Mitt Romney's disastrous get-out-the-vote failure

Some people will make too much of this (I'm thinking Fox News here), but one of the interesting aspects of last Tuesday's election was the crashing of Mitt Romney's "ORCA," his get-out-the-vote machinery, on election day:

Starting in the early afternoon, reports were coming in from across swing states that ORCA had crashed. That morning, when Shoshanna was on the phone with Boston, she was told the system was crashing, unable to withstand thousands of simultaneous log-ins. The system had never been stress tested and couldn’t handle the crush of traffic all at once. Thousands of man-hours went into designing and implementing a program that was useful on one day and one day only, and on that day, it crashed. My source familiar with the campaign described it this way, “It was a giant [mess] because a political operative sold a broken product with no support or backup plan. Just another arrogant piece of the arrogant Romney campaign.”

It's a fascinating piece. Read the rest here.

Why Republicans should drop free market economics

MEMO-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

TO: Republican Moderates

FROM: The Special Committee to Protect You from Yourselves

SUBJECT: Positions we should abandon in light of last Tuesday's election

In the wake of last Tuesday's loss by Mitt Romney in the presidential election, Republicans need to reassess their core beliefs. They need to take a look at where the nation is going. They need to modernize. Clearly, Obama's win in this week's presidential election tells us that there are certain issues which simply don't play with the American electorate, and the Republican Party needs to listen.

It is time for Republicans to abandon free market economics.

That's right. Romney ran on one thing and one thing only: on free market solutions to the nation's economic problems. He ran on these things and lost. So it is clear that what was repudiated in this election was economic libertarianism.

Okay. Now that you are all riled up by what I  just said, calm down for just a moment. Have you peeled yourself off the ceiling? Good. Alright.

Once your heart rate has returned to normal, I want you to sit back a moment and ponder the argument I just made. Doesn't make any sense at all, does it? In fact it's kind of stupid. Whoever really believes such a thing should have his head examined. No one should abandon his core beliefs on the basis of one election. In fact, if it really is a core belief, a person should keep it no matter what.

As soon as you have pondered the absurdity of this argument against the Party's free market position on economics, think about just how bone-headed you sound when you make arguments like the ones you are now making that the Republican Party needs to abandon its position on social issues.

Many of you are at this very moment engaged in a campaign to convince rank and file Republicans that the answer to their electoral woes is to cut and run on abortion and same-sex marriage. The extent of the absurdity of this argument is hard to fathom, since, in case you didn't notice, if there was anything Romney did not emphasize during this election, it was abortion and traditional marriage.

I don't remember him (or anyone else) saying anything about either of these issues at the Republican National Convention. Nor, with one exception, did either issue ever come up in a debate. Exit poll after exit poll confirmed that Romney got exactly what he wanted: voters going to the polls with unemployment and high food and gas prices on their minds.

This presidential election was about economics. Period.

So if you are going to argue that anything is a losing issue, it's going to have to be free market economics. But for some strange reason, I don't hear any of you arguing that. And ridiculous as that argument obviously is, it is ten times more ridiculous to argue what you actually are arguing: that the pro-life position and the championing of traditional marriage are hurting the party's electoral chances--despite the fact that these positions were not issues the Republicans emphasized in this election.

So go freshen up. Get something cool to drink. And come back tomorrow with recommendations that actually make sense.

The Commitment Gap: Mitt Romney and the Republican Party's crisis of values

Republicans trying to figure out what went wrong in Tuesday's election should put down their charts and graphs and visit the graveyard of the idea that they are more politically competitive if they nominate a moderate for president. They will find there a row of gravestones, each bearing the name of a candidate who was thought more likely to win because he was a pragmatist rather than a man of ideas.

The Litany of the Moderate Republican Political Dead includes Gerald Ford (lost to Carter), George Herbert Walker Bush (lost re-election to Clinton), Bob Dole (lost to Clinton), and John McCain (lost to Obama). In each case the party took the advice of those inside and outside who said they had a much better chance of winning without an "ideologue" (read: someone who is serious about ideas) on the ticket. Romney joins this list as only the most recent casualty of the crisis of values in the Republican Party.

Mid-campaign shifts of position, as we saw in Romney's general election campaign, are just symptoms of a deeper problem. The reason Republicans nominate moderates is that they don't have enough confidence in their own most deeply held beliefs—and this is not a technical problem; it is a moral problem.

