitting such dehumanizing speech.
In the course of an op-ed calling upon the government to restrict free speech rights, the authors compare Rush Limbaugh to Joseph Goebbels.
I know that Wikipedia is not the greatest source of information, but it usually gets the basics correct. From the article on Goebbels:
Goebbels rose to power in 1933 along with Hitler and the Nazi Party and he was appointed Propaganda Minister. One of his first acts was the burning of books rejected by the Nazis. He exerted totalitarian control over the media, arts and information in Germany.
From Webster’s dictionary:
Irony : 3 a (1): incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result (2): an event or result marked by such incongruity
Fonda, Morgan, and Steinem might want to have a look at this book before taking to the keyboard again.
They Said If I Voted for John McCain the U.S. Would Engage in Endless Middle East Conflict with No Concern for Congressional Approval
And they were right.
For those who didn’t watch the video, skip to about the 3:35 mark where Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta responds to a question about creating a no-fly zone over Syria. He states that the administration would seek international approval and then inform Congress about its actions.
That’s right – international sanction for military action would take precedence over Congressional authority. And that makes complete sense, because in the United States Constitution it clearly states right there in Article I, Section 8 that international bodies shall have the power to declare war and therefore bring the United States into armed conflict.
Oh. Wait. It’s Congress that has the power to declare war. Silly me. But we live in an international age, and if the Supreme Court can rely on international law in order to decide cases, then by golly the President of the United States should be able to commit American troops to armed conflict with a nice note from the U.N. or some other international body.
And at least he’ll be nice enough to let Congress know. Maybe he’ll text Speaker Boehner about it, but only after he gets off the phone with Sandra Fluke. Priorities.
The History of Presidential Primaries
This is a fairly interesting document. It takes a look back at each of the primary battles since 1972, as well as the delegate strength score after each primary date. The delegate strength score is an indication of the likelihood that the leading candidate is going to secure the nomination. It’s a formula based on the number of delegates won, the number of delegates needed to win the nomination, and the number of remaining delegates.
Right now Mitt Romney’s delegate strength score is 15, which is fairly weak for this point in the process. In the previous four seriously contested Republican presidential primaries, things were all wrapped up after Super Tuesday – technically McCain needed another week, but it was basically over after Super Tuesday. We’re nowhere close to wrapping this thing up.
It’s also interesting to look at some of those vote totals. Bob Dole was basically a juggernaut. That’s right, Bob Dole. He rolled over his competition, winning almost every single contest by double digits, securing majorities or near-majorities in most states and in a fairly crowded field (albeit a field of mediocre candidates). Even John McCain’s victory totals were fairly impressive. While Romney’s had a few substantial wins, his pattern looks nothing like previous Republican nominees.
Thanks For Proving Our Point
Rush Limbaugh is famous for “demonstrating absurdity by being absurd.” His satire works because it usually exposes the ridiculousness of the thing being satired. Unfortunately for Missouri Democrat Stacey Newman, she doesn’t quite understand that satire doesn’t really work when it highlights your side’s stupidity.
A Missouri House member frustrated with recent legislative debates over birth control and reproductive health is proposing to restrict vasectomies.
Legislation sponsored by Democrat Stacey Newman would allow vasectomies only when necessary to protect a man from serious injury or death. Vasectomies would have to be performed in a hospital, ambulatory surgery center or health facility licensed by the state Department of Health and Senior Services.
The Missouri House last week approved a resolution objecting to the federal health care law and a requirement that most employers or insurers cover contraceptives.
Newman, who’s from St. Louis County, says that such issues affect women the most. She says men also must make family planning decisions.
This is priceless, and for a number of reasons, but three spring immediately to mind.
On the obvious level this doesn’t work because her bill doesn’t mirror the debate that is taking place. Just about no person is actually seeking to ban contraceptives; rather we are simply fighting attempts to mandate that all employers grant insurance coverage for contraceptives, even when they have moral objections to contraception. So it fails on a literal level.
Second, to the extent that there would be people interested in restricting access to birth control for moral reasons, they almost certainly would also support a ban on vasectomies. Guess what Ms. Newman, the Catholic Church is no keener on vasectomies than it is on artificial birth control. So if you were hoping to shame people into dropping their opposition to birth control, they would only hop aboard your bandwagon. So that’s your second fail.
