Behind the Curtain: Who's Really Behind CPAC?

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CPAC is currently having its annual shindig in Maryland. CPAC is run by the American Conservative Union, and the event needs lots of money to happen. But it's not grassroots organizations that are funding this event. It's heavy hitters and deep pockets.

Who's really sponsoring CPAC?

It's big energy companies, tobacco, and the NRA.

Rarely seen and previously unreported tax filings for the ACU and ACU Foundation, the group responsible for staging CPAC, reveal that in the 2010 tax year, the National Rifle Association provided $225,000 of the ACU Foundation's overall revenue. In 2010 the ACU Foundation reported $288,670 in grant revenue and $1,063,103 in "program service revenue." The NRA's executive vice president and CEO, Wayne LaPierre, has been a regular featured speaker at past CPAC events and he again spoke at the gathering on Thursday. The 2013 CPAC included an event titled "NRA University" at which CPAC attendees could "learn more about NRA, Second Amendment, gun control debate." It even offered participants "a FREE one-year NRA membership," according to the conference schedule. The NRA is a "presenting sponsor" at the 2014 conference--a sponsorship level requiring a $110,000 contribution.

In 2010 the billionaire Koch brothers' companies contributed a total of $50,000 to the ACU and the ACU Foundation. In the same year, cigarette giant Altria contributed $25,000 to the ACU, and the conservative Anschutz Foundation contributed $25,000 to the ACU Foundation.

So, if you've wondered why Wayne LaPierre gets to scowl and complain and cajole the audience to buy guns before the President takes them away, it's because the NRA paid for the spot.

Here's the list of other sponsors, and lots of familiar names.

Presenting sponsors require a contribution of $110,000 or more. They include: the NRA, One America News Network, Tea Party Patriots, Townhall Media/Regnery Publishing, and the Washington Times.

Associate Sponsors, which require $60,000 contributions are Koch Industries and a movie scheduled to come out May 9, 2014 "Persecuted".

Supporting Sponsors require $25,000 contributions, and include: Citizen Link (Focus on the Family), Heritage Foundation, How Money Walks, Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Liberty Alliance, MPAA, National Review, Red Alert Politics, and Tea Party News Network.

Contributing Sponsors, who pony up $18,000 include: The Blaze, Citizens United 25th Anniversary, Leadership Institute, Run Ben Run, and Red Card Guest Worker Permit.

Participating Sponsors, which is the lowest tier at $9,000, include: Americans for Prosperity, ChooseEnergy.org, Ashbrook Ashland University, Sarah Palin's new tv show, AECR, 60 Plus, BDMR, College Republicans National Committee, Christians United for Israel, Competitive Enterprise Institute, Americans for Tax Reform, Eagle Forum, Eberle Associates, Empower Action Group, Fabrizio Lee, Facebook, Gravis Marketing, Convert! Integrated Marketing, GWU Graduate School of Political Management, Freedom Alliance, Let Freedom Ring, Policy Issues Institute, Justice Fellowship, TMA Direct, Turning Point USA, Unfairmovie.com (aka the anti-IRS movie), 780 WAVA 105.1, 1260 WRC talk radio, and Young America's Foundation.

Sponsorship levels are here.. Sponsors by level are here.

On the RNC Platform Finding NSA Programs Unconstitutional

The Republican National Committee is claiming that the USA Patriot Act's NSA provisions are now unconstitutional?

Really?

And they want investigations too?

A page-long resolution also called for "a special committee to investigate, report, and reveal to the public the extent of this domestic spying." This committee would then make suggestions for reform beyond what President Barack Obama suggested a week ago. The committee also wants to "hold accountable those public officials who are found to be responsible for this unconstitutional surveillance."

The full text of the resolution is here.

It would be laughable if it weren't so pathetically politically motivated.

Back in 2001, Congress overwhelmingly approved the Patriot Act:

senate.gov (passed US Senate 98-1, the one person being Russ Feingold).

clerk.house.gov (211 GOPers approved, versus 3 opposed, including Ron Paul; 145 Democrats approved versus 66 opposed).

Read carefully through the names of those who approved the Patriot Act. There are a whole lot of familiar names. Both Darrell Issa and John Boehner voted for the Act.

But if that isn't enough, let's look more recently at the 2011 extension of the Patriot Act. It passed 250-153 with 28 no votes. Once again, Issa voted for. Even Louie Gohmert voted for this.

By investigations, I guess that means Darrell Issa will have to investigate himself.

Back in 2001, every GOP senator voted for this; some of them are still in the US Senate today. Did any of them misunderstand the Act? Did every one of the 211 GOPers who voted for it in the House misunderstand the Act and ignore the constitutionality? Some of them are still in Congress today too.

Did any of these same people then suddenly find that the law was unconstitutional in 2011 when they reauthorized the provisions of the Patriot Act (Pub.L. 112-14), knowing full well that there were provisions that might collect data on the US, inadvertently or on purpose? The answer, of course, is no; they approved the legislation and reauthorized the law enabling the NSA to continue gathering data.

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Back in 2006, the media revealed that the NSA amassed a massive database of calls, which they said was targeted on international calls, but that too had caveats.

Sources, however, say that is not the case. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information are not being handed over as part of NSA's domestic program, the sources said. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information.

Don Weber, a senior spokesman for the NSA, declined to discuss the agency's operations. "Given the nature of the work we do, it would be irresponsible to comment on actual or alleged operational issues; therefore, we have no information to provide," he said. "However, it is important to note that NSA takes its legal responsibilities seriously and operates within the law."

The White House would not discuss the domestic call-tracking program. "There is no domestic surveillance without court approval," said Dana Perino, deputy press secretary, referring to actual eavesdropping.

She added that all national intelligence activities undertaken by the federal government "are lawful, necessary and required for the pursuit of al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorists." All government-sponsored intelligence activities "are carefully reviewed and monitored," Perino said. She also noted that "all appropriate members of Congress have been briefed on the intelligence efforts of the United States."

So, even after the 2006 revelations and Congressional briefings by security officials, they were still satisfied that the programs were constitutional.

So what's changed that the GOP is now claiming that these programs/actions are unconstitutional.

It isn't the NSA's actions.

It isn't the law either.

I'd argue that the only thing that's changed is that the GOP thinks that they've found an issue on which to hurt Democrats. I'm not alone in finding the flip-flop on the NSA and eavesdropping programs that the GOP formerly authorized so confounding (well, not really - it's more enlightening about tactics and politics than about the specific policy itself).

But by convenience (and in the same way that they turned on a dime to claim that the ACA's individual mandate was unconstitutional) they're now claiming that a position they once held was unconstitutional.

It's got nothing to do with the constitutionality of the NSA enabling legislation or the actions/results of the NSA programs. It has a whole lot to do with who won the White House and who won reelection in 2012.

