Freedom Line Blog

Troy, Ashton, Tim, Renee, Jeff…. any replies to this would be welcome. Anyway, here’s my take on last night’s debate, and the state of the race, from as neutral an analytical perspective as possible:

HUGE LOSER: Ron Paul finally marginalized himself irretrievably, especially in a pro-military state like South Carolina, with his lengthy diatribes basically positing that the Taliban weren’t all that bad and that bin Laden deserved a trial, or something like that. Plus, he wandered and meandered and sounded more shrill than usual. A horrible performance for him.

LOSER: Mitt Romney had his worst debate performance by far. He started okay and ended okay, both times in exchanges mainly with Gingrich, over the roles and behavior of Super PACs. But in between he was flustered, off his game, a bit stumbling, nervous-looking — and completely bumfuddled by Rick Santorum’s cross-examination about felon voting rights. Just when he had a chance to put the race away for good, he let others back in the game.

SLIGHTLY HELPED HIMSELF: Rick Perry has made himself almost irrelevant by his bad earlier debates and weak finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire. Last night, though, he was on his game, even if his substance was, well, not really substantial. Michelle Bachmann would have blown him out the door for saying we should completely eliminate foreign aid, because of course some of that aid actually “buys” for us essential things like cooperation on intelligence, plus military bases, etcetera. What he said about Turkey being virtually a terrorist state was absurdly overstated. But he played very well to whatever purely populist voting bloc is out there, and he did a great job blasting the Obama administration on its “war” on South Carolina over voter ID laws. Overall, if Perry had done this well in the first 10 debates, he might not be dominating, but he would still be very much in the mix in the polls.

BRAVURA LEMONADE-MAKING FROM LEMONS: Rick Santorum only got one question that actually played into his “wheelhouse,” as the expression goes. Almost every time he was given a chance to talk, it was on a subject that wouldn’t ordinarily play well for him. For that reason, he probably only helped himself a little more than he was hurt last night — but if he had not had his “A” game, it could have been a disaster. For instance, he was pressed on his truly wrongheaded vote years ago to automatically restore voting privileges (in federal elections only) to felons once they have fully satisfied all parole and probation requirements. On the merits, I think this is a horrible position. Most conservatives agree. Nothing should be automatic for some former felony inmates; full privileges should come only after careful review by a board convened for that purpose. On the other hand, Santorum always has had this subtext thing going of the Catholic social-gospel, people-can-be-redeemed-and-forgiven variety. It speaks well of him as a human being. This long-ago vote was his way of saying, hey, if you’ve fully paid your legal debt to society, you again become a full member of the society.

Conservatives don’t agree. Conservatives think some crimes are virtually unforgivable, and, moreover, that if they are to be forgiven, it should not be automatic, just by jumping through enough hoops with the passage of time. The good news is that such a proposal will never be politically popular enough to pass Congress, so people inclined toward Santorum but who don’t like this old vote of his shouldn’t worry about it being a serious effort.

But I digress. Somehow, Santorum actually won, big, in his exchange on the issue with Romney. Santorum correctly and effectively blasted the Romney super-PAC for falsely making it appear as if Santorum favors allowing current inmates to vote. Then he hit Romney from the right again (and from the standpoint of whether Romney is either courageous enough or competent enough) because Romney did nothing even to attempt to change Massachusetts law that allows felons to vote even before completing parole and probation. In short, Santorum turned a negative into a slight political positive overall, if only because the bigger impression wasn’t that he is a “squish” on felons, but that he is more honest, more thoughtful, more fair, and tougher than Mitt Romney. Santorum also gave really solid answers on gun rights and on the connection between marriage (or its lack) and poverty. If the debate had been a two-man affair between him and Romney, Santorum would have scored an enormous victory.

BIG WINNER, BUT WITH AN ASTERISK: Newt Gingrich’s performance was a perfect reverse-image of Romney’s. Whereas Romney did pretty well on the opening and closing questions but stumbled in the middle, Gingrich started and ended poorly but in the middle had what most pundits are calling the single best debate performance of this endless nomination season. I wonder, though, if it was a vote-winning performance. In an earlier debate, for instance, my wife astutely said that with detailed answers Rick Santorum was “winning minds without winning votes” (or as I put it, impressing without “connecting” with voters); here, I think Gingrich won visceral reactions without changing minds. Here’s the thing: by now, everybody expects some excellent debate moments from Gingrich. People know he can hit tee balls out of the park. But is that still enough to gain their allegiance? People have seen him all over the map on so many issues, and have seen him so desperate and mean about Bain and other anti-Romney jeremiads, that now they want to see something from him that touches their hearts, not just their viscera, and that tells them he can actually be a steady enough performer (not just an occasionally exciting or explosive one) in a full general-election campaign.

