The Exact Instant The Santorum "Surge" Ended ...

Rick Santorum [h/t Donald Douglas @ American Power -- I tuned in late to the debate and missed this part]:

We have to have one law. We can't have someone married in one state and not married in another.

Problem solved:

Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State. ... No State shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Any questions?

As of mid-2011, 53% of American voters supported ending marriage apartheid, and six states and the District of Columbia have now done so.

That trend will not reverse.

Within the lifetimes of most people my age (45), same-sex marriage will not only have been fully legally implemented by all 50 states and recognized by the federal government for tax purposes and such, but advocacy of turning back the clock on the matter will enjoy (and rightfully so) the same political cachet  and public support as proposals to re-institute segregation of public water fountains by race or to accord US Senators the privilege of jus primae noctis in their home states.

Some of the other Republican candidates -- like most Democratic candidates -- can probably get away with pretending to oppose same-sex marriage in order to give the dwindling social conservative bloc a plausible excuse for voting for them. This year, anyway. By 2020, taking that side of the issue will be political cyanide for any presidential candidate, period.

Rick Santorum, on the other hand, obviously does oppose same-sex marriage, which means he has zero chance of winning independents, and therefore zero chance of being elected president. And enough Republican voters will figure that out in time to know that they have to pick someone else if they don't want to have zero chance at the White House too.

Desultory In-Progress Debate Notes

9:01pm Central Time: Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ ... there are "major party" presidential candidates running on a platform of sending troops back into Iraq?


9:05pm: Obama wrapped up Iraq on the Bush timetable. He "surged" Afghanistan, amped up the drone war in Pakistan, launched a renewed covert war in Somalia, honchoed the takedown of bin Laden ... there's just no way to get around his "national security" flank from the hawk direction. But a bunch of these bozos are trying. As usual, the only one talking a lick of sense on foreign policy is Ron Paul.

9:07pm: Santorum notices that the Iranian people think America is cool -- then says what we need to do is keep trying to change that. Because the best way to overthrow an unfriendly regime is to do everything you can to keep its popular support level at the highest level possible.

9:13pm: Riffing on break commentary -- 53% of Americans support ending marriage apartheid. Republican candidates: "Fuck'em."

9:15pm: Newt Gingrich thinks that every issue is a "very big, very important topic." Ask him about his bunions and he'll roll out a plan for massive revisioning of NIH.

9:17pm: Mitt wants to get rid of all the "loopholes and deductions" that keep the poor politicians so destitute. Santorum wants to get rid of all the deductions except the ones that are actually there, so that it can be 1955 in Pennsylvania's factories again.

9:20pm: Mitt and taxes, sittin' in a tree ... Says we're "inches from not being a free economy any more." Because, you know, back in the days of Nixon's wage and price controls, things were so much freer.

9:21pm: Oh, shit, Paul's giving an economics lecture. Everything he's saying is absolutely right. He also sounds like he's about to scream "get off my lawn!" at any second.

9:23pm: That one guy from Texas, the other one, Rick somethin' or other, is flapping his gums. He's got the whole "get off my lawn" tone thing going, too. Someone plug in the shrill-meter.

9:24pm: Huntsman's glad someone's actually letting him speak this time. Mitt's rambling. He seems very much off his game tonight. He's worried he'll fall below 40% next Tuesday. He's right to be worried.

9:27pm: Newt thinks that Obama is a radical European socialist now. Quite a transformation from Kenyan anti-colonialist, huh? But now he's trying to make Romney into Obama, and I admit Romney looks more like Switzerland than Swaziland. Santorum looks ... lost.

9:28pm: Santorum will "use the language of bringing people together." As long as they're heterosexual and there's no contraception involved, of course.

9:30pm: Anonymous is ... China.

9:35pm: Huntsman: A trade war is a bad idea. Mitt: China will swerve first.

My partial impression (I came in way late): So far I'd say that Huntsman is picking up some points (that break into Chinese was gold), Santorum and Romney are cratering, Newt and Paul are holding their own, and Perry should have gone ahead and dropped out last Tuesday.