So, it leads to a quandary: is the GOP pleading ignorance of the law they championed, or are they playing politics in the hopes of dinging the President and Democrats? It's not like they can claim they were duped either. The 2006 revelations were well documented and should have informed decisions to reauthorize the law, including in 2011, and yet the law was reauthorized without concern about the constitutionality by these Republicans.

Well, they're going to play it both ways. And neither is particularly satisfying.

It's one thing to argue that the programs should be allowed to sunset because the threat has past or that additional reforms need to be instituted. It's quite another to claim that the program is unconstitutional little more than a year after reauthorizing the law for a second time.

It was enacted with sunset clauses, meaning that it would require Congress to reauthorize - to look at the law with a critical eye and evaluate how the law operated in practice. They've now done so at least two times - 2006 and 2011, with amendments added in several other acts of Congress since first enacted in 2001.

Each time, the law was approved with support from Republicans.

Indeed, the current version of the law is far more protective of US civil rights and limits what the NSA can do with far stronger oversight. Many of the revelations about the NSA refer to actions before the Obama Administration came to office and before the reforms were instituted.

Only now, with a Democrat in the White House is there a complaint that the ongoing program is unconstitutional, when it was revealed to be doing the same exact thing that it was revealed to have done in 2006 (and to which Congress knew or should have known all along pursuant to the regular briefings to Congress).

Cross posted at LGF.

End the Magical Balance Fairy Shutdown Myth

Let's go straight to the video tape.

Breaking News

That's from This Week With George Stephanopoulos this past weekend (10/04/2013) - starting around the 3 minute mark.

The transcript:

STEPHANOPOULOS: But Mr. Speaker, he says -- and he said it publicly on many occasions, that you came to him back in July and offered to pass a clean government funding resolution, no Obamacare amendments, that was $70 billion below what the Senate wanted. They accepted it. And now, you've reneged on that offer.

BOEHNER: No, clearly there was a conversation about doing this.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Several conversations.

BOEHNER: Several. But--

STEPHANOPOULOS: And you offered a clean resolution.

BOEHNER: But I and my members decided the threat of Obamacare and what was happening was so important that it was time for us to take a stand. And we took a stand.

STEPHANOPOULOS: Did you decide it or was it decided for you?

BOEHNER: I, working with my members, decided to do this in a unified way. George, I have 233 Republicans in the House. And you've never seen a more dedicated group of people who are thoroughly concerned about the future of our country. They believe that Obamacare, all these regulations coming out of the administration, are threatening the future for our kids and our grandkids. It is time for us to stand and fight.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But Mr. Speaker, this is clearly not what you want. I want to go back to several points you've made about this over the last few -- here you were right after the election with Diane Sawyer.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOEHNER: It's pretty clear that the president was re-elected. Obamacare is the law of the land.

If we were to put Obamacare into the CR and send it over to the Senate, we were risking shutting down the government. That is not our goal.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

STEPHANOPOULOS: So right there, you say that's not your goal. You don't want to put Obamacare on the CR. You did it.

BOEHNER: George, I have made it clear to my colleagues. I don't want to shut the government down. We voted to keep the government open.

Clearly, the Speaker admits that he had the opportunity to pass a budget, but refused because he and the rest of the Republicans decided to make it about defunding/delaying/destroying Obamacare. They had more than 40 attempts at repealing it, and failed on every single one, so their strategy became to tie the defund/delay/destroy to the annual appropriations cycle.

And it's time for all the media to quit playing that this is something that both sides made happen, or that the President and the Senate are responsible for this. The Speaker gave the game away and admits for all the world to see that the House GOP blew up a deal on a budget over Obamacare.

The Speaker has tied his legacy to the extremists in his party. He has become one of them by allowing them to dictate the terms of a deal that would end the shutdown. He has the power to end the shutdown by opening up the floor to a clean vote.

He refuses to do so, claiming that the votes aren't there.

If that's the case, then he has nothing to lose by letting the Democrats expend political capital in a failed effort to have a vote that wouldn't succeed. He'd gain politically by knowing that the count doesn't work in his favor, except that he, and everyone else, knows that this isn't true.

The math doesn't work in his favor. The votes are there, but the votes would undermine his ability to lead a fractured Republican caucus. So he's doing all he can to cast Democrats as the problem even though he clearly acknowledges that a deal was in hand but for the Republican insistence on destroying Obamacare as a precondition to a deal.

It's the poison pill provisions that the Republicans have offered up that have led us to this critical moment.

It's a clarifying moment - exposing the GOP extremism and extortion for what it is. It's an attempt to rewrite how government does business outside the regular legislative and electoral process.

Republicans will only agree to have these negotiations in a context where a government shutdown and the threat of default do give them that added leverage. This is an objective statement of the GOP position. Dems have offered Republicans the negotiations they want, once those conditions are lifted. Republicans have refused. Therefore, their position is that conditions which continue to threaten widespread destruction, giving them leverage, must remain for any talks to proceed.

The key tell is that Cantor and Ryan don't directly defend this position. They elide it. To be sure, both repeat the claim there have been negotiations attached to debt ceiling hikes in the past. But as Jonathan Chait explains, that isn't the same as dangling the actual threat of default and untold economic havoc as a way to extract massive one-sided concessions. Republicans cannot defend this tactic because they will not acknowledge they are actually employing it. John Boehner already allowed in March that the debt ceiling will and must be raised, because: "I'm not going to risk the full faith and credit of the federal government." But on ABC on Sunday, when Boehner was pressed on whether he'd actually allow default if Dems didn't give him what he wants, he repeatedly fudged, saying he would not allow a vote on a "clean" debt limit bill. What happens if default is the only other option? We just don't know.

Either Republicans are actually prepared to allow default and to use this frightening prospect as a weapon with which to get what they want, in which case such tactics cannot be rewarded, because they will all but ensure extensive destruction later. Or Republicans are not prepared to allow default, in which case the very notion that they have leverage here is a sham. Republicans are trying to use this ambiguity to their advantage. On the one hand, the uncertainty it creates is supposed to force Dems to give in to their demands. On the other, it is meant to obscure their actual intentions and thus shield them from politically potent charges that they are actually willing to place the country at grave risk to extract concessions they couldn't get through conventional channels.

The Democrats don't need to offer up anything other than a clean budget resolution on the terms they agreed to in July. That was already a concession on $70 billion on spending. The GOP took that offer and tossed it in favor of a political fight they cannot hope to possibly win.

The fight is already wearing down Republican polling and ratings for Congress in general. While Republicans are cheering that the President's approval ratings are at 37%, the Congress rates only 5% approval. The President doesn't face reelection and has a freer hand to use the bully pulpit to attack the Republicans for bringing about this crisis because they are trying to unite the base in opposition to health care reforms that would expand access to health insurance to millions of people.

The GOP has to engage in cognitive dissonance on a massive scale to reconcile its positions - that it wants to end the shutdown, avoid default, and recognizing the economic harms that those actions are having all while advocating for those same things and claiming that the damage is minimal. The GOP has to lie to itself and everyone else to do so, and the public is seeing through the lies.