In that light, it struck me that Gingrich really didn’t look good, particularly at the beginning of the debate. He looked a bit pale; he looked grim; he looked particularly fat of body but oddly thin of face; and he didn’t look friendly. Indeed, I think he looked, overall, unappealing, unhealthy, and unlikeable. And even when he was destroying the premised of Juan Williams’ questions, there was a weirdly off-putting edge to him. He was too “hot” (as opposed to figuratively “cool”) for TV, in both tone and visage. It was almost as if he was making one last hurrah before another bomb, a big one, drops on him. It was as if he was in a particularly foul mood because he knows his goose is cooked, for some reason or another.

So, while I concur that Gingrich absolutely dominated the middle portions of debate, with effective and popular positions and explanations, I’m not sure if it will translate into major new poll support. Just a hunch. But it was a hell of a show.

Politico has the story of Holder again crying wolf (actually, it’s worse than crying wolf) and playing the race card (sorry: more accurately, it’s worse than that; it’s flat-out race-hustling) about voter ID laws and other legitimate efforts to stop the voter fraud which has become such a staple of the deliberate efforts of pro-Democratic interest groups. This is especially a large issue in South Carolina, where the Justice Department has blocked a voter-ID law even though it tracks laws in Indiana and Georgia that the Supreme Court already has ruled are perfectly allowable under the Constitution. This is, as has become the norm under Holder, nothing less than sheer lawlessness from the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department.

These people do not care about what the Constitution and laws actually say; they merely care about twisting the law to gain power. They are flagrantly anti-republican (small ‘r’) and anti-constitutionalist, and they must be stopped.

At the American Spectator, I recommend reading Andrew McCarthy’s explanation about why Romneycare makes Mitt Romney a weak candidate against Barack Obama. Here, let me add a few more thoughts on the subject. I think this is McCarthy’s best paragraph in a piece full of good paragraphs:

[S]ome things are wrong everywhere. One such thing is a massive government infiltration into the private economy, one that coerces the purchase of a commodity (health insurance) as a condition of living in the state. For one thing, such an exercise in steroid statism establishes a rationale in law for government intrusion into every aspect of private life: If health care is deemed a corporate asset, then “bad” behavioral choices must be regulated, lest someone get more than his share. Romney portrayed Romneycare as a model, at least for other states, if not for the nation. But no free-market, limited-government conservative thinks this officious onslaught is a model to be emulated anyplace.

Here at CFIF I made a similar argument back in June, although not as well as McCarthy has now made it:

It doesn’t matter one bit if Mitt Romney’s “individual mandate” was imposed by a state instead of by the feds; either way, a government forcing people to buy a product the person doesn’t want, just by virtue of living and breathing within the government’s jurisdiction, is a government without any real limits whatsoever.Tyranny is tyranny at any level.  By Romney’s logic, it would be better still if your local township, rather than the state, could send police to oversee you filling out your insurance application and writing the check. Next stop: SWAT teams to escort you to the hardware store to buy widgets. Federalism is, of course, an important principle. Using states as “laboratories of democracy” is a good and practical idea. But federalism should never be an excuse for despotism. What’s wrong is wrong. It’s not a matter of practicality but of morality writ large.

McCarthy goes on to note this:

There is no serious person who doubts that Romneycare was the building block for Obamacare: The experts who helped design the former were consulted in the creation of the latter. Yet Romney continues to insist that Romneycare is a smashing success, one he suggests he’d do again without hesitation.

It still baffles me that Romney’s opponents haven’t yet made this case successfully in the debates.

I agree wholeheartedly with both Ashton and Troy that Romney does a poor job defending/advocating democratic capitalism and that Troy’s approach to what Romney should say is a good one. I also agree with Ashton that Romney, alas, is always going to have a tough time making that sort of case, because experientially and temperamentally (and maybe philosophically) he isn’t prone to that sort of approach. He really is easy to demonize (from the left)as a corporate raider, which makes him much more vulnerable to such charges in a general election campaign where the opponent has $800 million and is playing for a different set of voters than he is vulnerable to the charge in a GOP contest where the attack is rightly seen as perhaps scurrilous, and at least rhetorical overkill. Gingrich and Perry right now are doing Obama’s work for him — and it will make Romney all the more vulnerable in the fall.

Yes, if Romney tried language like Troy’s, it would help. But only so much. The sad reality is that he’s the perfect foil for Obama, both as plutocrat and as yet another Republican dynastic legatee. If he gets the nomination, he will be a weak general-election candidate because of it.

Just by way of analysis, not meaning to be pro- or anti-Romney’s candidacy — but can anybody give me even a halfway convincing explanation for why the commentariat thinks that Mitt Romney is so much more electable than some of the other GOP candidates? (And no, polls don’t count: Polls aren’t actual analysis, and head-to-head polls for next fall mean absolutely nothing at this stage of a race other than a rough sense of name ID. If they did, Jimmy Carter would have beaten Ronald Reagan by 32 points.)

