Vital Remnants

Wait a minute. I thought it was Newt Gingrich who was supposed to embarrass conservatives.

Labels: 2012 election, Mitt Romney

I am waiting to hear from my detractors about my post last week in which, a week ahead of the event, and after considering carefully various sophisticated metrics, and constructing a wide variety of charts and graphs,  I called the Florida Republican primary race for Newt Gingrich. Having been inspired by both CNN and Fox News having called South Carolina before a single vote was tabulated, I decided to follow suit.

If Anderson Cooper could do it, so could I.

But, alas, Newt Gingrich did not win the race. Instead Mitt Romney, one of the remaining two monogamous candidates left in the race, was victorious (Santorum was the other monogamous candidate, but something about his monogamy was not, apparently, quite as appealing to Florida Republican voters).

"What happened?" my detractors will ask. "You blew it. How can you show your face after this ignominious prediction?" Well, they wouldn't say exactly that, partly because I don't think they know what the word "ignominious" means.

Still, I would like to address what went wrong.

I have thought a lot about my method of predicting the outcome of the Florida race over the past 5 minutes, and I have conducted a thorough review over that time of the methodologies I employed in making my prediction. After doing this extensive analysis and producing several long reports, I have determined why my forecast was incorrect.

The problem was that my method was entirely too scientific.

I explained when I made the prediction that, if my prediction was false, it would therefore be falsifiable, and since (as many of my detractors like to point out) falsifiability is a sufficient criterion for a method being scientific, I will consider it proven that my method was, in fact, scientific.

So from here on out, I will go back to the method that sustained me so well when I predicted in 2008, the day after the Iowa primary, that Obama would win the nomination and the general election, putting him hin the presidency; the method that stood me in such good stead (if I can talk about my own state now) when I predicted, on the basis of a few conversations and my gut feeling, that Greg Stumbo would win the leadership race in the Kentucky State House for Speaker.

What method was this? Prophecy. Plain and simple. I will now go back to divine inspiration as my chief mode of political forecast.

You can all go back to your homes now.

Labels: 2012 election, Newt Gingrich

For Immediate Release
January 31, 2012

LEXINGTON, KY--"The Governor is trying to shift blame from his own inept handling of the now doomed gambling bill so that he can blame it on someone else," said Martin Cothran in response to Beshear's comments today accusing Senate President David Williams of "intimidation." Beshear is trying to blame David Williams for the demise of the constitutional amendment to expand gambling, said Cothran, "but the fault lies squarely with the Governor."

Cothran said the Governor's delaying tactics are what has ultimately doomed the legislation. "He said he would have a bill out three weeks ago. Instead, he keeps delaying. He originally said he would have it out in early January. Now we're into February. He keeps saying 'next week' and 'in a few days.' He's done this so many times now that lawmakers are having a hard time taking him seriously."

"This is the longest drum roll we have ever seen," said Cothran.

The group said Beshear would not be alienating Senate President David Williams unless he had already given up on his own bill. "You don't insult the head of the chamber you're counting on to pass your bill unless you have already given up on it yourself," said Cothran. "If there was any doubt that the gambling bill was already dead, his comments today should have settled it."

Labels: 2012 General Assembly, gambling, press release

For Immediate Release
January 31, 2012


LEXINGTON, KY--"If the Governor thinks he has the votes he needs, he ought to tell us who they are," said Martin Cothran, spokesman for The Family Foundation, after Gov. Steve Beshear's claimed Monday that he had 23 Senate votes to pass a constitutional amendment to allow casino gambling. "The Governor says he sees 23 votes. We think it's a mirage. I've had legislators who are in favor of this bill tell me they don't think it has the votes.

"The Governor is bluffing," said Cothran.

"The clock has run out on the gambling bill," he said. "As far as we can tell, this thing is dead. The Governor has waited too long to introduce it and we don't see how he can resuscitate it at this point."

"Support for this bill has been slipping away for several weeks. If he introduces it now, it will be the first time a new model has been unveiled just as the wheels were falling off."

Labels: 2012 General Assembly, gambling, press release

For Immediate Release
January 31, 2012


"We think there should be full disclosure about the individuals and the wealthy corporations who may have been involved in the attempt to rewrite Kentucky's Constitution," said Martin Cothran, spokesman for the group.