Finally, the legislation itself highlights the fundamental problem with the HHS mandate. Leaving aside the issue of religious liberty, what is disturbing about the mandate is that the federal government is decreeing what is and, by logical extension, what is not to be covered by health insurance. Who is the government to dictate to insurers what they cover? A government big and powerful enough to make these decisions is certainly powerful enough to restrict access to certain procedures. So by introducing this bill, you’re actually proving the fundamental point that opponents of the HHS mandate specifically, and Obamacare in general, have been making. Yet another fail for you. But your failure is our success, so thanks.
Shenanigans in Michigan
Despite losing by three percentage points in Michigan on Tuesday night, Rick Santorum could claim a small moral victory. Because Michigan awards its delegates proportionally, Santorum and Mitt Romney walked away with 15 delegates each.
Or so we all thought.
Well lo and behold the Michigan Republican establishment got together and made sure that didn’t happen.
On a 4-2 vote, the Michigan GOP’s credentials committee met Wednesday night and awarded both of the state’s at-large voting delegates to the party’s national convention to Romney — who won the popular vote 41%-38% over his chief rival, Rick Santorum.
Based on earlier explanations to reporters and the campaigns that the party’s rules said the at-large delegates would be awarded proportionally, it had been expected that each candidate would get one at-large delegate.
. . .
Saul Anuzis, one of six members of the credentials committee, said the credentials committee voted in early February to award both at-large delegates to the winner of the popular vote.
Republican Party spokesman Matt Frendewey said he didn’t do a good job explaining the rules to reporters.
“I just didn’t explain it clearly enough,” he said.
You see it was all just a big misunderstanding. They always meant to award both at-large delegates to the winner of the popular vote. Nothing to see here. The native son won after all. Have fun in Ohio.
Unfortunately for Anuzis (who at one point came close to heading the RNC), not all Romney supporters are this dishonest.
Not to former Attorney General Mike Cox, a member of the committee, who said the vote doesn’t pass the smell test.
“I have this crazy idea that you follow the rules,” Cox said. “I’d love to give the at-large delegates to Mitt Romney, but our rules provide for strict apportionment.”
Cox supported Romney and even acted as a surrogate for the candidate on several occasions during the last three weeks. He was one of two “no” votes Wednesday night — along with attorney Eric Doster. Voting for the distribution of delegates to Romney were party Chairman Bobby Schostak, Anuzis, party Co-chairwoman Sharon Wise and party official Bill Runco.
Cox figures the issue will become moot when Romney does well on Super Tuesday, when 10 states hold primaries and caucuses next week.
“But this niff-nawing over one delegate doesn’t help him,” Cox said.
He acknowledges that there was discussion of giving the popular-vote winner both at-large delegates, but that it didn’t get written into the rules.
Obviously Mr. Cox’s ears must have had a typo during that discussion.
So we have further proof that Mitt Romney is such an incredibly awesome hurricane of a candidate that party insiders have to change the rules post facto in order to give him a victory in his native state.
One would like to think that by now Romney and company have done enough to repel any Republican voter from even considering voting for Romney. HA! Romney now commands a 16-point lead according to Rasmussen, and has all but erased Rick Santorum’s lead in Ohio, and now leads in Washington state.
I don’t know what to say. In light of the events that transpired yesterday I made a vow that I was no longer going to hector those whom I normally agree with about this election. It doesn’t mean that I won’t continue to try and do everything in my power to help Santorum get the nomination, but I’m done banging my head against the wall. It is what it is.
Andrew Breitbart (1969-2012)
Shocking news as one of the most tenacious fighters of the conservative movement has died this morning. This from his Big Journalism site.
Andrew passed away unexpectedly from natural causes shortly after midnight this morning in Los Angeles.
We have lost a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a dear friend, a patriot and a happy warrior.
Andrew lived boldly, so that we more timid souls would dare to live freely and fully, and fight for the fragile liberty he showed us how to love.
Please keep him and his family in your prayers.
Our Country
So to sum up: we now live in a country where students at ostensibly Catholic universities testify on national television before Congress that they are freely engaging in pre-marital intercourse, and that the university’s failure to pay for their $100 per month contraception is severely cramping their style – as they pay on the order of $50,000 per year for the privilege of said education.
But Rick Santorum is considered kooky and extreme.
Assessing Potential Supreme Court Vacancies
Supreme Court appointments have been a relatively muted issue during the campaign. It might be worth taking a look at the Court and in order to see where we might be headed over the course of the next presidential term. I will be listing Justices in order from least to most likely to retire over the next four years. Letter in parentheses indicates party of the president under which they were appointed.