Usually, at this level, past performance is as good an indicator as anything else. Well, Romney’s past electoral performance is decidely weak. In 1994, as Rick Santorum was pulling an upset to win a Senate seat in Pennsylvania, Romney was getting crushed by Ted Kennedy — in a race where Kennedy actually was seen, even three weeks out, to be far more vulnerable than usual, because the tawdriness of his nephew’s late-1991 rape trial (and his role therein) combined with the overall tawdriness of his long-running behavior, combined with a nationwide revolt against Democrats, made Massachusetts voters unusually open (according to all sorts of polls and focus groups) to replacing him. But, again, Romney got absolutely crushed.

In 2002, Romney won the governorship; in 2006, he chickened out of running for re-election; and in 2008, despite all sorts of financial advantages, he found a way to lose the Republican nomination fairly decisively to a seriously underfunded John McCain, losing a long string of individual primaries in the process.

So, overall, his electoral record is 1-2 — or, if you count each state in 2008 as a separate contest, which might not be exactly fair, he’s something like 2-17.

Add last week’s Iowa result, where he underperformed again (and earned exactly six FEWER votes than he earned in 2008), and you have a candidate who just doesn’t seen to be able to deliver on Election Day.

By contrast, Rick Perry famously has never lost an election (but then again, he hasn’t exactly had as tough a row to hoe in Republican-friendly Texas, and barely won re-election for governor in 2006 over an underfunded Democrat). Rick Santorum, running every single time in battles that were uphill or (once) no better than 50-50 shots (i.e. in districts or a state that was not friendly to Republicans), has won four out of five elections, and outperformed other Republicans in his state in almost every case in doing so. (For instance, in 2000 he won PA by four points while GW Bush was losing it by 5; in 2006, even in losing, he lost by less than the GOP candidate for governor that year did.)

Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, and Ron Paul aren’t really easy to categorize, because they either come for slam-dunk Republican states (Huntsman) or they haven’t run in anything bigger than a congressional district (Gingrich, although as a national proxy candidate he helped Dole lose in 1996 and the GOP lose House seats in 1998), or their candidacies are so sui generis (Paul) and their electoral history so odd (Paul again, running for president on the Libertarian ticket once) that it makes comparisons difficult. But it’s clear that none of those three has shown any reason for anybody to believe they can compete very well on a national stage, and Perry’s performance so far this year indicates he perhaps wasn’t prepared for national issues.

Which leaves, again, Santorum, having won four of five elections and overperformed so far on the presidential stage, and Romney, having so far lost two of three elections and badly underperformed on the presidential stage. So it makes no sense at all to assume that Romney is more electable in the fall against Barack Obama’s $800 million.

Former U.S. Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama, a moderate Democrat, has been on a roll of late in exploding liberal shibboleths, from the false claim that voter ID laws are racist ploys (and that vote fraud is nonexistent) to the idea that Rick Santorum can’t appeal to the political center. His latest, at NRO, takes on a recent, scurrilous column by the NY Times’ Andy Rosenthal, claiming that most opposition to Barack Obama is race-based. Davis blows away Rosenthal’s allegation, here.

For instance:

To be sure, some of Obama’s enemies have depicted him in dumb, outrageous ways. Their bad behavior ought to be denounced, but accuracy demands that this be done in the context of rejecting the personal demonization that is par for the course in partisan politics. Rosenthal does civility a disservice by deploying it narrowly, to make a smear of his own, and by falsely suggesting that the toxicity in politics is a right-wing product.

Davis, who was the first member of Congress outside of Obama’s adopted home state of Illinois to endorse Obama for president, is no closet conservative. When conservatives stray from decency or honesty, I expect him to call us on it with the same verve that he has been calling “foul” on the left in recent months — and we will certainly deserve it, because Davis doesn’t take cheap shots. There is, for instance, racism that remains on the right, and we all have an obligation to call it out when we see it. But for the charge to carry weight, it should not be diluted by false accusations that deprive the charge of its power and weight. Kudos to Davis for trying to keep the conversation honest.

I’ve been so busy this week that I missed the chance to link to a host of excellent pieces as they came out. So now here’s some one-stop-shopping for wonderful political pieces.