Romney lost because he did two things that all technocratic pragmatists do: 1) He triangulated on fundamental moral issues and focused exclusively on what we might call "secular" issues: issues on which there is no fundamental disagreement among voters; and 2) He cast himself as a more capable administrator than his opponent.

To a moderate, an election is not about issues, it is about competence. An election is not about what the candidate thinks; it's about what he can do. Moderate pragmatists only want to talk about means, but they do not want to talk about ends. Democrats have the moral confidence to talk about both.

Republicans try to convince Americans that Republicans do agree with Americans; Democrats try to convince Americans that Americans should agree with Democrats.

This is why many Republicans emphasize economics and are squeamish about moral issues: Everyone wants a job, a higher salary, and lower inflation. These are ends about which there is no debate: The only thing at issue is the means by which these things can be brought about. But when you start arguing about whether a fetus is a human being deserving of legal protection, or whether marriage necessarily excludes a man marrying a man or a woman a woman, then all of a sudden you have crossed a line: the line between means and ends.

There is no technocratic calculus by which a moral issue can be resolved, and so it must be minimized, if not ignored altogether.

There is one issue in which these contrasting emphases can both be seen at play. Both parties have been willing to fight openly over the health care issue. But what to the Democrats is a moral issue—an issue about social justice involving fundamental human rights—is to Republicans an economic issue—one about facts and figures and technical feasibility.

The problem with pragmatism is that it isn't very useful—at least not in the political world. With the one exception of Clinton (who stands in a separate Machiavellian category altogether), Democrats don't run pragmatists; they run ideologues—people with an explicit moral agenda. Just look at this year's party conventions: The Republicans talked about who Romney was and what he could do; the Democrats talked about abortion and same sex marriage. The Republican's hid their views on controversial moral issues and lost; the Democrats put them front and center and won.

The irony is that, if you look at polls on these issues, they still slightly favor traditional marriage and the pro-life position. There is no reason for Republicans to run from them and every reason for Democrats to fear invoking them. And yet they do it anyway.

In this year's presidential race the abortion issue raised its head again and again thanks to Republican politicians who, ill-equipped to address it when asked, tripped all over themselves and lost their elections. Two seats in the United States Senate fell into Democratic hands yesterday for one reason and one reason only: the candidates were simply incapable of articulating moral issues.

The difference between the two parties is that there is a depth of moral commitment among Democratic leaders that is lacking among their Republican colleagues. The average Democratic activist will fight and die for nationalized health care, the "right" to abortion, and most of them now will spill blood over the "right" of gays to marry. Although Republicans will argue the economic feasibility of the nationalized health care, when asked about the right to life or traditional marriage you get qualifications a mile long.

Democrats go into battle with the intention to come back with their shield or on it. Republicans too often go into battle with their tails between their legs.

This was evidenced repeatedly throughout the campaign. While spokesmen for the Obama campaign championed the "pro-choice" position unapologetically, whenever a Romney spokesman was asked about the careless remarks of Todd Akin or Richard Mourdock—or on Romney's position on Roe v. Wade, they went into prevent defense. They dissimulated on the issue itself and gave all the reasons why Romney's stated position on abortion wouldn't make any practical difference. The "practical" result of this, of course, is that people begin to doubt your sincerity and question the depth of your convictions.

The obvious response on the abortion issue would have been to shoot right back and attack Obama's history of supporting partial birth abortion, a procedure in which a full-term baby is partially delivered and then, through an incision in the back of the head, has its brains sucked out. This is an easy and effective response for a person even moderately competent in basic moral discourse, but for the soulless Republican political operatives now deployed to defend their candidates, it is a form of articulation foreign to them.

Republicans have lost their moral voice. They have tried to occupy what they perceive to be the high ground of abstract economic competency, only to cede the much higher moral ground to their liberal adversaries. They have abandoned what Richard Weaver once called the "Office of Assertion," and have settled into the Seat of Sophistry.

Republicans either need to stand for what they claim to believe in or admit they don't believe in what they claim to stand for—things like the sanctity of life, the integrity of marriage, and larger moral well-being of Americans.

If they take the first course, they will remain a viable political party. If they take the second course, they will not only become politically irrelevant; they will have lost their political soul.

My somewhat misanthropic endorsement of Romney

Maybe it's my age and the number of campaigns that I have seen in my lifetime, but the political cant has really gotten to me during this election. On one side you have MSNBC, where Obama can do no wrong and Romney is the child of the Devil. On the other side you have Fox News, where Romney can do no wrong and Obama is holding seances in the White House.