John Roberts (R), Samuel Alito (R), Sonia Sotomayor (D), Elana Kagan (D): All recent appointments, and all relatively young. None of these guys are going anywhere anytime soon barring a catastrophic health crisis.
Clarence Thomas (R): Even though he recently started his third decade on the Court, Thomas is still fairly young, as he won’t turn 70 until 2018. He is the Justice most committed to completely overturning decades of bad precedents, and I have a hunch he’d like to be on the Court to help shape those future rulings. There is a tiny sliver of a chance he could retire if a Republican wins the presidency, but it would be a fairly big surprise.
Antonin Scalia (R), Stephen Breyer (D): Scalia and Breyer are fairly close in age. Scalia turns 80 at the end of the next presidential term, and Breyer is two years his junior. Scalia would also be completing his 30th year on the Court in 2016. Both are still vigorous and active. Neither will retire if a member of the opposite party wins the forthcoming election, and I would put the odds of retirement at just under 50/50 if someone from their party wins. I would imagine Scalia would share some of Thomas’s desire to be able to shape opinions, so he might hang on through the next term.
Anthony Kennedy (R): The Court’s swing vote, he is just a few months younger than Scalia and has served just one less year on the Court. His retirement would be the game changer, and whoever gets to pick his replacement could be altering the course of the Court for the next thirty years. It doesn’t matter which party controls the White House, the confirmation fight over his replacement will be a bloodbath, and I would fully expect a filibuster effort.
Will he retire, and will he peg his retirement to whoever is in the White House? He’s a moderate, but he was appointed by a Republican. Ultimately Kennedy will probably decide upon his retirement in the same manner as he decides most of his votes: by flipping a coin.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (D): The only one of the eight clear ideoloigical justices who could retire during an administration of the opposite party. She is the oldest member of the Court, and she has had some health problems in recent years. I personally have seen her up close a couple of times, and she looked incredibly frail – and this was several years ago. But she is still fairly vigorous, even travelling to Egpyt in order to tell the Egyptians how rotten our Constitution is. She has evidently indicated a willingness to retire at 82, the same age as Louis Brandeis. That would occur in 2015.
If Barack Obama wins re-election, I would put the odds at just about 100 percent that she will retire over the next four years. Even if a Republican wins the White House, health issues might force her hand. If that happens, the confirmation battle will be just as intense, if not more so, than for whoever would replace Kennedy.
Ultimately the question we have to ask is which of the candidates is likely to go to the mats when it comes to a Supreme Court nomination battle?
It Takes A Family
I recently completed Rick Santorum’s It Takes A Family. I quipped on Twitter that had I read this before the campaign started then Santorum would have been my top Rick pick before that other Rick entered the race (though I still maintain that Governor Perry would have been an outstanding nominee, but no need to go there). At times Santorum slips into politician speak – you know, those occasions when politicians feel compelled to tell stories of individual people in order to justify some larger agenda. And some of the book is a little plodding, especially when he gets into wonkish mode (which fortunately is not all that often). Those quibbles asides, there are large chunks of this book that could very well have been written by yours truly. That isn’t meant to be a commentary on my own genius, but rather a way of saying I agree with just about everything this man has to say.
The book title really says it all. The heart of Rick Santorum’s political philosophy is the family, meaning that to him strong families are the heart of any functioning society. The family has been undermined both by big government programs and by the culture at large. Santorum mocks the “village elders” who view more government programs as the solution to all problems. Santorum acknowledges that many of the problems we face don’t have quick and easy fixes, and often no legislative action can be taken. Santorum offers a series of small policy proposals that are aimed at giving parents and individuals in tough economic circumstances some tools to help, but he also emphasizes the doctrine of subsidiarity. Ultimately we must rely principally on local institutions, starting with the family.
Santorum understands what even some on the right fail to appreciate, and that is we can’t divorce social issues from economics. The breakdown of the family coincides directly with economic hardship. If we want a healthier economy, we need healthier families. It’s a central tenet of conservatism that is somehow ignored by large swathes of the political right.
His approach to politics can be summarized in a passage on page 341 of the hardback edition: Continue reading
Religious Kook Talks About Evil Existing in the World
Yet another social conservative yahoo railing about evil, abortion, and sin. A guy like this couldn’t even sniff the presidency.