First, Jennifer Rubin was on fire this week. She still is bedeviling Newt Gingrich. And she hits Gingrich yet again here. She continues to praise Rick Santorum, this time for running a “thinking person’s race.” (She was one of the only columnists to take Santorum seriously as a candidate as early as late summer.) She defends Santorum from the charge from Rick Perry — whom he continues to criticize — that the Pennsylvanian is somehow a “big government conservative.” (For that matter, I have a new piece answering that same charge, here at National Review Online.) On that same general topic, she blasts “the screechy voices in the blogosphere, the perfectionist pundits…,” those who demand philosophical purity without any political context. (This last was a particularly well argued piece.) She closes a piece analyzing Santorum’s big remaining challenges with a great paragraph: “Republicans can get awfully theoretical and sterile in their approach. Santorum can remind the entire field that politics is also about emotion, connection, inspiration and faith.” And she provides a moving portrayal of Santorum’s wife, Karen.

Whew! That was just in three days.

She’s not the only one writing with eloquence and perspicacity. Two new pieces at The Weekly Standard make the case (as William Kristol has made for months) that it is foolish to anoint a nomination winner prematurely and that “moderate” or “establishment” or “safe” choices are often less likely to win than are candidates the establishment sees as risky.

A note about Bill Kristol: For much of 2011, I repeatedly contended in private conversations with very smart Washington people (along wit columns here and elsewhere)  that Santorum, though a long shot, had a real chance to become a finalist or winner in the GOP nomination sweepstakes. For most of that time, everybody airily dismissed the idea out of hand. Only one conversation went differently. Over coffee in downtown DC with Kristol in early May, Kristol said he doubted Santorum could do it, but that he thought highly of him… AND that, considering what he, Kristol, already recognized as the weaknesses and volatility of this year’s apparent field (this was before the polls themselves became volatile), that he wouldn’t write Santorum off, because he could see a “path to victory” for Santorum, albeit a remote one. He then gave a quick “for instance” hypothetical situation (for just about 45 seconds of our discussion), whose details I don’t remember other than that he was the only person to even suggest Santorum could find such a path. Later in the summer, Jen Rubin started covering Santorum seriously, with the same insight Kristol had, and in the fall blogger R.S. McCain did as well. That was it. Nobody else. So a hat tip to the three of them….

Now, back to good pieces this week. I think the most remarkable piece of the week came from former U.S. Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama, a thoughtful, moderate, black Democrat whose insights are usually worthwhile. He wrote at NRO that Santorum’s Iowa caucus-night speech was superb — “the best Republican rhetoric in the last decade” —  and offered a real political threat to Democrats. Along those same lines, two OTHER new pieces at the Weekly Standard pick up on some of the same themes: “the neglected substance of the Santorum campaign,” and that “Santorum has the potential to be a formidable opponent to Obama.” As Jonathan Last noted — and this is a theme first seriously highlighted a couple of weeks back by NRO’s Rich Lowry, “It’s an interesting bridge, from economic to moral issues, that Santorum constructs.”

At NRO, Robert Costa called Santorum “a blue collar candidate,” and at the Telegraph in Great Britain, a columnist made Rocky Balboa comparisons in calling him a “working class hero.”

Meanwhile, turning to Mitt Romney, Deroy Murdock penned this absolutely devastating examination of Romney’s record as a tax hiker and a big burdener of business. Particularly of interest this week, Romney even taxes New Hampshireites: ”

As if impoverishing his own taxpayers were not bad enough, Romney’s March 5, 2003 signature raised taxes on non-residents retroactive to that January 1. Perpetrating taxation without representation, Romney’s law declared that, “gross income derived from… any trade or business, including any employment,” would be taxable, “regardless of the taxpayer’s residence or domicile in the year it is received.”

Consequently, according to data furnished by the Massachusetts Department of Revenue, between 2002 and 2006, New Hampshire residents who work or do business in the Bay State shipped Massachusetts $95 million above what they paid when Romney arrived. The average tax paid by New Hampshirities to Massachusetts grew by 19.1 percent, from $2,392 in 2002 to $2,850 in 2006.

This is the sort of thing that Newt Gingrich is flinging at Romney. As Murdock shows, there is real substance behind it.

There…. that’s more than enough for now. I think there were others I wanted to highlight, but if I remember them, I’ll do so in another post.

In a case that should make conservatives stand up and take notice, and that merits (and later will receive from me) far more ink (or cyber ink) than this blog entry can provide, yet another liberal media organ, with yet another series of tendentious stories, is doing the work of the organized political left and the Democratic Party (but I repeat myself) by trying to rescue Wisconsin unions from duly passed laws reining in their abuses.

It’s a complicated story, but the semi-short version is this: In an absurd and perhaps unconstitutional attempt at strangling free political speech, organs of the Left brought ethics charges  in 2008 against newly elected Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, who had just defeated liberal hack Louis Butler in a hard-fought race. They had the temerity to accuse Gableman of lying about Butler during the campaign, and wanted an organ of the state to adjudge what was and wasn’t acceptable political speech — First Amendment be damned.

The charges failed, eventually, on a 3-3 vote at the state Supreme Court.