Cothran said he thought many Kentuckians would find it disturbing if it turned out that wealthy horse tracks and casino corporations were heavily involved in changing the Constitution in a way in which they stood to financially benefit. "People don't want their laws written in smoke-filled back rooms by millionaire businessmen whose names they don't even know," he said. "This process needs to be out in the open."

Labels: 2012 General Assembly, gambling, press releases, TFF

For Immediate Release

Labels: 2012 General Assembly, gambling, press releases, TFF

There are some so-called "conservatives" who are really liberals.

The Bain controversy is the perfect case study to illustrate the distinction at the center of the economic school of thought called "Distributism." And it is a case study in the Fallacy of the Appeal to the Aggregate that seems to infect the rhetoric of a lot of people who call themselves "conservative."

The Bain controversy, let us remember, involves Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's involvement in Bain Capital, a private equity firm. As a private equity company, Bain has invested in numerous companies and, in the course of its regular business, employees were laid off and jobs were outsourced.

In our last installment of Distributism 101, I discussed the Distributist distinction between theoretical and applied economics. "On the one hand," said Hillaire Belloc, "theoretical economics focuses on the way economics laws work. On the other hand, applied economics tell us what the economic state of affairs ought to be."

What people like Romney do to justify their own individual actions in pursuing profits is to clothe themselves in the mantle of "conservatism." But in doing so, they confound the two modes of economic thought: Whatever "works" economically, they seem to suggest, is ipso facto the way it ought to be.

Furthermore, among such people the definition of what "works" is always cast in aggregate terms: if an economic action produces greater aggregate income or greater aggregate employment, etc., then it is automatically considered to be the result the individual ought to pursue.

To propound this doctrine on a policy level is one thing. There, it has a certain air of plausibility--although it is still not unproblematic. But to propound it on the personal level, as Romney has done, is to completely confound both economic and ethical categories.

To say that your personal action is right because it contributes to the greatest good of the greatest number may or may not be the doctrine of Adam Smith, but it is certainly the doctrine of John Stuart Mill. More specifically, it is the doctrine of utilitarianism, the doctrine of which Mill was the most prominent historical exponent. And to acquiesce to such arguments in the name of conservatism is to imply that conservatism itself is a utilitarian doctrine, which it most certainly is not.

The problem, of course, is that there are people running around calling themselves conservatives who are spouting economic utilitarianism and don't seem to realize it, and Romney is one them.

Predatory capitalism is not a conservative doctrine. It is economic utilitarianism, and economic utilitarianism is the soul of liberalism properly so-called. American political rhetoric has developed in a rather strange way and has seen the term "liberal" turned into a reference to someone who believes in socialism. "Liberalism" used to mean--and still does mean in Europe--someone who believes in economic freedom.

In fact, I think partly because of the changed application of the word in American politics, we seem to have come up with a new word to mean what "liberal" used to mean: libertarian. I suppose it gets us out of the problem of calling people we think of as conservatives "liberals."

When Romney was called out for this, out came all the libertarians who have convinced people that they are conservatives to defend him: David Boaz at the Cato Institute, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, and Tim Phillips of Americans for Prosperity.

But, as I have pointed out on this blog before, libertarianism is not conservatism. In fact, pure libertarianism is almost the exact opposite. This is why social conservatives (the ones who really understand their social conservatism, anyway) should have a troubled conscience in making common cause with libertarians. I'm not saying they should never do it. Sometimes the predations of socialism require it. But we shouldn't forget that conservatism is ultimately inimical to libertarianism. And I'm afraid we forgot that some time ago.

People who think it is right to lay people off and outsource their jobs purely for the purpose of padding their own profits are not conservatives. Conservatives are about conserving things--things like families and communities. This requires an acknowledgement of the efficiencies of the free market in subordination to common good, to which the efficiencies of the free market are sometimes blind.

The extreme individualist utilitarianism that is espoused by some people who want to call themselves "conservative" is corrosive of these things.

They are utilitarian capitalists, which is another word for "liberal."