The video clip above highlights the problems succinctly. Republicans who agree that the default will lead to widespread destruction, yet use this as leverage by refusing to deal unless the GOP demands (preconditions) are met are the worst of the worst in this ongoing saga. They're putting politics and passion over reality, economics, and national security.

Any Republican who hews to this position needs to be run out of office. And that's a list that is significant.

It includes none other than Speaker Boehner himself. He's claiming that he wouldn't let the nation default because of the harm done, and yet he's completely going along with the Tea Party wing in demanding that the Administration and Democrats accept their demands or else.

Or else what? Economic catastrophe if we don't do what the GOP says? It's extortion. And it's economic folly. The Speaker knows it, but by continuing to pander to the extortionists, he's one of them.

The GOP and the Speaker are guilty of target fixation. They've determined that destroying Obamacare is paramount, and are willing to do whatever it takes to destroy it. That might help keep the extremists in the party happy, but it is having tremendous damage to the polity and even greater damage is on the horizon if the debt ceiling is not increased.

It's all part of a larger fight by the GOP to slash and burn government spending at all levels, and it's a fight that the Tea Party relishes because they believe that they have a mandate to chop government spending, even though they are a minority within their own party. The tools that were supposed to get the parties to compromise and come to agreement have instead been used by the Tea Party to institute far harsher cuts and more destructive policies than if a compromise had been worked out.

The sequester is case in point. A refusal to work out a deal that targeted cuts and offer up even the slightest bit of tax increases or reductions in tax credits and incentives was rebuffed and refused. Instead, across the board cuts were instituted, and the GOP won the day. The Senate and the Administration are now working off the sequester figures - accepting the cuts. The GOP won that fight, and that's what's driving them here too. The GOP and Tea Party have flipped the tools and events that should force compromise into ones that bring about the very policies that they endorse - smaller government.

It's a worrying trend, and one that may lead the nation into default. With no reason or intention to compromise, the GOP will take the nation over the cliff. One can only hope that voters realize who's taking them for this dangerous ride.

The GOP.

Cross posted at LGF.

Obamacare Rolls Out Even As GOP Seeks Defund/Delay/Destroy Poison Pill Provisions In Budget and Debt Ceiling Talks

Yesterday marked the beginning of the Affordable Care Act's (ACA) health exchange rollout. While some refer to this as Obamacare with derision (and there are polls that indicate that people have a much more favorable view of the term ACA than Obamacare even though they refer to the same program/law), the purpose of the law is to provide access to affordable health insurance for more than 20 to 30 million people.

The rollout yesterday was not without its hiccups. Some people were met with overloaded servers so that they couldn't complete the registration, and there were some bugs in the process.

That is to be expected with any rollout of any major software/website. It shouldn't be a surprise given how the Republicans have sought to defund, delay, and destroy the ACA at every opportunity.

They've attempted to repeal the ACA more than 40 times in the House alone.

Years of litigation over the constitutionality of the law was concluded with a landmark decision that found the central provision, the individual mandate, constitutional. The GOP claimed that this was unconstitutional, even though the GOP and the Heritage Foundation had made the individual mandate a central part of their alternative plan to Hillarycare when that proposal was rolled out in the early 1990s. Republican Mitt Romney made the individual mandate part of the MassCare program.

But, the moment that the Obama Administration made it a central tenet of the ACA, the GOP savaged it as an affront to personal liberty. We'd have to have collective amnesia to follow the Republican argument and logic. We'd have to ignore that the ACA is modeled on the very successful MassCare, which has reduced the number of uninsureds in Massachusetts by expanding access to affordable health insurance.

Then, we get to the claims by the Tea Party extortionists who think that this is some form of socialism or worse.

The government created health exchanges where private insurance companies offer policies that include minimum levels of coverage that protect against catastrophic health costs to the individual that would otherwise bankrupt them or deny them further insurance. Insurance companies were instrumental in shaping the law, which is why the taxes and fees imposed by the act were written the way they were. Insurers wanted to be part of this - and they're going to be key facilitator to the Obamacare's success. Obamacare created an entirely new market that didn't exist before. That's a market capitalism failure. Obamacare sets up a situation where insurers can profit from millions of new insureds and their premiums (including the subsidies that help those who are eligible afford the insurance).

At the same time, insurance companies can no longer deny policies due to preexisting conditions or include lifetime limits. That's key to millions of people across the country who have had diagnoses for mental health issues, cancer, and other chronic conditions. Someone who was diagnosed with cancer as a child or young adult will no longer be denied insurance because of their cancer diagnosis. Someone who was diagnosed with lung or kidney disease that needs ongoing care will no longer be denied insurance.

People who are under the age of 26 can still be covered on their parents' insurance. That eliminates a period of time when many are in college and allow their insurance coverage to lapse (before the ACA, many insurers didn't allow dependents to stay on parents' insurance beyond age 21).

People with small businesses can now find insurance for themselves or their employees because the purchasing power of the exchanges helps reduce the costs to them.

And for those who think insurance costs are going up solely because of ACA have amnesia because health costs have been soaring for years (and this chart goes back decades). This isn't a new trend that began suddenly in 2009. It has been going on for decades as the cost of health care outraced the rate of inflation.

With this as the backdrop, the Tea Party extremists and the GOP have conspired to shut down the government with the extortionist demand that Democrats defund, delay, and ultimately destroy Obamacare in exchange for a short continuing resolution that allows government to continue operating. Thus far, Democrats have been resolute in defeating the GOP efforts, and some in the GOP are realizing that this is a losing hand and that they've screwed themselves and the nation of an opportunity to actually reform some of the problems with the ACA. The GOP's extremism in seeking defunding, delaying, or destroying Obamacare puts Democrats in position of having to defend the entirety of the program. They're willing to do this, even as some parts of the program should be further reformed. But a better situation than before the ACA is not the opposite of the perfect. The GOP claims that ACA needs to be repealed ignores the fact that the health insurance situation in the nation was a disaster and bleeding hospitals dry for indigent care.

Some Republicans are beginning to realize the damage being done to their party. This includes Rep. Peter King, who announced he was running for President, but also suggested that the government shutdown is the result of a cadre of extremists in his party who refuse to view the President as legitimate and are looking to roll back every single one of the President's achievements. They're willing to burn the government to the ground to achieve their ends.

The government shutdown is a minor trifle compared to the fact that the same Republican extremists are pushing poison pill provisions into the debt ceiling argument. They refuse to accept anything less than a defund/delay/destroy Obamacare for raising the debt ceiling, despite the fact that this Congress has already appropriated the funds. It is an incontrovertible fact that granting the hike does not authorize any new spending and failing to grant it does not cut spending.

These facts, and the fact that the polling doesn't favor the GOP, doesn't faze the Tea Party extortionists who think that if they take this to what they think is the logical conclusion that the Democrats will cave and they'll get the delay they seek. The polling suggests otherwise, but the GOP and its leadership are unwilling to confront the Tea Party cadre and put down this nonsense once and for all. In fact, expect the extremists to take the brutal punishment they're getting in newspaper opeds and editorials today as a badge of honor in rattling the mainstream media's cage.