I say this not to try to take the fashionable moderate pose, which I find intensely tiresome. I'll admit watching Fox News more than MSNBC (which I hardly ever watch at all) because it shares a few more of my political predispositions. But I have gotten to the point where I simply cannot abide Sean Hannity, who gets more and more shrill as the election approaches. If I can't find another decent political show at that time, there is always another episode of Bonanza on the Western channel.

I have resorted, during this election season, to CNN, where I can enjoy good, honest, old-fashioned liberal bias. At least they're liberals who really think they're being objective.

I think what bothers me the most about the overreactions by conservatives is that politics for some of them has clearly become a religion. We expect this of liberals, who are largely secular, and so have need of a replacement religion. Politics, if it is suitably utopian—as modern secular liberalism is—suits this role nicely. They have "immanentized the eschaton," as Eric Vogelin once put it (in other words, grounded their essentially religious aspirations in the here and now). But real conservatism can never do this, even though people who call themselves conservatives (e.g., Hannity) do it on a daily basis.

I know that if Romney loses, I'm going to have numerous friends and acquaintances who put their heart and soul into trying to get the guy elected coming to me for counseling and advice. My counsel (and advice) to them can be stated in the following general formula:

"Get a life."

And I know with equal certainty that if Romney wins, they will be bouncing off the walls and will call me to make sure I know what they will then know about what has just happened: That what we have just seen is the arrival of the Blessed Hope Himself in all His glory. My advice to them will be similar to that I would have given them under the opposite conditions, and is best expressed in another similarly crafted expression:

"Get a life."

Conservatives should take their cues from people like Micheal Oakeshott, who saw the conservative disposition as primarily an attitude about life—one that eschews the casting of the temporal and transient as something ultimate and eternal. This is particularly true of Christian conservatives.

"To be conservative," said Oakeshott, "is to be disposed to think and behave in certain manners; it is to prefer certain kinds of conduct and certain conditions of human circumstances to others; it is to be disposed to make certain kinds of choices":

... To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss. [Emphasis mine]

In the current election, I think that being a conservative requires one to prefer Romney, and to choose him as president--not because he is going to bring about the Millennial Kingdom, but because he's better (or at least not as bad) as the other guy.

I will thoroughly enjoy watching the election returns tonight. But, after the question about who will actually win, the question I am asking myself today is which I would rather see: Rachel Maddow wringing her hands over an Obama loss, or Sean Hannity having a nervous breakdown over a Romney loss.

It is hard to judge between the two.

Keep procedures where babies brains are sucked out safe and legal

The Republicans need to offer Democrats a deal: They'll stop supporting the campaigns of candidates who think that killing an unborn child who was the product of rape should be illegal if the Democrats will promise not to support the campaigns of candidates who support partial birth abortion, a procedure in which a doctor partially delivers a baby and sucks out its brains.

Of course that would be difficult, given that the Democrats platform would prevent making it illegal and President Obama has supported keeping it legal.

The Clinch: The last presidential debate

Clearly, Obama won the third debate. The question is whether it was a Pyrrhic victory. On points, I don't think there is any question that Obama won and won fairly easily--largely because he was more aggressive. The question is whether it matters.

Several observations: 

• Whatever happened to Libya? The glaring thing about the debate was Romney's decision not to mention Libya. And it was very obviously his decision. It was clearly intentional. It floors me that Romney did not use this, since it couldn't have failed to score. As the debate went on, I kept thinking, I wonder, since Romney got the coin toss, if that meant he was speaking last. That would be the perfect time to launch the criticism, since Obama could not respond. What a brilliant tactic! So when Obama gave his closing remarks and it want back to Romney, I thought, okay here goes. He's going to nail him. But ... nothing. I think this was a huge missed opportunity. 
• The gravitas game. The Romney's clear strategy coming into the debate was to look Commander-in-Chiefish. I do think he succeeded here. He looked an awful lot like the guy who already was. I think Charles Krauthammer was right: Obama looked small; Romney looked large. Chris Wallace made the remark that if he had been parachuted in from another planet into the audience of this debate, he would have thought that it was Romney who was president, not Obama. This was an atmospheric consideration that does not get detected by debate judges, but it matters nonetheless. 
• A kinder and gentler toughness. Then there was Romney's peace offensive. If you put this together with the fact that Romney toned down the aggressiveness all around, I think this bolsters David Gergen's contention that Romney was trying to appeal to women voters. All of the Romney's agreements with Obama and his mentions of peace don't really get my blood pumping, but maybe Gergen's right and it will do that for women. If it does, it will have been the first time anyone looked more like a good commander-in-chief by sounding dovish.
• They still use bayonets, don't they? I winced when Obama said, in response to Romney's charge that the number of ships has gone down since 1917, that we don't use horses and bayonets any more either. I say this comes back to haunt him. It won't help him in the shipyards of North Carolina--or in the Navy at large. If I were the Romney campaign, I would immediately get out an ad, showing a series of Marines (who still use bayonets), saying, "Mr. President, I still use a bayonet."
• And that's why I want to talk about ... the economy. Romney repeatedly turned this issue back to his chief issue. I think this helped him.
• The staredown. I know these things aren't supposed to matter, but, thanks to this new split-screen view where we see both candidates facial expressions at every moment (will someone please pass a law banning this?), I think Romney won the grimace battle. Romney has a strange kind of smile that I don't find particularly attractive, but people are apparently used to it. Tonight, Obama unveiled The Glare. It was this intense, head-stuck-forward, jaw-jutting grimace that he was clearly trained to use by his handlers in this debate. I thought it was kind of creepy. I can just see John Stewart making fun of this. I don't think it looked good.