OK, wow, it's over. Or are there closing statements still to come? If that's it, I'm thinking the bloom came off Santorum's rose in a pretty big way already, but that the big loser was Romney. He sounded shrill and defensive, the whole time I was watching. Yes, it's over. Talking heads now. Buh bye.

A Question for Gary Johnson

Image via WikipediaFollowers of third party political news are probably aware that on December 28, former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson abandoned his campaign for the Republican Party's 2012 presidential nomination and announced that he'll instead be seeking the nomination of the Libertarian Party.

Libertarian activists seem, for the most part, excited about this development, as well they should be. Cavils about carpet-bagging and bad branding ("the party of Republicans who can't find support in their own party") and such aside, it's probably a net plus that a former two-term governor thinks of the LP as a worthy vehicle for a presidential campaign.

But I have a question -- a question that Libertarian Party members and prospective campaign donors should be asking.

Johnson's presidential campaign committee ("Gary Johnson 2012 Inc."), like all other presidential campaign committees that have raised or spent more than $5,000, files quarterly reports with the Federal Elections Commission. The report for the 4th quarter of 2011 isn't due until the 15th, but the report for the 3rd quarter -- covering the period through the end of September -- shows the campaign with only $10,882 dollars on hand ... and debts of $240,067.

I'm just guessing here, but I suspect that the campaign's financial situation got worse, not better, in the 4th quarter. If I'm right, then we're looking at a campaign somewhere in the general neighborhood of $250k in the red.

Who's going to pay off that debt?

If Johnson (who's independently wealthy) is willing to get his campaign back to the zero point out of his own pocket, well, that's great.

If not, then Libertarians are being asked to dig their presumptive front-runner out of a campaign finance hole he dug over in GOP-land, before they even begin to finance things like television advertising and putting the candidate on the road to get his message out.

$250k may not be huge over on the "major party" side of things, where presidential campaign expenses are now running into the hundreds of millions of dollars. The Libertarian Party's recent presidential candidates, on the other hand, have run campaigns in the $1-2 million dollar range, against which $250k is a pretty big deal.

I've seen some snarky remarks around the blogosphere about the fact that the rest of the Libertarian presidential field hasn't raised a whole lot of money. But I suspect that each and every one of those others has a better bottom line than Johnson does at the moment.

Raising money's important. Spending money's important too. But especially important is doing more of the former than the latter.

Something to think about, Libertarians.

Related articles

• Gary Johnson drops GOP presidential bid to run as Libertarian (thehill.com)
• Gary Johnson birthday money bomb and LP announcement media coverage (independentpoliticalreport.com)
• What's new with the candidates seeking the Libertarian Presidential nomination (independentpoliticalreport.com)
• Gary Johnson Makes His Play (knappster.blogspot.com)

Today's Inquiry into English Usage and Basic Mathematics ...

This one's from the New York Times ...

And as the Pentagon confronts the prospect of cutting its budget by about 10 percent over the next decade ...

... but you can probably find it in just about any newspaper article discussing the upcoming "budget cuts."

So, just how deep are these horrendous, army-killing cuts?

Well, if "sequestration" goes as forecast, the federal government's non-war military spending will only increase by 10% instead of by 18% between 2013 and 2021.

No, that is not a typo. The "cuts" are not cuts in actual spending, they're cuts in the previously projected growth rate of that spending.

Most federal government spending proceeds on rails due to something called "baseline budgeting." The "baseline" is the previous year's spending. Under "baseline budgeting," that previous year's "baseline," plus an increase based on a formula, happens automatically unless Congress decides to tinker with it.

This "sequestration" thing -- triggered by Congress's inability to agree on "deficit reduction" targets last year -- imposes across-the-board reductions in that rate of automatic growth of spending, not in spending as such.

Neat trick, huh? Your congressman can brag to you that he's cutting spending at this morning's town hall, then -- this afternoon, over cognac and cigars -- brag to your local defense contractor or other corporate welfarist that he's increasing that same spending.

Hint: He's lying to one of you. And it's not the guy pouring the cognac and lighting the cigars.