Ht: Right Scoop for the video, and Rush Limbaugh for reminding us about it today.
It is Time to Get Rid of Most Campaign Finance Laws
One of the big items today is news that the Romney campaign is bleeding cash. Considering his all out assault first on Newt Gingrich, and now Rick Santorum, this comes as no surprise. Yet while Romney spends more in a day than Santorum spent through most of the campaign thus far (only a slight exaggeration, I think), Santorum continues continues to poll ahead of Romney nationally and is neck-and-neck in Romney’s home state. Of course Romney still has plenty in reserve thanks largely to his Super PAC. Even Newt Gingrich’s fledgling campaign is still alive thanks to the generosity of one supporter funding a pro-Newt Super PAC.
These Super PACs have come under fire. They are the indirect result of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law, a law which itself amended the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA), a law meant to restrict the amount of money that individuals could donate to individual candidates. FECA created a two-tiered structure that basically divided federal contributions into two categories: hard money and soft money. Professional sports fans probably recognize the terms as related to soft and hard caps, and it’s really the same concept. Under FECA individuals could only contribute $1,000 to a candidate per election cycle. Yet there were no restrictions placed on “soft money,” meaning contributions to party committees. This was the original end-run around campaign finance law. Under the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act (BCRA), or McCain-Feingold, individual contribution maxes to candidates were raised, but soft money contributions were phased out. This, in turn, gave rise to other organizations, mainly 527s, which were able to raise unlimited amounts of money to air issue advocacy ads against candidates. These various organizations are not technically affiliated with any candidate, and it is a violation of campaign finance law for candidates to collaborate in any way with these groups.
So is it time for another set of reforms? Indeed it is. And the reform is simple: repeal all these ridiculous (and arguably unconstitutional) provisions, and allow individuals to contribute whatever amount of money they want directly to candidates.
There Is No Right to Privacy in the Constitution
In other words, Santorum is right and his hardcore libertarian opponents are wrong.
Rick Santorum has stated that he believes that there is no right to privacy in the Constitution. Therefore, Supreme Court decisions such as Griswold v. Connecticut (striking down Connecticut’s anti-contraception statutes) and Lawrence v. Texas (striking down Texas’s anti-homosexual sodomy laws) were wrong.
Mitt Romney artfully dodged this question at a recent debate, so Santorum’s coming under fire for stating what should be taken as a given among so-called conservative constitutionalists. As indicated in prior posts, Santorum does not suggest that he would personally favor such laws; in fact he has expressly stated that he would not vote for laws that banned contraception or sodomy.
Santorum’s main fault, evidently, is that he is expressing an originalist understanding of the constitution. Both of the decisions referenced above were gross miscarriages of constitutional justice. No matter what you think of the laws in questions, Supreme Court Justices are supposed to decide cases based on the constitution, not their personal policy preferences. In both cases, the majority opinion was based on policy, though justified with a thin veneer of constitutional justification.
In the case of Griswold, Justice William O. Douglas wrote the famous majority opinion in which he stated that though there is no right to privacy expressly stated in the constitution, it is found in “penumbras” and “emanations” found in other constitutional rights. Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Lawrence, relying heavily on the concept of substantive due process, a legal concept that has enabled the Court to completely trample on states’ rights. In other words, the Court struck down state laws that ran afoul of no direct constitutional prohibition. The writers of these majority decisions had to contort the plain meaning of the document in order to justify a decision they had already reached without reference to the constitutional text.
Both of these cases sparked notable dissenting opinions. Potter Stewart in Griswold and Clarence Thomas in Lawrence said much the same thing: the law under consideration is uncommonly silly, and if i were a legislator in this particular state I would vote against such a law. But my job as a jurist is to determine whether the law is constitutional or not, and neither Stewart or Thomas considered the law in either case to run afoul of the constitution. The sentiment expressed by both Stewart and Thomas should inform any intellectually honest jurist.