Later, last year, Gableman joined a narrow high court majority  ruling in favor of the constitutionality of the controversial new Wisconsin laws reining in the unions. The Left wants that ruling vacated — so they are going after Gableman again.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel suddenly is all hot to report that Gableman’s lawyer during the ethics trial back then worked on a contingency fee basis — in other words, that Gableman didn’t pay the lawyer out of his own pocket. Worse, Gableman later ruled in a number of cases in which the lawyer’s firm was of counsel, including some 4-3 decisions — and ruled in favor of the client of that firm.

Egads! Scandal! The way the Journal-Sentinel-House-Organ-of-Democrats has been playing the story in multiple articles, Gableman accepted a free “gift” in the form of the contingency fee agreement (the firm was never paid because the 3-3 tie vote on the ethics charge meant that Gableman didn’t actually “win” the case, and therefore the attorneys couldn’t collect). When Gableman then was faced with other cases involving the firm that had provided him a “gift,” he therefore was supposedly required to recuse himself.  Or so the paper’s biased coverage overwhelmingly suggests. And of course, it just so happens that one of those cases was the union case, which, by this logic, should be re-opened because of Gableman’s ghastly ethics.

What a nice, neat little package.

And what a crock of, uh, you know, rhymes with mitt.

To make its case, the Journal-Sentinal (pretending to be objective) turned for supposed legal-ethics expertise to Stephen Gillers, “a New York University Law School professor who specializes in legal ethics.” Never mind that Gillers is the same hack that the Left and establishment journalists (again, I repeat myself) trot out any time they need a “expert” to bash conservative legal ethics — because, of course, Gillers always somehow seems to come down in favor of whatever position benefits the political aims of liberals. How convenient.

But here’s the real kicker: How is it that a contingency fee arrangement is suddenly a “gift”? I thought the left, always in hock to the plaintiffs’ bar, loved contingency fee arrangements! That’s what gets the jackpots that are used to fund a huge part of the Left’s political apparatus. Is every plaintiff represented through a contingency-fee arrangement getting a “gift”? Of course not. As Viet Dinh, Gableman’s NEW lawyer, wrote in a letter to the editor that the Journal-Sentinel has conveniently refused to publish (although it did selectively quote from the letter in a “news” story), “Justice Gableman has the same fundamental right to representation as any other individual, and there is nothing improper or unethical about acquiring legal representation through a contingency fee agreement…. The inaccuracies are so persistent, and their pattern against Justice Gableman so consistent, that one unfortunately must consider editorial and journalistic bias.”

WAIT: There’s more. This is rich. It now turns out that a clearly left-leaning Judge in Wisconsin, the Hon. John Siefert, sued the Wisconsin Judicial Commission over a different issue in 2008. And guess what: Siefert did so under a contingency fee arrangement!! One waits with bated breath to see if the Journal-Sentinel will now run a series of “news” articles asking if Siefert improperly took a “gift.”

One will probably wait forever, and one’s breath will remain bated.

Seriously, we could all be debating this topic within another month. Put on your thinking caps, because there are all sorts of different approaches to how to make a ticket work…..

IF — and it is a big “if” — if Rick Santorum actually wins Iowa, or finishes in such a strong second that he is closer to first than the third-place finisher is to him, THEN he also will finish in the top three, and maybe top two, in New Hampshire, and will challenge very seriously for the win in South Carolina and may well pull it out. If he wins South Carolina, he will win the nomination. If he comes in a strong second in South Carolina, he will be almost even-money to win the nomination.

Any questions?

In one of a spate of stories today about Rick Santorum’s surge in Iowa, Byron York notes in print the same potential drawback I’ve been hearing from all across the conservative spectrum:

A number of commentators have observed that even if Santorum flies high in Iowa, he faces trouble ahead.  That is true.  In the RealClearPolitics average of polls in New Hampshire, Santorum is in sixth place, with 3.8 percent of voters.  In the same average of polls in South Carolina, he is in seventh place, with 2.7 percent.  So yes, a Santorum surge could be short-lived.  But his answer would likely be: First things first; do well in Iowa and see what happens then.

The answer to that is that Santorum actually has done a lot of the same, or at least very similar, nuts-and-bolts organizing work in those next two states as he did in Iowa. In South Carolina, for example, where well-liked conservative former U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett is Santorum’s state chair, Santorum has county organizations in 42 of the 46 counties — by far the most of any candidate (according to the Santorum campaign), with Gingrich reportedly in second with 33 counties organized. And in NH, according to the Santorum campaign, the Pennsylvanian has more “endorsements” than any candidate other than Romney.