Labels: 2012 election, Distributism, economics, Mitt Romney

A number of people, including several of my friends, are saying they cannot vote for Newt Gingrich because of his past marital infidelities. I addressed this in a recent post and pointed out that God seems to be far more concerned with a public official's religious beliefs than it does about how many wives a public official has had (David, Solomon)--or whether he has committed sins of the flesh outside of marriage (Abraham).

In the Old Testament, polytheism is dealt with far more harshly than polygamy or even adultery.

In this connection, I pointed out that Mitt Romney, being a Mormon, is necessarily polytheistic. So why (the question was implied but not made explicit) were my friends taking the position that Christians should not vote for Gingrich, but were not taking the position that Christians should not vote for Romney?

It was an a fortiori argument: "from the stronger." If one can vote for Romney, despite the fact that the reason for not voting for him was (Biblically speaking) stronger, then why can't one vote for Gingrich?

I am, admittedly, a Monogamist for Gingrich. I am going to begin calling my pro-Romney friends "Monotheists for Romney," just to underscore that they are not applying similar standards to their own chosen candidate.

Hopefully, they will still like me.

Labels: 2012 election, Newt Gingrich

LEXINGTON, KY—A spokesman for the Family Foundation today predicted that if the Governor did not release his expanded gambling proposal by the end of the week, the issue would effectively be dead this session. "By the time the Governor and his friends in the gambling industry finish divvying up all the millions of dollars they think they're going to pocket through this legislation and come out of their smoke-filled room over in the Capitol building, this whole thing will be over," said Martin Cothran, spokesman for the group. "In fact, the gambling bill may already be dead."

"Support for the gambling legislation is collapsing faster than a ten dollar tent in a hurricane."

"They didn't have the votes to begin with, and now what little support they have is deteriorating by the day," Cothran said. He said there was a widespread impression among lawmakers that the expanded gambling effort has been plagued by confusion and dissension among expanded gambling supporters. "I think a lot of people are just fed up with the infighting and lack of action and want to move on to other things."

"A lot of legislators, even those who would otherwise support it, are already moving on," he said. "Of course we oppose this bill, but if we were supporters, we would be wondering who was in charge here and what happened. Why was an initiative that seemed like a sure thing when the session started all but fallen apart? This should have been introduced three weeks ago. We're trying to imagine what it's going to look like when a page from the Governor's office comes running down the Senate aisle with a bill draft in his hand just as the President of the Senate is gaveling the 2012 session to a close. They have only themselves to blame."

Labels: 2012 General Assembly, gambling, Kentucky

“Not only do they not have the votes in the Senate, but they are losing support by the day."


"Gov. Beshear and his friends in the gambling industry have had a whole year to try to put something together for legislators to look at. But here we are, into the fourth week of the General Assembly, and they can't even decide what they want. They're essentially jerking lawmakers around. We think the patience of most legislators has run out."

Labels: 2012 General Assembly, gambling, press releases, TFF

My good friend Francis Beckwith asks the following question, which he calls "uncomfortable and awkward," about Newt and Callista Gingrich on his blog today:

So, let me ask it again in a more extended fashion: Are conservative Christians, who believe in the morality of the natural law and all that it entails about marriage, family and civil society, prepared for America to have a First Lady who was a home wrecker and was once the President’s mistress, with her husband as the national standard bearer for the causes of life, conjugal love, and the common good?

This is a legitimate question, and my answer to it is that I would rather not have such people--sinners--occupying the White House. Adultery is a violation of one of the Ten Commandments and is a mortal sin. On the other hand, I would rather not have a person who is a polytheist in the White House either. Mormonism is essentially polytheistic, a violation of another of the Ten Commandments, and also a mortal sin.

I would far rather have a non-sinner in the White House. As soon as anyone spots one, I'd like to know about it.

But there is an important difference between the two scenarios above--the Gingriches and the Romneys. It is that the former are repentant, and the latter are not. And so I'm not clear on how unrepentant and continuing violation of the first commandment is less problematic than the repentant violation of the sixth commandment.

In fact, if we are looking for God's own attitude toward the relative sinfulness of these two particular sins--polytheism and polygamy--it is not too difficult to see where the greater problem lies. God frequently penalizes individuals--and the nations they lead--for committing the former, but does not seem to have much of a penchant for penalizing an individual or nation for the latter.