Justice Arthur Goldberg offered a concurring opinion in Griswold that some conservatives have found to be more compelling, citing the Ninth Amendment as justification for striking down the Connecticut statute. The problem with this rationale is that the ninth amendment ought to be read in conjunction with the tenth. The Bill of Rights in general were meant to be restrictions placed upon the federal government. The ninth and tenth amendments exists because the framers of the Bill of Rights fretted that the Bill of Rights would be read to imply that only the rights contained therein were protected. in fact many of the opponents of the Bill of Rights opposed creating such a list precisely because they believed that a specific enumeration of rights would imply that rights not listed were not protected. So the ninth amendment assures us that the first eight amendments are not an exhaustive list of protections. But again, this has to be read in light of the purpose of restricting the power of the federal government. It is not a broad grant of individual rights, but an assurance that the federal government could not augment its reach beyond certain delineated fields. If anything, the ninth amendment should be used as a cudgel against the Court and the federal government in general in their attempts to restrict states rights.
Therefore I find it odd that those who claim to be averse to a centralized, big brother government are content with said government being able to strike down state laws for no other than the laws in question are of questionable value. It suggests to me that those who cry “Nanny Statist!” with regards to Rick Santorum ought to look in the mirror.
The Goldilocks Conservative
Rick Santorum has come under fire from right-wing critics for being not conservative enough on fiscal and economic issues, while simultaneously being too conservative on social issues. In my mind, he’s just right.
On the matter of fiscal policy Santorum has been portrayed as some kind of big government statist. As a Senator he did cast votes for raising the debt ceiling, for Medicare Part 2, No Child Left Behind, and other big spending programs. He’s admitted erring on a couple of these votes. Overall, though, Santorum’s record as judged by free market policy institutes is fairly solid. The Weekly Standard ran a piece on the National Taxpayer Union’s grading of Santorum, and he compares very favorably to most of his colleagues. Continue reading
Newt Fading
I wanted to followup on Don’s post from yesterday about National Review urging Gingrich to exit the race. As I said in the comments, I owe NRO a slight mea culpa. I thought that by including Santorum (and Huntsman) with Romney as the candidates they thought worthy of the nomination they were merely blowing smoke. Yet they have given Santorum fairly favorable coverage, so much so that angry Romney fanboys like Old Fan think that NR is in the tank for Santorum. I still think the hatchet piece on Gingrich was out of line, so I’m not totally ready to forgive them for that.
As for the actual meat of their suggestion, there is much merit to it. There have been nine primaries and caucuses thus far. Gingrich was the landslide winner in South Carolina, but has otherwise done terribly. He’s finished a distant second twice, and has barely hovered around ten percent in the other contests. Right now one poll has Gingrich in fourth place behind Ron Paul, and other polls show a clear trend towards Rick Santorum as the favorite among the anti-Romneys. Now, polls have shifted mightily throughout the campaign season, so Gingrich shouldn’t head for the exits quite yet. But poor showings in Arizona and Michigan should just about do it for Newt. Considering the fact that the bulk of his supporters will likely flock to Santorum (where as Santorum supporters are evenly split between Romney and Newt as their backup choices), and that Newt is much more favorably disposed to Santorum than Romney, I would imagine that Newt will not stay in the race if he has another pair of fourth place finishes.
That being said, if National Review wants Gingrich out of the race the last thing it should have done is publish an editorial making this feeling public. Republican primary voters in general, and Gingrich supporters in particular have, to a large extent, been driven by spite. It’s practically impossible to read a screed written by a Gingrich supporter that doesn’t mention the “Establishment” once or a dozen times. Throw in the fact that National Review is already reviled with a special kind of intensity in camp Gingrich – and with good reason – and I can envision Gingrich supporters doubling down. Newt himself has shown that he is prone to fits of spite, so National Review may have just guaranteed that Newt will stay in the race longer than intended. In fact I’d submit that if National Review wanted Newt out of the race the best thing it could do is endorse the man.
Randians on the Right
Speaking as a former Rick Perry supporter, I promise you that not all of us are petulant brats. I cannot speak for others, unfortunately.
Red State’s all-out assault on Santorum comes as no surprise. This is a blog that perceives all who fail short of achieving purity as a conservative (whatever that’s supposed to mean) as heretics. So they have taken a few incidents where Santoum fell short – and in some cases, he did cast a wrong vote or endorsed the wrong candidate – and have now transformed Santorum into some kind of statist.
The shrill attacks on Red State are to be expected. What’s disappointing is seeing an otherwise insightful blogger like Ace of Spades hyperventilate ignorantly about Santorum. What set Ace off was this comment by Santorum from much earlier in the campaign:
One of the things I will talk about that no president has talked about before is I think the dangers of contraception in this country, the whole sexual libertine idea … Many in the Christian faith have said, “Well, that’s okay … contraception’s okay.”