I'm also wondering if this was some kind of clinch. Romney figures he's ahead on points and all he has to do in this round is come out roughly even. We'll see.

Why NOT politicize Benghazi?

We heard once again in last night's debate that the Romney campaign should not politicize the terrorist attack in Benghazi that was not a terrorist attack then, but which is now that we know more, even though we still don't have a complete enough investigation into what happened there to say exactly what it was even though that didn't stop us from saying that it was a protest over a movie.

Okay, well let's just say Romney is politicizing the issue. The first question then is how Mr. Romney is politicizing the issue any more than people in Obama's administration already politicized it when they portrayed it as some sort of popular protest over a movie in order to make it agree with the Obama political narrative about the improved U.S. relations in the Middle East.

The second question is what moral rule we are employing here to say that anyone shouldn't politicize it. Is the rule that we shouldn't politicize any incident in which Americans are being killed overseas? Where were the Democrats who are saying that now when George McGovern ran an entire campaign over the Vietman War, an incident in which many, many more people were dying than died in Benghazi.

In fact, where were these self-righteous Democrats when they themselves were criticizing George Bush over the Iraq War? Weren't people dying there?

The Democrats (and the Republicans, for that matter) politicize everything that it is to their advantage to politicize. So why not politicize this?

Big Bird eats twice his weight in taxpayer money every day

Why are we subsidizing with taxpayer money a bird that can't even tell you what kind he is? In fact, Big Bird is the very personification of species confusion. According to Wikipedia, he is officially a canary. But when asked on on episode of Sesame Street if he was a cassowary, he replied, "I'm more of a condor."

A condor? Aren't they a kind of vulture? Don't they eat dead things? We're borrowing money from China to subsidize a talking yellow buzzard?

In 1976, he told host Peter Marshall on the Hollywood Squares that he was a lark. In one film he is called an Ibis. Wikipedia says he looks more like a chicken. We have made an educational icon out of a taxonomically-challenged bird. Big Bird deserves to go the way of the raphus cucullatus.

In case you're wondering, that's a dodo.

Headline of the Day: "Does Obamacare cover butt-kickings?"

Read it here.

Al Gore: The altitude hurt Obama. No kidding

Romney's Finest Hour

When James Carville tells a Democratic presidential candidate in the post debate analysis that he "didn't bring his A game," it's bad. In fact, almost all the Obama apologists were left defenseless after last night's debate in which Romney dominated Obama at every turn.

I say "almost all" because there were still a few hardy souls in Obama's campaign who held forth manfully in the spin room after the debate. One of them was David Axelrod, who did his best to answer Candy Crowley's post-debate question, "David, what happened?"

David Gergen declared, "This is now a horse race." Wolf Blitzer was left without much to say. Even Rachel Maddow, was relatively subdued. Rachel Maddow. Subdued. I'm going to cherish the moment.

Folks, these are the people Obama depends on to spin these things so that Obama looks good. They were clearly embarrassed. I think this debate was the most dominating performance by any candidate in a modern presidential debate. Yes, Reagan's "youth and inexperience" remark won him a clear cut victory over Walter Mondale in 1984, but it was just one line. The rest of that debate was fairly pedestrian. What sets Romney's win over Obama apart was that he dominated his opponent over almost the entire debate.