In fact, if multiple marriage disqualifies one for public office, it is instructive who is thereby disqualified. We can start with David and Solomon. In fact, it would be an interesting question to consider how a guy with 700 wives would do in the Republican primary. In fact, with the kind of extended family that implies, one wonders if there would be any way he could lose.

I do not believe that the relatively greater divine distaste for polytheism over polygamy is an indication that polygamy was morally acceptable, but it does seem to pose a serious problem for anyone who wants to argue that serial monogamy (which it seems is less of a sin than polygamy) is any more problematic than polytheism.

I have pointed out elsewhere that I agree that character matters, but that I also think that conversion matters more. Not only has Gingrich publicly admitted that what he did was wrong, but as a Catholic convert, you have to do this little thing that involves going into a little room and spilling out your guts--including sexual sins--in detail to a guy on the other side of a panel, who, once you are finished, absolves you of your sins.

I too, like Beckwith, wish that Gingrich had been a little more contrite in his answer--as he has already been when he has discussed this elsewhere. I too, like Beckwith, think he should have been more sensitive about the pain he caused his wife. Maybe St. Augustine was being a little too self-obsessed himself when he said pretty much the same thing about the concubine he abandoned--it pained him.

In fact, it kind of bothered me that Ronald Reagan was a divorcee.

This is not a trivial problem. Gingrich's past bothers me. So does Romney's present. Maybe Santorum's future should concern me as well--he seems pretty squeaky clean so far, but who knows.

One of them will win the Republican nomination and face Barack Obama, who, incidentally, is neither a serial monogamist nor a polytheist.

Should I vote for him? It's an uncomfortable and awkward question.

Labels: 2012 election, Newt Gingrich

Joe Paterno was one of the good guys. In fact, he was one of the greatest of the good guys in modern college sports, and--if you read carefully about the recent Penn State scandal--you will realize that nothing that occurred in the Sandusky child molestation case diminishes Paterno as a coach or as a person.

One story a football coach friend of mine once told me encapsulates much about Paterno as a coach and as a man. It was the 1987 Fiesta Bowl, which pitted Penn State against Miami. Miami that year had a hot quarterback by the name of Vinni Testaverde. The game is now legendary for the contrast between the two teams. Miami was a team that had earned its reputation as a band of thugs. As someone put it, they were the "Oakland Raiders of college football.

And  they were furthermore run by a coach who had no business coaching students: Jimmy Johnson, who later went on to coach the Dallas Cowboys and who has thankfully retired from coaching. He personified everything that is wrong with modern college footbal. The thugishness on the team was something he apparently didn't discourage.

The game would be a contest between the good guys and the bad guys.

The Hurricane players decided to dress the part--in military fatigues. In a pre-game steak fry, to which both teams were invited, Penn State players ribbed the camo-bedecked Hurricanes about their coach, among other things. The humorless Hurricane players walked off in a huff, one remarking, "Did the Japanese sit down and eat with Pearl Harbor before they bombed them? No. We're outta here." The team walked out.

"Excuse me," said a Penn State player. "But didn't the Japanese lose the war?"

When the Penn State players arrived for the game, they stepped off the bus--dressed in suits. As they made their way to the locker room, Johnson's thugs were there to greet them. Paterno referred to both these incidents in his wonderful, Paterno: By the Book:

"I don't know whether Jimmy helped his kids plan their disgraceful walkout. ... But I know he was there. Nor did he raise a finger of caution when we were climbing out of our bus for the locker room as his team ... just about blocked our path, waving and taunting and yelling, 'We'll get you, you mothers.' (I'm only using half their word)."

Paterno cautioned his players, telling them to expend their energy on the field.

After having lost to Oklahoma the previous year in the Orange Bowl, Paterno's players wanted a win, and the attitude of the Miami players made them want it even more.

The game did not start out well for the Nittany Lions. Their quarterback, who had trouble finding any open receivers, was pummeled. Their ground game was in a funk. At one point they fumbled, a mistake which gave Miami a touchdown. Penn State got one of their own, resulting in a 7-7 tie at the half.