However, House Speaker John Boehner can't or wont take those sensible measures because the Tea Party threatens to primary anyone who isn't sufficiently conservative enough. These extremists think that if only they have enough pure conservatives that they can succeed in taking down President Obama and his signature achievement in health care reform. Heck, there are reports that the Speaker wont allow a clean CR to come up for a vote because of the fear it might pass. That would effectively put Boehner in the extremist camp because he's catering to the very extremists who are shutting down the government.

Yet, he might be pushing this now, because if the debt ceiling isn't increased, it will result in damage that both sides acknowledge - a loss in credit ratings, increased borrowing costs, and tremendous damage to the US economy.

After all, if the leadership in the House drops the Hastert Rule, a bipartisan continuing resolution to fund government would happen today. If they adopt the Gephardt Rule, the nonsensical debt ceiling negotiations would be an afterthought since the budget appropriations process would allow for a concurrent increase in the debt ceiling to cover the contingency of the government spending more than it takes in revenue. In doing both, Speaker Boehner would marginalize the tyranny of the minority TP Extortionist camp, allow Congress to focus on the business of governance, and signal that the TP movement is nothing more than a bunch of nihlists who are willing to torch government in furtherance of a goal of denying access to health insurance for millions of people.

Cross posted at LGF. (Edited to add more link attributions to buttress the argument)

Massive Corruption Sweep Busts Politicians Trying To Rig Republican NYC Mayor's Race

Earlier this morning, law enforcement carried out  a massive corruption sweep in NY, with multiple arrests of local politicians.

State Sen. Malcolm Smith and city Councilman Dan Halloran were arrested this morning on charges they were plotting to rig this year’s mayoral election through fraud and bribes.

The pols allegedly formed an alliance built on cash payments and fraud to get Smith — one of the state’s top Democrats — placed on the GOP mayoral ballot, sources said.

FBI agents arrested them both at their Queens homes shortly after 6 a.m.

“I have no idea,” Halloran, in handcuffs, told a Post reporter when asked if he knew why he was being arrested.

Others arrested includeBronx Republican Chairman Joseph Savino and Queens GOP Vice Chairman Vincent Tabone, and they are all being accused of trying to rig the mayoral election.

As alleged, Senator Malcolm Smith tried to bribe his way to a shot at Gracie Mansion - Smith drew up the game plan and Councilman Halloran essentially quarterbacked that drive by finding party chairmen who were wide open to receiving bribes. After the string of public corruption scandals that we have brought to light, many may rightly resign themselves to the sad truth that perhaps the most powerful special interest in politics is self-interest. We will continue pursuing and punishing every corrupt official we find, but the public corruption crisis in New York is more than a prosecutor's problem."

The 28-page complaint offers up a bunch of juicy details, but it boils down to money for access:

Council member Halloran was to receive $20,500 while Tabone and Savino received $40,000 in bribes with a promise of $40,000 more.

If Halloran's name sounds familiar, it's because he was a blowhard who alleged that Sanitation workers purposefully slowed down snow removal during the blizzard a few years back. Investigations found no evidence of any kind of slowdown. And the FBI had already been investigating Halloran when they sniffed out the potential bribery for ballot access plan.

Smith's name should sound familiar as well, as he was part of the breakaway Democrats in the State Senate who gave temporary control of the Senate to Republicans in a coup against Democratic leaders. Smith joined a group of independent Senators, earning himself and his staffers a pay raise in the process. Smith's defection also enabled Gov. Andrew Cuomo to maneuver and exploit the divisions in the Senate to advance his own agenda with less opposition - including on matters like the same sex marriage act and the NYS SAFE Act.

Not only does this scandal threaten the disrupt the political balance in the State Senate, but this scandal threatens to upturn the entire Republican campaign for NYC mayor, as key behind-the-scenes officials are involved and it's entirely possible that others could find themselves perp-walked. Tabone has been working for the campaign of John Catsimatidis.

These people are instrumental in getting the campaigns of multiple candidates off the ground and working support for candidates already in the running. It could potentially derail existing campaigns for those who are in the race and indirectly helps those Democrats who are already in the race, including Democrat City Council honcho Christine Quinn.

Expect Tabone and Savino to flip on Smith and Halloran who are the big fish in this particular scandal in exchange for less time behind bars.

Gov. Christie Takes House GOP and Rep. Boehner to Task For Screwing Sandy Victims

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie gave a press conference today following sending a letter to Congressional leaders along with Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York.

It was a real barn burner and the focus of his righteous ire was the mess created by House Republicans. Members of his own political party, and specifically, Speaker John Boehner, screwed victims of Hurricane Sandy in the name of politics.

This was a speech that shows Gov. Christie was on the job and knew what his job was. Christie did what he was elected to do. The job of governing for the state of New Jersey and making sure that the state gets the aid it needed and was promised. He gave thanks to those who were involved in those efforts - including his long time political nemeses in Bob Menendez and other NJ Democrats, because they too were doing the job that they were elected to do - making sure that they got Sandy aid done.

He thanked the President, because he too got the job done.

You know who didn't? The GOP and Boehner in particular. It's been 66 days since Hurricane Sandy hit, and three weeks since the $60b aid package was submitted. The House has sat on the bill for three weeks.

They did nothing.

It speaks to the gross incompetence on the part of the GOP and the House in particular. There was no excuse.

Christie let them know it in no uncertain terms. This was a BS manufactured crisis (the fiscal cliff/debt ceiling/tax rate), and it's all on Congress for failing the people of New Jersey and New York and others affected by Sandy.

New Jersey (and New York) pay more to the feds than it gets back normally. Now, it's asking for assistance over a true natural disaster of massive proportions along the East Coast, and the GOP abdicated its responsibilities. In fact, the House specifically adjourned at 2pm today rather than taking up the bill and passing it.

Some GOPers and right wingers were carping on pork - or more specifically $400m in unrelated items. Yet, the final House version (the pair of bifurcated bills - itself a move to try and get something done on the part of Rep. Eric Cantor and the NJ delegation) and the Senate bill had excised that stuff leaving a clean bill.

There were no excuses. Nothing. All Christie got from Boehner's office was nothing but static, and Christie let everyone know he wont stand for that.

That's not bluster. That's calling it as it is.

After the Christie presser, Boehner attempted to make amends, and his compromise is to address about $9b in aid in a vote on Friday, with the balance of of $51b to be voted on January 15.

To some, this may seem like a fair deal, but that's absolute rubbish.

At no time in prior Congressional actions on natural disasters did they dither in this fashion.

At no time did Congress bifurcate a disaster aid package - essentially forcing two votes where only one was necessary.

There's no reason that the full $60b package couldn't be voted on today, or on Friday. The delays have real world consequences.