If this campaign has shown anything thus far, it is that the electorate is very volatile and that support for a single candidate can double, triple, quadruple, even quintuple in the matter of just a few weeks. It happened for Cain, Bachmann, Perry, and Gingrich. Is there any doubt that if Santorum does really well in Iowa, his “flavor of the month” status could quickly boost him elsewhere?

Finally, as I was writing this, Fox News just reported that Rasmussen is out with a new poll that confirms the CNN poll: Santorum in third, with 16 percent….

Rich Lowry has an excellent column today about the real possibility of Santorum finally catching fire. And Lowry picks up on a too-little-noticed thematic element, in which Santorum ties together his social issues with his economic positions:

[H]e’s not a thoughtless culture warrior, in it for the bombast. Santorum links his social conservatism to the struggles of the working class in one of the few thematic departures in a Republican primary that has been more about personalities and past heterodoxies than substantive differences.

And Public Policy Polling finds that while Santorum hasn’t rocketed to the front yet, he is in the best position to catch fire late:

Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum continue to all be clustered right around 10%. Santorum actually has the best favorability numbers of any of the candidates at +27 (56/29). He’s also the most frequent second choice of voters at 14%.  Whether he can translate any of this into a top 3 finish remains to be seen, but he’s someone who would seem to have the potential to grow his support in the final week…. And given all the strange twists and turns to this point don’t be surprised to see yet another surprise in the final week…and based on the innards of this poll the person best positioned to provide that surprise in the closing stretch is Santorum.

These last six days will be most interesting.

Now the stories about a potential Santorum Surge in Iowa are coming more and more rapidly, with Stacy McCain at the American Spectator (who has been tracking and praising Santorum for weeks) reporting in today, as does John McCormack at The Weekly Standard. This comes after both Dick Morris and Mike Huckabee (along with Cokie Roberts from the center-left) said that Santorum is the one to watch.

It reminds me of our discussion several weeks ago (meaning me, Ashton, and Troy) in which I said just this sort of thing could happen: “[I]n all his winning races, Santorum closed fast right at the end. He’s trying to do the same thing here, without much campaign cash but with plenty of hard work. It may look like a long shot, but only a fool would completely write off his chances.”

Will his surge be big enough or soon enough? We’ll see a week from now. But he, not Rick Perry, may be the Rick to watch, with a real chance to win, as the nomination fight moves forward after Iowa.

If anybody actually cares about integrity and freedom, this latest news should be big trouble for Newt Gingrich. Somebody (I need to find out who) dug up this old memo from Gingrich praising Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts health care plan in fulsome terms, and especially praising its individual mandate to buy health insurance:

The individual mandate requires those who earn enough to afford insurance to purchase coverage, and subsidies will be made available to those individuals who cannot afford insurance on their own. We agree strongly with this principle, but the details are crucial when it comes to the structure of this plan. … In our estimation, Massachusetts residents earning little more than $30,000 a year are in jeopardy of being priced out of the system. In the event that this occurs, Governor Romney will be in grave danger of repeating the mistakes of his predecessor, Mike Dukakis, whose 1988 health plan was hailed as a save-all but eventually collapsed when poorly-devised payment structures created a malaise of unfulfilled promises. We propose that a more realistic approach might be to limit the mandate to those individuals earning upwards of $54,000 per year.

On one hand, this isn’t the most astonishing news: Gingrich has been quoted for 17 years in favor of some sort of individual mandate, and this 2006 citation isn’t even the most recent one. On the other hand, Gingrich has insisted that his proposal was something a little different — some sort of “bond” that rich people would put up — and, also, that he really started moving away from even that “bond” mandate after a while because, really, the reason he was for a mandate was in order to have a conservative alternative to Hillarycare in 1994. At other times he has tried hard to play down or soften the edges of his support for a mandate. But this is unequivocal, and it is within the past six years, and it shows not a single hesitation about undermining individual liberty. Indeed, Gingrich’s only complaint is a class-warfare-inducing lament: Romney stuck the mandate on lower-middle-income earners, whereas Gingrich only would apply it to middle-middle-income earners. Gee, what a relief! (Not!)

Even worse, Gingrich is to the left of Romney on Romney’s own health plan. Romney at worst has only tentatively recommended Romneycare as a whole as a model for the nation; and this year, he has become like a broken record saying he would never impose a mandate via the federal government, and that Romneycare was an example of state-level federalism in action, unique to the circumstances of Massachusetts. Gingrich, on the other hand, wrote this: “The most exciting development of the past few weeks is what has been happening up in Massachusetts. The health bill that Governor Romney signed into law this month has tremendous potential to effect major change in the American health system.” Those lines led directly into his discussion of the mandate, which Gingrich described as an example of requiring “personal responsibility.”