It’s not okay because it’s a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be. They’re supposed to be within marriage, for purposes that are, yes, conjugal … but also procreative. That’s the perfect way that a sexual union should happen. We take any part of that out, we diminish the act. And if you can take one part out that’s not for purposes of procreation, that’s not one of the reasons, then you diminish this very special bond between men and women, so why can’t you take other parts of that out? And all of a sudden, it becomes deconstructed to the point where it’s simply pleasure. And that’s certainly a part of it—and it’s an important part of it, don’t get me wrong—but there’s a lot of things we do for pleasure, and this is special, and it needs to be seen as special.
Ace is displeased: Continue reading
Other Reactions on the HHS Mandate and the “Compromise”
I don’t have much to add to what’s already been said on the subject other than to express my wonder at who President Obama thinks he is fooling. Granted I’ve already encountered vacuous leftists using the “but they don’t have to pay for it” talking point, but these are the types of people content to loyally follow Obama over the cliff anyway.
I just wanted to use this space to highlight a few other blogs that have written copiously about this subject. Ron Kozar thinks this has been something of a missed opportunity for Catholics.
One point, which cries out to be made but isn’t being made, is how stupid it is to buy insurance for something as inexpensive as contraception, even if one has no moral objection to it.
It’s like requiring your auto insurer to cover an oil change, with no deductible. Thus, rather than simply collecting the money from the consumer, the oil-change mechanic would have to employ a clerk to “process” your insurance and await an eventual check from your auto insurer. This kind of nonsense – mandating coverage for routine, inexpensive procedures, and relieving the consumer of the need to pay – is one of the larger reasons why the healthcare and health-insurance systems are so utterly out of control.
Another point that cries out to be made but isn’t being made is that the government shouldn’t be dictating the terms of health-insurance benefits to employers in the first place, regardless of the employer’s religion. The debate is being framed as a question about which package of coverages the federal government should mandate, rather than about whether the feds, or any government, should be dictating any terms at all.
Meanwhile, Jay Anderson has been on fire lately. He has several blogposts this week worth reading, so just read his blog. Needless to say, I agree that it is time to disinvite certain so-called Catholics to the supper feast of the lamb.
Finally, if you’re not reading Jeff Goldstein’s blog Protein Wisdom, you should be. Jeff is a Jewish, Santorum supporting, libertarian-conservative, and he’s done just as good a job of getting at why Obama’s actions are so tyrannical as anyone else. Here’s his take on the compromise.
The problem is, rules or laws that provide exemptions to specific identity groups are ripe for corruption — and there’s no more reason that the federal government should be able to direct insurance companies to provide free contraception that it should the Catholic church. And by making the accomodation a waiver or derivation, Obama is still asserting his own Executive authority to tell private companies how they must spend.
Catholics shouldn’t have to go on bended knee before the State and beg for a conscience exemption for providing the kind of coverage it wishes to provide. And the State should not have the arbitrary power to pick and choose who must follow laws, who gets waivers and exemptions, and so on.
Obama’s “accommodation” is meant solely to hide his underlying power grab: namely, the unstated authority of the State to set these kind of dictatorial demands on private industry, and by extension, on individuals.
Looks Like A Two-Man Race to Me
Rick Santorum has won two of the three election contests tonight, and as of the time I write this is dead even with Mitt Romney in a state that had been all but conceded to Romney before this weekend. Santorum has now won three of the eight primaries/caucuses that have been held thus far, and possibly four. That puts him about even with Romney, and comfortably ahead of Gingrich and Paul in states won.
Admittedly he will be behind Romney in the delegate count, especially considering that no delegates were up for grabs in Missouri. But 200,000 people went to the polls in Missouri, and a majority of them voted for Santorum (and again, I’ll admit that Gingrich was not on the ballot there). He drubbed Romney in Minnesota as well.
This primary season has been a wild one, and who knows what will happen in the coming weeks. The Romney sleaze machine* is already out in full force hitting Santorum. Santorum is radically underfunded compared to Romney and even Newt, although that makes his victories thus far that much more impressive. Right now it is looking like a two-man race, but it’s not between Newt and Romney but rather Romney and Santorum.
*: I wrote a post a few weeks back in which I said that Newt was and perhaps still is a jerk. For the record, Mitt is kind of a jerk, and over two election cycles has proven himself to be a rather despicable campaigner. For those of you who would vote for Romney in the general election, I suppose the silver lining is that the man is willing to fight dirty. So at least he’s got that going for him. Which is nice.