It affects contracting for restoration of infrastructure and projects critical to rebuilding. It delays private businesses from moving forward with their own rebuilding efforts since they need that infrastructure rebuilt before committing to their own rebuilding.

These delays are wholly on the GOP leadership and Speaker Boehner. And he deserves all the excoriation and derision directed at them because had this been put up to a straight floor vote, it would have been adopted handily.

Boehner and the GOP leaders played political games with the disaster aid.

Todd Akin's Comments Symptomatic of Bigger Problems For GOP

GOP officials are trying their hardest to try and contain the fallout from the reprehensible comments made by Missouri Congressman Todd Akin who is seeking a US Senate seat in a race against Claire McCaskill. Even Presidential candidate Mitt Romney and his vice president nominee Paul Ryan called on Akin to quit the campaign. Akin has refused thus far, and he missed the deadline to withdraw without requiring court approval (or to pay the costs for redoing the ballots).

The problem for the GOP is that his comments weren't merely a misstatement or ill-conceived (as Akin himself put it on his own website - awkwardly at that). They are symptomatic of a much larger problem for the GOP. You've got Republicans who support restricting abortion to only those cases of forcible rape - or restricting federal funding for all abortions, including in cases of rape or incest.

Then, you've got social conservatives claiming that their claims that women can't get pregnant from rape and base it on research carried out by the Nazis during World War II (where they took prisoners and subjected them to gas chambers to see if stress affected ovulation).

The misogyny runs deep with Republicans. It's not just Akin. There's Kansas state Rep. Pete DeGraaf who suggested women should plan ahead for rape the way he keeps a spare tire. Indiana state Rep. Eric Turner said some women might fake being raped in order to get free abortions.

Then, there's the litany of attempts to impose onerous and invasive ultrasound procedures that would have the effect of reducing the number of abortions and abortion providers, including Virginia. Moreover, such requirements might constitute state-imposed rape on such women because the procedure isn't medically required or indicated.

Or the series of personhood amendments being propagated by Republicans across the nation that would give an embryo rights that would necessarily limit the rights of women to control their own bodies. Moreover, those same personhood amendments could seriously restrict access to in-vitro fertilization and other similar techniques, to say nothing of embroyonic stem cell research.

But perhaps the biggest sign that Akin isn't an isolated case is that Akin claims that the fallout from his comments has led to a big increase in campaign contributions although it should be noted that he bested his modest goal of $10,000:

“Donations are pouring in. Thank you for standing up against the liberal elite,” Mr. Akin wrote on Twitter last night.

A counted on Mr. Akin’s website said, as of this writing, Mr. Akin had raised $10,638 since beginning a “still standing” campaign following his remarks. On Twitter last night, Mr. Akin said his goal was hitting “$10k to fight the liberal elite.” He also posted a series of messages blaming the “liberal elite” for driving a “a lot of negativity” his way and for pushing around and otherwise intimidating those in the pro-life movement.

I'm not surprised by that.

The true tragedy is that the race for the Missouri Senate seat is as close as it is even with the furor about Akin's comments. Akin may still win the contest against McCaskill. That's troublesome in its own right and shows just how deep support for the belief system that Akin revealed in last Sunday's interview truly goes.

Nor am I surprised when Kirk Cameron comes out in support of Akin. Cameron went on CNN to defend Akin:

One defender? Kirk Cameron. The child-star-turned-evangelist was on CNN this morning discussing the remarks, and Cameron encouraged people to watch the whole video (which you can here) and then said, “[Akin] is clearly a pro-life advocate and I respect him. He said that he misspoke and that he misphrased something and that he apologized.”

Rep. Akin released a statement after the interview saying he “misspoke,” but hasn’t backed away from his remarks. Despite calls on Akin to get out of the Missouri Senate race, so far he’s staying in.

“I’m the kind of person that believes that I would like to be evaluated by my entire career and my entire life, not two words that I would misspeak and then later apologize for,” Cameron told CNN. “So he’s in a tough spot.”

The problem is that Akin didn't misspeak. He said exactly what he thought. He said precisely what his ultimate intentions are. He didn't misphrase anything. Akin said exactly what he thought. He believes that there is such a thing as legitimate rape - and his prior history about trying to impose restrictions for forcible rape are proof that this is part of what Akin actually believes. It goes to the belief that some women who are victims are rape deserved what they got - it's a combination of slut shaming, treating women as second class citizens who can't be trusted with control over their own bodies, and is misogynistic at its core.

Cameron's comments are echoed by other religious leaders, including Bryan Fischer.

In other words, if we go by what Akin has said and done over his entire political career - these words that Akin claims was a misspeak aren't. Akin meant exactly what he said. He cowrote legislation that would create the nonsensical category of forcible rape along with Ryan (but which didn't get passed because of the furor it created).

Cameron is right in one respect though- Akin is in a tough spot, along with the rest of the GOP that has wholly subsumed the social conservative agenda.

UPDATE:
Lest anyone think that I'm not sourcing my materials, here's links to the following as referenced above:

The link showing Ryan and Akin's attempt to create a category of forcible rape (and there's a new report indicating a separate attempt by Ryan to include forcible rape in a second piece of legislation).

Bryan Fischer said that Akin's comments were right.

And here's where Akin and others got that trope about how rape victims can't get pregnant (Seattle Post going into the history).

Here's where Gawker recorded Akin's awkward website attempts to try and generate campaign contributions from this mess.

Romney Chooses Paul Ryan For VP Slot

Mitt Romney has made his decision. He will go with Wisconsin Republican firebrand Paul Ryan as his Vice Presidental selection. It's somewhat odd to make that move on a Saturday morning, but it does mean he gets to dominate the Sunday talk shows, but it doesn't mean nearly as much press as if he held off until Monday - after the Olympics. People are still focusing on sports and not on politics at this point, but the Romney campaign must be feeling the heat and need to stem a tide of bad polling, and the fact that Romney essentially called for mercy to stop harping on Romney's tax and business records, and that Romney's own goals on health care reform and other assorted lies, misstatements, and gaffes.

Ryan will give Romney a short-lived bounce. It gives Romney a breather, but does it really benefit him in November?

Well, it improves his chances of holding on to the red-meat GOPers and right wingers, and could help with Wisconsin and Midwest, but that could be more than offset by the fact that Ryan's plan would gut the safety net - from Social Security to Medicare and Medicaid - programs that most Americans believe are good programs and are to their benefit (even if they may also think that some kind of incremental reforms are needed over time). After all, independents and moderates are going to have serious issues with what the GOP and the socons are looking to do. So, the overall effect will be negative since it reinforces everything that we already knew or expected from Romney.

On Government Spending, Cost Inefficiencies, and Jobs

I was reading through a bunch of articles on the economy and what might happen if the automatic deficit cuts are applied (that was agreed upon by Congress if they couldn't reach a deal on how to make specified cuts). The focus was on defense spending where a 10% automatic across-the-board cut would be applied. So, for a submarine construction program, they'd have to cut 10% funding. That has the GOP trying to pin the lost construction jobs on the President.