All of which leads back to what I said in my May 17 column here on this site, namely that Gingrich and Romney both flunk conservative political philosophy. I repeat now what I wrote then: “[T]he issue here isn’t utility, but liberty. Mussolini ‘made the trains run on time,’ but that should never have justified his authoritarianism. Essential liberty must never be sacrificed on some central planner’s altar of efficiency.”

Or, for that matter, on some former Speaker’s warped notion of what does and doesn’t qualify as “personal responsibility.”

UPDATE: The discoverer of this memo was BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski.

Rich Lowry reports at The Corner a more specific (“prominent officeholder”) bit of news about efforts from big-name conservatives to draft Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal into the presidential race, along the lines of my cryptic blog entry here a couple of weeks ago on the same subject. But there are complications. Lowry gets to the nub of the matter here:

One big problem: Jindal is with Perry–literally. Not only has he endorsed him, he’s been campaigning with him. For a Jindal scenario to work, Perry would have to collapse and Jindal turn around and immediately express interest in rising from his friend’s ashes.

Here, though, is how I would read this: Perry is in trouble. It’s not that Jindal would ever jump in without Perry getting out; it’s that prominent conservative movers and shakers clearly have given up on Perry’s campaign. Think of it this way: If Perry were thought to still be a seriously viable candidate, nobody would be talking about recruiting his most prominent and popular endorser. Perry, therefore, is seen by serious people as failing to be viable, long-term.

(Disclosure:  I have had similar discussions with some of these same conservative leaders, and have said I think Jindal would be a great choice for the circumstances, if no real conservative breaks through in Iowa; i.e., for what it’s worth, I have encouraged them privately just as I have written about the idea publicly. None of which is to be taken by way of an endorsement — which isn’t my job — but it is to acknowledge participation of sorts in some of the same discussions I am now, third-hand, reporting that Lowry is reporting on.)

If this word gets out, Perry votes in Iowa might siphon off to Santorum (or Bachmann), because a weak Perry performance in Iowa would be seen by voters eager for another choice as making it more likely for Perry to withdraw and Jindal to enter the race. For those voters who like Santorum, of course, then if he already is “on the move” in Iowa (a move that began to be noticed weeks ago), then this report would further tend to encourage them that one of the other conservative opponents may be fading.

All sorts of permutations suggest themselves. It’s certainly fascinating to watch.

Am I the only one in the non-congressional conservative universe who thinks John Boehner and the House are doing the right thing and should stand firm, with regard to the payroll tax cut holiday? The Wall Street Journal, Karl Rove, and all sorts of other worthies are all saying that Republicans have totally lost the politics on this issue and that they should acquiesce to the Democrats’ two-month extension.

I say their prescriptions are wrong, and that Boehner and company should stick to their guns. First of all, there are times when principle should be more important than politics. In this case, somebody needs to act the role of the adult and insist that doing what is technically a complete recipe for disaster is just a total non-starter. There are ways to turn the politics around. Boehner could call a prime-time press conference and say aloud that he KNOWS everybody says this is a political loser, but that he MUST do what’s right, specifically because of the procedural problems for small businesses in implementing a mere two-month tax cut AND because he, unlike the Dems, thinks that the tax cut should be for a full year. AND, for that matter, that it ought to be fully paid for. Furthermore, he could add, he could pledge right now that if the Democrats — the Dems, the Dems, the Dems, not the Republicans — fail to extend the tax cut, then Republicans pledge to make it up to voters when the Dems finally come to their senses. In other words, he can say that the tax cut, whenever it is finally passed, will be made retroactive to cover any time lost due to the Dems’ rank political gamesmanship. It is far easier for the government to retroactively provide a tax cut of this sort (it has been done a number of times in recent years) than it is for millions upon millions of small businesses to set up a payroll-withholding system for just two months, which is what the Democrats propose.

(As for me, I think this is the stupidest tax cut in my adult lifetime — and I’m a 33-year Reagan-Kemp-Laffer supply-side tax cutter — and I think it would be better to work for permanent tax relief on another front rather than temporary relief that drains Social Security. But if there IS to be this tax cut, which seems politically to be almost mandatory now, then it is absolutely idiotic to do it the way the Democrats have done it. Mitch McConnell and the Senate GOP REALLY REALLY screwed up by agreeing to this monstrosity. It is they, not Boehner and company, who screwed up both the policy AND the politics on this.)

The reality is that the Republican position of a year-long tax cut should be a political winner over the Dems’ two-month cut. There are ways to turn around the politics. They are ways that must be attempted, because the two-month cut is flat-out irresponsible. The Wall Street Journal, of all outfits, should understand this and point this out, rather than blasting the House GOP for a political problem definitely not of their own making. Responsible people should applaud rare acts of political courage for the purpose of responsible law-making. Boehner and company deserve praise and support, not sniping.