Real Hypocrisy
President Obama’s decision to accept Super PAC funding is neither surprising or even all that upsetting. Even though he railed against the Citizens United decision, going so far as to call out the Supreme Court Justices during his State of the Union address in a pique of feigned outrage, nobody who actually has any understanding of who Barack Obama is (meaning people smarter or at least less naive than, say, Doug Kmiec and Kathy Dahlkemper) ever doubted for one moment that he would completely reverse course on yet another promise.
Honestly, there is nothing wrong with Obama’s decision. Not only did the Supreme Court get it right in the Citizens United case, I think that most of the campaign finance restrictions in this country are either unconstitutional or are simply bad policy choices that actually exacerbate the problems with how campaigns are financed. Every new regulation only creates some other entity that further eliminates transparency from the process and merely complicates things unnecessarily.
What is amusing is the blatant hypocrisy, and this is one of those rare times when the term actually applies. The word hypocrite is often thrown around incorrectly. Jonah Goldberg has been one of the foremost crusaders against the incorrect usage of the term. A hypocrite is not someone who claims to uphold a certain principle and then falls short of meeting the ideal. If that were the meaning of hypocrisy, then all sin is hypocrisy. No, a hypocrite is one who pretends to have certain virtues but who, in fact, does not posses said virtues. We all fail to live up to our own moral standards from time to time, but the point is that we are at least trying. Does anyone for one second really believe that Barack Obama truly doesn’t want to receive funding from corporations or wealthy donors? Of course not. It was a populist front meant to distract attention away from the failings of his own administration. He was absolutely insincere at the State of the Union, and he’s been insincere on this issue from day one. This is a guy who raked in more money from Wall Street and other financial institutions than his Republican competitor in 2008, who still collects a hefty amount from this sector, and yet who pretends to be absolutely appalled that these groups have the temerity to influence elections through their campaign contributions.
Yet there are still going to be those who act shocked – SHOCKED! – that Obama could betray his stated principles. As the examples of Doug Kmiec and Kathy Dahlkemper show, never discount the blindness of those who just want to believe. Darwin’s already covered this ground earlier, so I won’t belabor the point. It just astounds me that a man can be so transparently dishonest time and time and time again, and yet there will always be obedient lapdogs ready to be fooled again.
Face Palm Political Ad of the Year
Courtesy of the Right Scoop comes this political advertisement for Pete Hoekstra, who is challenging Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow.
“Your economy get very weak, ours get very good.”
Your Super Bowl Champions: the New York Giants
So there evidently this game last night . . .
A random bunch of observations about the Giants victory.
- It would have been completely awesome had Eli Manning announced in his post-game interview that Payton was coming to the Giants as his backup.
- Speaking of post-game celebrations, the NFL’s attempts to mimic the Stanley Cup celebration comes off as so incredibly lame. The NHL might be the red-headed stepchild of North American professional sports, but it has the one championship celebration that every other pro sports league tries to imitate, but none of them are as cool and as genuine as the hoisting of the Stanley Cup and the parade around the ice.
- People will point to the Giants 9-7 record as a condemnation of the NFL regular season, but does anybody who watched that game think that the Giants weren’t the better team? The Pats had touchdown drives immediately before and after halftime, but the Giants basically dominated just about every other second of that game. So many teams in the NFL are either all defense and or all offense, and the Giants are one of the very few who play well on both sides of the ball. On top of that, the Giants beat the Packers (really, they mauled them), the 49ers and the Patriots on the way to a championship. That’s not a fluke.
- I’m probably in the minority but I was happy when Bradshaw slipped into the endzone. Sure, the odds slightly favor going for the chip shot field goal over letting Brady have the ball with 50 seconds, but too many things can go wrong. Just one game ago the Patriots saw a kicker miss a sure-fire field goal that would have sent the AFC championship game into overtime. It’s the Super Bowl, and you take the points and the lead when it is being offered to you, and then trust that the defense can hold.
- The Manning to Tyree play is probably still the superior one when you factor in Manning escaping a sack, but Manning to Manningham is a close second.
- Oh, and did I mention the Giants are the champions of the world:
![](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_YqM_zH1K7Uw/TOK1hLlt3BI/AAAAAAAAA1o/HCzoksN1-ME/s1600/email+icon+32x32.png")
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