I find the hypocrisy of that unsurprising, but revealing. It is an admission that the government can and does create jobs - the GOP is questioning where those jobs are coming from. It's apparently okay that defense contractors get government contracts to build stuff (using union labor in many instances), but if the President proposes infrastructure programs to spur jobs, he's derided as a socialist or worse.

I don't have a problem with the military spending on building new submarines and other technologies that can allow the military to do more with fewer personnel (the newest aircraft carrier will have a significant reduction in personnel aboard because of automation of numerous functions). Lower personnel costs have a cumulative effect. It reduces exposing our soldiers, sailors and marines to harms' way.

But at the same time, we need to address serious and widespread deficiencies in infrastructure. That would be a tremendous jobs opportunity but the GOP points at the stimulus package as a failure. What they want people to ignore is that the stimulus was as much a bailout of states that were in major deficit situations that couldn't raise taxes into the teeth of a major recession (at least half the stimulus was transfer payments to cover existing obligations, not to spend on new infrastructure that would encourage jobs development and a lasting improvement to infrastructure).

Still, there's plenty of fat on infrastructure projects. Amtrak went ahead and announced a $151 billion program that would upgrade the Northeast Corridor to true high speed rail. It's a staggering figure considering that it would run about $330+ million per mile or more than 10 times what it would cost for a mile of high speed rail in the rest of the world. There's no reason it should cost that much, and it would sap spending elsewhere on infrastructure. Construction costs are significantly higher on such projects in the US than they are elsewhere. That cost inefficiency has to be addressed at the same time that such projects are done.

Health Care Reform Act Survives the Supreme Court

In a huge surprise to many on the right, the US Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate provisions of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (HCR/Obamacare). The Court ruled that it was a constitutionally permissible tax imposed by Congress.

The bottom line of the Court's decision, where Chief Justice John Roberts broke with the conservative group (Scalia, Thomas and surprisingly Kennedy), is that the entire ACA is upheld, with the exception that the federal government's power to terminate states' Medicaid funds is narrowly read.

That overturns the decisions by the 11th Circuit that found the law unconstitutional.

As I've noted, the individual mandate serves as a tax, and that's the grounds on which the Court found that the individual mandate is constitutional. The mandate provisions are set forth at 26 USC 5000A (the Internal Revenue Code) and imposes an annual penalty of $95, or up to 1% of income, whichever is greater, on individuals who do not secure insurance in 2014, which rises to to $695, or 2.5% of income, by 2016 and after (and adjusted for inflation). Families are hit with higher penalties. There are exemptions to the "fine" in cases of financial hardship or religious beliefs

This is a not insignificant sum of money we're talking about. This provision is expected to raise several billion dollars every year it is in operation beginning in 2014, and is part of the revenue side of reforming the health care funding across the country. It is also seen as a critical tool to getting people into the health care insurance pools so that they can help spread the costs of health care for those who are more likely to utilize the insurance policies.

The tax and spend power of Congress is unquestioned. The question was how the Administration had considered this not to be a tax. I thought that was a poor decision on their part. The Administration focused on a Commerce Clause justification, but the Court found that the power was vested in the Congressional power to tax.

UPDATE:
The decision can be found here: NATIONAL FEDERATION OF INDEPENDENT BUSINESS ET AL. v. SEBELIUS, SECRETARY OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES, ET AL. No. 11–393

Wisconsin Gov. Walker Holds On To Job In Recall Election

Governor Scott Walker, a Republican, held on to his job in yesterday's recall election. His win has more to do with how people view a proper use of recall elections than any of the policy choices he made or getting out the vote.

The results had nothing to do with the GOP or President Obama (which exit polls found to still be favored over Romney in November, even as both aren't seen as getting the job done on the economy), but rather that most Wisconsin voters didn't think that a recall was warranted over policy differences/preferences. 60% saw recalls as warranted only in cases of official misconduct. That was the real issue here. Walker came into office saying that he'd change how things were done - and while ending union collective bargaining was a huge change, it's a policy position - not official misconduct.

Sixty percent of Wisconsin voters in today's recall election say recall elections are only appropriate for official misconduct, according to early CBS News exit polls. Twenty-eight percent said they think they are suitable for any reason, while nine percent think they are never appropriate.
Today's recall election in Wisconsin pits Republican Gov. Scott Walker versus Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, in a rematch of their 2010 race. According to the early exit polls, 6 percent say they decided on their candidate in the last few days, with 93 percent saying they made up their minds before that.

The recall effort was brought about mainly in response to Walker's plan that restricted collective bargaining rights for public union workers. Today, 52 percent of Wisconsin voters in the early exit polls said they have a favorable view of unions for government workers, while 43 percent have an unfavorable opinion of these unions. Among voters in unions households (public or not), 69 percent view these unions favorably.

On the issue of collective bargaining, 50 percent of Wisconsin voters say they approved of the recent changes to state law that limits collective bargaining for government workers, but 48 percent disapproved of these changes.

Other exit polls break down the consequences going into November further, and it only reinforces the fact that it will be a money battle all the way to the end.

Gay Marriage Has No Effect On The Institution of Marriage

War on marriage my ass.

Are people really that fearful that gay marriages will destroy society and life as we know it?

I know, it's a rhetorical question. It's not just fear, but centuries of religious dogma pushing back even though this country is predicated upon equal protection and equal rights.

The issue of gay marriage isn't only about the institution of marriage marriage. It's about a whole series of related issues - health care and insurance benefits, tax treatment (singles versus married filing jointly), acting as health care proxy, access to health records of the spouse, inheritances, etc.

But those who are yammering loudest about the President's declaration of support for gay marriage don't realize how hypocritical they sound when they're coming off multiple failed marriages.

If you're already married - how exactly does gay marriage interfere with that? It doesn't.

If you're planning on getting married, some other couple's gay marriage isn't going to affect your marriage plans either (unless you're both trying to get married at the same place on the same day - in which case, you better put that deposit down on the catering hall now).

Marriage is a bond between two people. That hasn't changed. It isn't affecting your rights to get married if you're a heterosexual. You'll still have those rights (along with the right to get divorced - as nearly half of all marriages do these days) plus all the benefits. The only difference is that gays and lesbians would be able to gain access to the same benefits.

President Obama Comes Out In Favor of Gay Marriage

President Obama has announced that he now supports gay marriage. That's a huge turnaround from his prior stance on the issue, and he does so at a time when the civil rights of gays and lesbians are under assault from social conservatives who think that they should be imposing their religious views on others.

I think he saw the reaction garnered from what VP Joe Biden and Sec. Arne Duncan said in support of gay marriage.

It was the right thing to do because it goes towards equal rights and equal protections under the law.

However, this has political ramifications going into November's presidential elections. While it would reinforce his support, it can also serve to energize the GOP base to support Mitt Romney to thwart potential changes in federal law and policy that could help the GOP in rallying the so-cons against him in battleground states.