Related articles

• A Shrinking Military Budget May Take Neighbors With It - New York Times (nytimes.com)
• THERE ARE NO CUTS! - The fallacy of baseline budgeting (thehill.com)
• The Vile Baseline Budget Scam !! (theconservativecrawfish.wordpress.com)

Newt the Inevitable

Image via WikipediaYes, the Senator from United Health Services is still "surging" [hat tip -- Politico]. Rick Santorum raised $2 million in the two days following his Iowa caucus victory (and it was a victory, even if he came up a few votes shorter than the presumptive GOP front-runner who's been relentlessly pursuing the presidency for six years now). He's on the hustings in New Hampshire, launching TV ad buys and direct mail in South Carolina, doubling down on the hardcore social conservative message that endeared him to Catholic and evangelical Christian voters in Iowa, even at college events he committed to when nobody gave him a snowball's chance in hell, where it doesn't play well.

But it's all for nought. He's unelectable, and even his biggest fans know it. Independents can't stomach his Torquemada approach to social issues, and even the most hardened "values voters" will blanch as the record of his K Street hijinks continues to roll out.

The only real impact the "Santorum surge" will have on this race is hastening the doom of Mitt Romney, who at this point looks set to leave South Carolina with an 0-for-3 record of convincing victories, possibly even dipping below 40% in New Hampshire, where he should have had a shot at an outright majority.

Image via Wikipedia

Enter Newt Gingrich.

What's that you say? Gingrich hasn't won anything so far either? But no one expected him to, my dear. And yet he hangs on like a bulldog, absorbing every blow without a blink and tearing relentlessly at Romney's bleeding flanks as the contest lurches south toward his lifelong stomping grounds.

Oh, yes, he's an ethics-challenged, revolving door, ward-heeling grifter too. But we've known that for a long time, and we're used to it -- it's just now coming out on Santorum, who still possesses a reputation of moral rectitude subject to shattering with recitations of his venality. Not only is Gingrich's record not a big deal any more -- rivers under the bridge, so to speak -- it may even be a strength.

Accompany me on a short journey to the days of yesteryear, when the "failed governor of a small southern state" got himself elected President -- twice! -- in the face of morals accusations that made him out to be little short of a modern-day Caligula. Remember that guy? The one who laughed off Gennifer Flowers and went with "it's the economy, stupid?"

You may remember another guy, too. A guy who worked his way up from backbencher to House Minority Whip by "nationalizing" his reputation as a partisan fighter, and who, two years after that "failed governor's" first presidential victory, honchoed a successful "national campaign" to garner the GOP its first House majority in 40 years (he's the only GOP contender who can plausibly claim to have run a successful national campaign). A guy who hasn't lost an election since 1976. Who walked out of Congress on his own after a bout of backstabbing by his co-partisans ("I'm willing to lead but I'm not willing to preside over people who are cannibals") instead of being sent home by his state's voters like Rick Santorum was in 2006.

Gingrich is teflon. He's immunized. Everyone already knows he's a sonofabitch. That frees him to relentlessly focus on making himself our sonofabitch.

So far, the GOP nomination race has been a desultory bar fight. Now it's developing into a serious boxing match, and Gingrich is the only man in the ring who can absorb body blows early, then turn around and keep delivering them as the thing drags on, until he's the only one left standing.

The polls aren't showing that yet, but they will. Once Romney's been dispatched, Gingrich runs the GOP primary table. You can write it down.

Related articles

• Coming Soon: The Second Ascent of Newt Gingrich (knappster.blogspot.com)
• Rasmussen in SC: Romney 27, Santorum 24 (hotair.com)
• You: A bitter fight shaping up in 'mean' South Carolina (latimes.com)
• Gingrich on Romney Debating the President: 'Obama is Going to Laugh at Him' (ABCNEWS) (memeorandum.com)
• How Bad Is Newt Gingrich? (theothermccain.com) [including this one -- "Republicans will never nominate Gingrich" -- so I can hang it on Stacy when it turns out I'm right and he's wrong -- KN@PPSTER]
• Keokuk, IA (pop. 10,000) hands Mitt his big win (Libertarian [sic] Republican) [including this one because part of this post is an expanded riff on some of my comments there -- KN@PPSTER]

Note: I've included some Zemanta "promoted links" in this post -- specifically to candidate biographies. So far as I know, I don't make any kind of bank on those links, but I figure it's nice to pay back Zemanta for all the value added they're giving me.