But the Hurricane's offense wasn't doing well either. The much vaunted Testaverde couldn't get anything going, despite the undersized Penn State safeties, which the Hurricanes had ridiculed before the game as "smurfs." It began to become apparent to Miami's offense that the Nitanny Lion defensive backs hit. Hard. And even though Penn State's offense kept stalling, Miami began turning over the ball. In the fourth quarter, Testaverde threw to the wrong places, and when he threw to the right place, his receivers dropped the ball. But Miami still managed a field goal, making it 10-7.

Peterno himself was not worried. His philosophy was that you win with defense, and second with special teams. All the offense had to do was not hurt them. This is exactly what happened.

Testaverde, shaken and confused by Penn State's shifting schemes, threw the ball right into the hands of a Penn State defender, who ran it to the Hurricane's five yard line. On the next play, the Penn State quarterback went in for a touchdown. The score was 14-10, and that's how the game ended.

The good guys had won.

When the board of Penn State basically fired Paterno, they sacrificed him on the altar of their own reputation. Rather than do the right thing to the man who had done so much for the university and its players and students, they did the easy thing. Paterno was 85 years old and suffering from health problems. He had already resolved, in order to make things easier for the university, to retire at the end of the year, which was shortly approaching. The board should have left it at that. It didn't.

Paterno called what he did at Penn State a "grand experiment." What was the experiment? It was a simple recipe: "Success with honor." This he accomplished not only by being a moral example to his players, but by doing something that too many college and high school coaches fail to do--some by simply not even trying: ensure their players do well academically.

Penn State football players not only had to perform on the field, they had to perform in the classroom. He produced 37 first team all-Americans. In 2010, the team sported an 84 percent graduation rate, a rate too rare in college athletics. And the emphasis Paterno gave to academics didn't end with the players on the team. He gave millions of his own money and money that he raised to improve Penn State's academic programs.

It is interesting to note that while the Penn State football stadium is named after a former governor, the library is named after him: The Paterno Library.

The scandal itself was not Paterno's fault. Nobody even pretends that it was. He did what he was supposed to do, reporting what little had been reported to him by Mike McQuary to school officials the next day, one of whom was the head of the campus police. But as soon as the scandal was announced, the Monday morning moralists swung into action, spouting casuistry as they came. Local police had known about Sandusky since 1998, but let it go.

And some of the criticism had come from ESPN, which itself had sat on a recording it had of a conversation with the wife of Syracuse assistant basketball coach Bernie Fine, revealing something of the man now charged with charges similar to those against Sandusky--a recording they sat on for years.

Within a matter of hours, the reputation of Paterno who been the paragon of propriety and virtue in a world characterized by two little of either was in tatters.

Even before the report of Paterno's death, the wheels were falling off the moral case against Paterno. Mike McQuery, who witnessed what we know now to have been child molestation recently testified that he didn't tell Paterno all that he had seen. And the board is now being battered by charges from its own alumni that it did Paterno wrong.

He was told of his firing in a phone call from a board member. It was cheap. It was tawdry. And it was entirely without class.

Paterno's reaction to what was done to him, on the other hand, was as classy as the rest of his career. "You know, I'm not as concerned about me," Paterno told one interviewer. "What's happened to me has been great. I got five great kids. Seventeen grandchildren. I've had a wonderful experience here at Penn State. I don't want to walk away from this thing bitter."

He said he was not bitter, although he had every right to be. He wanted everyone to understand that this wasn't a football scandal. "I'm not worried about me. I think the courts will have their decisions as to what happens. That's where I want to leave it. I want to leave it on a high note and let the legal process do what they got to do."

The Sandusky scandal happened to Paterno in the fourth quarter of his life. He was 85 years old, having been head coach for 46 years, and having served at Penn State in other capacities for more years than that. The scandal put him behind as he approached the final minutes.

But Paterno was a devout Catholic Christian who believed that the game doesn't end here. Despite the fact that you are behind as you near the end is not reason to give up hope. It was a message he told his players again and again over the course of his storied life.

Joe Paterno was a good guy, and good guys eventually win.

Labels: Joe Paterno