Super Tuesday Scorecard

I see that the media outlets are busy saying that Mitt Romney didn't score the knockout blow yesterday - even though he won 5 races and was the leader in two others. Rick Santorum won three (and close behind to Romney in Ohio), while Newt Gingrich could only manage to win his nominal home state of Georgia (though not in Virginia, where he currently lives because he couldn't be bothered to get sufficient petitions to get on the ballot in time).

Because of the way the GOP is apportioning votes in most of these states, a win matters, but if you come in 2d you can still pick up delegates. That's allowed Santorum to hang around as much as he has, but the numbers work against everyone but Romney at this point. Romney has racked up 2-3 times as many delegates as everyone else, and the ability to overcome that advantage is narrowing. While there are a bunch of winner-take-all primaries in April, the chances that Gingrich or Santorum could sweep those are slim and none - and slim left town.

Gingrich continues soldiering on claiming that he's going to stay in the race until the convention, but even he's got to know that he's toast. Even his win in Georgia comes with caveats - he might come away with less than half the delegates (because of the proportional delegation rules in effect). No chance at all. Santorum may think he's got a chance, but the statistics run against him as well.

He didn't do badly, but he didn't score enough points to claim any advantage over Romney going into upcoming primaries. It leaves Romney with the advantages of money and delegates pledged thus far. And that's more than sufficient to stay frontrunner and push towards the nomination.

The Unintended Consequences Of Personhood Legislation

The GOP is pursuing personhood legislation in states around the country as a way to make abortions illegal. Since the pro-life movement hasn't been able to overturn Roe v. Wade, they're using this as an alternative attack on the legal right to abortion in the country. Colorado has twice tried to bring a personhood amendment, and Missouri has also failed to approve a personhood bill.

It's a move that is destined to have unintended consequences that its proponents are wary to even discuss. Virginia is the latest to attempt to legislate away the right of abortion by redefining the term person. The GOP is pushing a personhood bill there, and yet the word "person" appears in the Virginia statutes 25,000 times. Any chance that something important might be affected by changing the definition?

Absolutely.

Unfortunately, not only would this bill lay the foundation to ban abortion and contraception, it could also wreak havoc on other areas of the law. The word “person” appears over 25,000 times in the laws of Virginia. No one knows the exact consequences of changing such an ordinary word, but the proponents of H.B. 1 refused to discuss or address these concerns in committee or on the floor of the House. Granting fertilized eggs all of the rights, privileges, and immunities the people of the Commonwealth currently hold could impact inheritance laws, election laws, tax laws, and even criminal laws. The bill has the potential to allow individuals to claim embryos in petri dishes as dependents, to challenge population numbers and election districts based on where IVF clinics are located. We fear this bill could even allow a non-family member to bring charges against a woman who has had a miscarriage.

The more legislatures attempt to push these kinds of laws, the greater the chances that the unintended consequences will be more severe.

Granting personhood to an embryo could potentially result in questioning census results, tax levies, inheritance law, and domestic relations laws, employer benefits laws, etc.

The GOP is opening a Pandora's box of trouble with this - and it's all with an eye towards eliminating the legal right to abortion. It's a roundabout attempt to make abortions illegal - and by making a claim that is unsupported by the science at that.

Small Thinking and Big Time Intrusion

Rick Santorum, the latest anointed Anyone But Romney candidate for the GOP nomination for president, has been parroting the small government line for years. His campaign rhetoric is all about reducing the size of government. The New York Times picked up on Santorum's stump speech, indicating that it's small thinking and for the government to out of the way. It's a good op-ed on Santorum's position, but it doesn't quite go far enough.

Santorum also goes to the extreme position of being all for government intrusion into personal lives - it should be ever more intrusive into a woman's health and decisions about her own life.

So, Santorum (and most of the rest of the GOP for that matter) is all for small government, except when it comes to contraceptive rights, the right to have an abortion, and other reproductive health choices. When that comes up, the government must impose highly invasive procedures that are unwarranted, costly, and extremely burdensome. It's anything but small-government ideology. It's the most invasive kind of government intrusion.

Contraception shouldn't be controversial in this day and age. It's safe, legal, and access shouldn't be an issue either. People can choose to use it or not, and insurance companies cover those medical costs. However, because religious groups are complaining, it's become fashionable to go after contraception - and the access to such health care.

The end result of these latest attacks on contraceptive rights is that women who want to practice birth control will find themselves with potentially fewer options and unwanted pregnancies, complications, and other issues that are far more troublesome from an ethical standpoint.

The Repercussions of Rick Santorum's Comments About CPAC Straw Polls

Conservative Republicans held their annual CPAC conference over the weekend, and it was a motley crew of assorted extremist statements, racists, and wackjobs rubbing shoulders with the presidential candidates, including Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.



The CPAC also held a straw poll, in which Mitt Romney won by a 38-31 margin over Santorum. Santorum's response to that is particularly enlightening and troubling all at once. Santorum claims that Romney bought the CPAC straw poll win by busing in voters.

“You have to talk to the Romney campaign on how many tickets they bought,” Santorum said on CNN’s “State of the Nation.” “We’ve heard all sorts of things.”

Santorum said it was within the rules for candidates to buy tickets for supporters and cart them in specifically to vote for their chosen candidate.

“We didn’t do that. We don’t do that. I don’t try to rig straw polls,” he said.

Santorum said his primary wins in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado last week were the true tests of who the GOP electorate wants.

“Our people turned out. We didn’t have to pay them to turn out. . . . They are enthusiastic about our campaign,” Santorum said on CNN.

Team Romney said their candidate won three separate contests on Saturday, besting Santorum 38 to 31 in the conservative CPAC straw poll; placing first in Maine’s caucuses with 39% to Ron Paul’s second-place finish of 36%, and topping CPAC’s national survey of conservative voters.

“Rick Santorum has a history of making statements that aren’t grounded in the truth,” Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul said in a statement to the Daily News.

Santorum needs to say and do anything to maintain any kind of momentum. CPAC chose Romney, who has been perceived as being more moderate by the media, and that's a shot at Santorum and the other GOP pretenders that they've got a chance at the nomination.

Did Romney buy votes and/or bus in voters to participate in the straw poll and is this something that candidates regularly do? Well, according to Santorum if the conservatives who showed up voted for Mitt, they were bought.

There is really nothing to substantiate Santorum's comments other than wishful thinking, but it also speaks to just how one shouldn't count straw polls here or even in the races that Santorum won over the prior weekend. They are as much about organization skills as they are about genuine preferences.

If you take the CPAC poll at face value, then there appears to be nothing standing in the way of a Romney nomination. He's got both Santorum and Newt Gingrich beat among conservatives, and he does better among moderates and other demographic sectors than his opponents. It shores up his numbers among conservatives and it becomes a self-fulfilling result; by winning the CPAC straw poll, it convinces other conservatives that voting for Romney is acceptable and palatable despite the protestations to the contrary by Gingrich or Santorum. That, in turn, leads to those conservatives voting for Romney going forward.