When I wrote my column on Eric Holder this week, I meant to make reference to Ashton’s column and subsequent blog post on the same subject, but went off on a tangent and never did. But I agree entirely with his points, and with those of Troy, who it seems was reacting to Eric Holder playing the race card at almost exactly the same time, and in much the same way, as I was. I particularly appreciate Troy reminding us (I forgot to include it) of the time Holder referred to “my people” (meaning, of course, only black people) when responding to criticism of his handling of the Black Panther case — yet another example of hideously race-centric thinking.

The good news on this front is that the count of congressmen expressing “no confidence” in Holder — in effect, although not explicitly, a demand for his resignation or ouster — is now 91. This is getting close to reaching semi-critical mass.

The question is, where the bleep are the other 15 or so GOP House members? Where are all the GOP senators? For that matter, how about any self-respecting, country-first, moderate or even liberal Democrats who care more about doing the right thing than for playing politics? Where is the courage? When will they get a clue? The lawlessness and incompetence at Justice — especially, but certainly not anywhere entirely, evident in the Fast and Furious scandal — is an utter travesty, and justice and propriety compel Holder’s dismissal and a thorough cleaning of his Augean Stables. This is a subject the public will understand, and one on which they are sure to side against the Holderite contingent of racialist bumblers. Then again, waiting for many GOP senators to get a clue is probably more pointless even than waiting for Godot.

It was bad enough when the White House fired Gerald Walpin, the honest and diligent Inspector General for the Corporation for National and Community Service (which oversees AmeriCorps), without cause and without properly notifying Congress, and then lied about what it had done and why.

Now comes word that Congress has underfunded this crucial internal watchdog, leaving the bloated AmeriCorps bureaucracy and liberal-grant-making apparatus without adequate oversight. I’m still trying to get the exact numbers and supporting documentation but I am told by a very reliable source that the IG office’s budget has been slashed by an astonishing 40 percent, from $6.7 million to $4 million.  The overall CNCS budget, though, took a hit of only about 3 percent from its base of $1.076 billion. So the suspect agency gets to keep chugging along at about the same pace, but the watchdog supposed to keep it honest gets gutted. This is nuts. If anything, government as a whole should be seriously downsized, but agency IGs should receive at least as much money as before, because IGs typically bring to light expensive forms of fraud or mismanagement, and thus can actually save taxpayers money in the long run.

Talk is heating up about the need for a new entrant in the Republican presidential sweepstakes, with not only The Weekly Standard keeping up its long-running and always-thoughtful drumbeat now called the Valentine’s Day Option, but George Will saying as much on Sunday, after Rhodes Cook of the Sabato Crystal Ball explained why it is still definitely feasible.

A name I am increasingly hearing is that of Bobby Jindal, subject of glowing reviews in the past three or so months by Fred Barnes, Jim Geraghty, Michael Barone, Chris Cillizza,  and Yours Truly.

Here’s the key thing: There is not an elected official in the country who knows health care policy as well as Jindal, and once the Supreme Court decides the Obamacare case, health care will be front and center in the campaign. Why does Jindal know so much about it? First, he was the wunderkind Secretary of the Louisiana health department, where he flat-out saved the state budget from disaster while completely and successfully renovating its Medicaid program (after explaining Medicaid’s rules to the federal Medicaid officials who didn’t even understand them as well as Jindal did). Second, he was executive director of the Breaux-Thomas entitlement commission in the late 1990s that not only pushed the idea of premium support (the heart of Paul Ryan’s Medicare plans), but got several Democratic senators to buy in to the concept.  Third, he worked on health care in the private sector, for McKinsey and Company.  Also, (from Wikipedia), “as a Rhodes Scholar. He received an M.Litt. degree in political science with an emphasis in health policy from the University of Oxford in 1994 for his thesis “A needs-based approach to health care”.

He also served as the Assistant Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

If Republicans want somebody who not only will oppose Obamacare (that’s an easy thing to do), but also to be able to outline a positive alternative and explain it understandably, nobody, not even Paul Ryan, can do it better than Bobby Jindal.

Regarding our ongoing conversation this week about Rick Santorum, it’s worth noting that he just nabbed the endorsement of one of the most rapidly rising stars in Iowa politics, Secretary of State Matt Schultz — a Mormon, no less, who had endorsed Mitt Romney in 2008.

If I were a conservative activist leader, I’d be working on two tracks right now: Doing everything possible to boost Santorum in Iowa and, as an alternative in case he never catches fire, greasing the skids to help draft a candidate like Bobby Jindal into the race as a late entry — a stratagem with a much better chance of success this year than in any year since 1976, according to this new analysis making the rounds.

This is by way of analysis of options, not candidate advocacy — based on the clear sense from conservative movement types, in many many conversations this week, that they are not happy with the idea of a two-man, Romney-Gingrich race.