However, if the CPAC straw poll was nothing more than a popularity contest, the results of which were determined by who was able to bus in more supporters, then it doesn't particularly address whether there's a real groundswell of support or whether it's a manufactured result in favor of Romney. Why anyone would bother to give the CPAC straw poll any credence if it can be manipulated in such a fashion; but the answer to that is that candidates see the utility of a poll that can be bent to their own will and needs.

Either way, Santorum's sounding like he's got sour grapes and is up against a candidate who does a better job of campaigning than he does.

Mitt Romney Wins Decisively In Florida; Newt Gingrich Promises To Continue Campaign

Despite getting walloped by Mitt Romney in Florida by a decisive 46-32 margin (Ron Paul and Rick Santorum were barely evident and had already conceded the winner-take-all state and had moved on to Colorado and Nevada campaigning), Newt Gingrich is still hopeful that he can win the nomination.

Last night, he stood before a podium with "46 states" emblazoned on it all the while talking about how he's going to fight Romney straight through to the nomination across all 46 remaining states:



Problem for Newt is that there aren't 46 states left for him. He's only got 45.

Gingrich's campaign failed to get on the Virginia ballot, meaning he's going to be shut out there come Super Tuesday. While he thinks that he can make up for it by doing well in his former state of Georgia, that's a significant delegate swing in favor of Romney. In fact, it's a 100 point swing. That's nearly 10% of the delegates needed to win the nomination.

Add to that the fact that the seven states up for grabs in February aren't likely to support Gingrich over Romney. That includes Maine (24 delegates); Nevada (28 delegates); Colorado (36 delegates); Minnesota (40 delegates); Arizona (29 delegates); and Michigan (30 delegates).

It's conceivable that Romney takes above 75% of those delegates going into Super Tuesday (considering the possibility for proportional delegations). It would give Romney a commanding lead and one that would give him momentum and make it all but impossible for Gingrich to continue past Super Tuesday.

South Carolina Prefers Ethically Challenged Gingrich Over Monied Romney

It's rather surprising how quickly voters in South Carolina have shifted preferences from Mitt Romney to Newt Gingrich. They're all too quick to ignore all of Gingrich's flaws - particularly the fact that his fellow Republicans essentially booted him from power as Speaker of the House over an ethical flap that resulted in a $300,000 fine. Since he left Congress, Gingrich has been a lobbyist and while he claims to be a historian, his fact-challenged rants and revisionist history over his own follies and foibles has actually won over South Carolina voters who once again found someone to vote for other than Mitt Romney.

Romney hasn't helped himself by several poor performances at the last two debates. Particularly, he hasn't answered key questions about his finances in a way that would silence the opposition. He's belatedly decided to release his tax returns, and also noted that his effective tax rate (the rate that he actually pays, rather than the rate that his tax would be computed under the statutory rate) is roughly around 15%. That's primarily because of his reliance on capital gains rather than wages.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with this from a legal standpoint; Romney worked for a venture capital firm, and his compensation was all legitimate (though one can question whether his position and company created or destroyed jobs through decisions made by Romney and his coworkers). But by obfuscating on his tax returns and how much money he made, he created a problem for himself that was exploited by the likes of Gingrich and others.

Romney could have thwarted this kind of attack by going on the offensive. He should have defused the situation by claiming that not only will he release the tax returns, but that there's absolutely nothing wrong with making money. Making money is what our nation does quite well most of the time and the job of a venture capitalist is to decide how to spend large sums of money on companies that may or may not pan out. Gingrich and the other candidates who were questioning Romney's taxes are showing anti-capitalistic tendencies by claiming that he didn't pay enough in taxes even as they all rail against high taxes.

The compensation for those decisions is quite often not in dollars, but in stock in the companies in which the venture capital firm invests in. Thus, the venture firm and its employees often get compensated in stock - capital gains, rather than wages.

Rick Perry Drops Out Of 2012 Race; Endorses Newt Gingrich

It shouldn't be all that surprising that Rick Perry is dropping out of the race for President.

The announcement from Mr. Perry was expected to inject fresh momentum into Mr. Gingrich’s efforts to emerge as the leading alternative to Mitt Romney. It was unclear whether Mr. Perry would campaign with Mr. Gingrich in the final two days of the primary campaign here.

Mr. Perry will not participate in the debate here on Thursday evening, an aide said, and will make the announcement to supporters and contributors in South Carolina at an 11 a.m. news conference. He had been aggressively campaigning across the state, hoping that the first Southern primary would revive his candidacy.

It was the second time that Mr. Perry had signaled that he would leave the race. After a poor showing in the Iowa caucuses two weeks ago, Mr. Perry said that he was returning to Texas to reassess his campaign, but he decided to press ahead in South Carolina.

Mr. Perry was in the single digits in recent polls here, but his withdrawal from the race could affect the outcome of the primary by giving conservative voters one fewer alternative. He had been appealing heavily to South Carolina’s evangelical voters.

The decision by Mr. Perry, which was first reported by CNN, narrows the Republican field to four candidates.

Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker who is competing with Rick Santorum to emerge as the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney, has urged Mr. Perry and Mr. Santorum to drop out of the race to coalesce support among conservatives.

He repeatedly failed to make a positive impact on voters despite having a major warchest. Perry's campaign never could figure out a ground game and Perry's repeated gaffes, most notably failing in a debate to remember the three cabinet departments that he would eliminate as President showed that he wasn't ready for prime time.

Perry says that he'll endorse Newt Gingrich for president, which will not come as much of a surprise since the social conservatives are all scrambling to find which candidate remaining can challenge Mitt Romney for the nomination. I don't think that Perry's endorsement will count for much, as Gingrich is still lagging behind Romney significantly in polls in the next round of states.

The candidates remaining in the campaign trying to topple Mitt Romney besides Gingrich are Rick Santorum and Ron Paul. Paul's support tops out at no more than 20% in any of the states where he's competitive, and Gingrich has pretty much signaled that he will stay in the race if only to smear Romney at every opportunity. Like Paul, Santorum's best showing was in Iowa and is expected to be nothing more than a footnote in upcoming primaries.

Thus, at this point, the idea of endorsements and shifting support among conservatives is all about jostling for the scraps and trying to force Romney to move even further to the right. That is a political maneuver that is fraught with danger particularly since candidates need to be able to tack to the center during the general election in the attempt to gain independents and moderates. If the GOP nominates a more conservative candidate (say Santorum or Gingrich), it would most assuredly result in an Obama landslide, precisely because the GOP extremist positions, on everything from global warming to creationism and religion in the classroom, is antithetical to what moderates and independents want in their candidates. It would marginalize the GOP in a way that hasn't been seen in generations. Paul's chances for a nomination are even lower, because his libertarian positions don't jibe with the GOP positions and appeal to an even smaller percentage of people - to say nothing of Paul's racist and anti Semitic past (those newsletters simply cannot be ignored).