There wasn't just one line that distinguished Romney, but multiple lines--and they kept coming.

• "Mr. President, you're entitled to your own plane and your own house, but not your own facts..."
• "Sorry Jim, I'm going to stop the subsidy to PBS, I'm going to stop other things. I like PBS, I love Big Bird, I  actually like you too, but I'm not going to keep spending money on things to China to pay for it. That's number one."
• "I will not reduce the share paid by high income individuals. I know that you and your running mate keep on saying that, and I know it's a popular thing to say with a lot of people, but it's just not the case. Look, I've got five boys. I'm used to people saying something that's not always true, but just keep on repeating it, but ultimately hoping I'll believe it."
• You say that you get a deduction for taking a plant overseas? I've been in business for 25 years. I have no idea what you're talking about."
• "I don't want to go down the path of Spain. I want to put more Americans to work."
• "It's frankly not moral for my generation to keep spending massively more than we take in, knowing burdens will be passed on to the next generation and paying interest and principal all their lives."

And so on and so forth for an hour and a half.

Obama had a few memorable lines, but unfortunately one of them was, "You know, four years ago, I said that I'm not a perfect man, and I wouldn't be a perfect president, and that's probably a promise Governor Romney probably thinks I've kept." To borrow a line from Winston Churchill, Obama is a modest man with much to be modest about.

From the very beginning Romney was on his game. There were several things he did which set him apart in this debate:

• He used personal stories. Obama only got personal only once, and that was when he invoked his grandmother. That was it. The rest was wonkishness. Obama needs to show his human side.
• He said things clearly, simply, and memorably. Romney has always been efficient in this presentations. But last night he was ruthlessly efficient. I wondered if it was just me, but as I listened to the debate, I didn't have to expend much energy to hear what Romney was saying, but I had to focus very carefully to understand Obama's points. This was not good for the President.
• He was aggressive. Romney seemed like the master disciplining his student. And Obama just stood there and nodded! Obama returned fire a few times but, but he seemed overwhelmed by the amount of fire he was taking from Romney.
• He was informed. Whether his facts were correct is for the fact-checkers, but Romney repeatedly threw out simple statistics, and point by point statements--with thankfully only three to five points.
• He was presidential. And this is surprising. Few people can be as aggressive as Romney without looking mean. He didn't look mean. He just looked authoritative.

He even managed to use the opportunity to congratulate Obama on his anniversary to humanize himself and get a good-natured laugh.

A CBS post-debate poll of uncommitted voters had Romney winning 46% to 22%. That's over 2-to-1. CNN's poll of uncommitted, registered voters gave it to Romney 67% to 25%.

That's arithmetic.

As one commentator said, this debate was not about Barack Obama; it was about Mitt Romney. And all he had to do was look like he was on the same level as the President. That's the one advantage the challenger has. But Romney did much more than that. He won the debate decisively, and, perhaps more importantly, he won the post-debate analysis. Even Obama's allies were left admitting he had been whooped.

This will result in new momentum for what has been a lackluster campaign. It will re-energize his campaign workers. And it will open up pocketbooks.

Live-blogging the Presidential Debate Here

LIVE BLOGGING HERE! SCROLL DOWN

I will be live-blogging tonight's Presidential Debate  at Chris Jeub's debate website with several others, including Andrew Pudewa.

The address is http://www.chrisjeub.com/presidential-debates. I notice that there is a 404 error at that site right now, but I assume that will change closer to debate time. If there is a better address, I will post it here for those interested.

UPDATE: The link above still does not work. If it is not working by debate time, I will be live-blogging on this page.

9:10: OBAMA: We've heard the "luckiest guy" in the world thing before. Auto industry again (we heard a lot about this at the convention). "Question is not where we've been but where we're going." ROMNEY: Great response by Romney on Obama's anniversary. Romney scores on the personal story he told. Five points is still too many points (he needs three), but it's better than the 50 something he had in the primary. Solid beginning for Romney.

9:15: Emphasizing middle income Americans a great point for Romney. It addresses his weakness, and he doesn't sound defensive in making the point. He needs to avoid sounding defensive after his "47%" debacle and so far he's doing it. Good score for Romney on Obama's oil policies. He's on the offensive--great for Romney.

9:20: Obama charging Romney with too many tax cuts? This is supposed to be damaging to Romney? Obama making telling technical points (and not illegitimate ones), but they're going to be a little too technical. Romney's corrections (whether they're accurate or not) at least sound good. He sounds good correcting Obama. Romney again goes personal, talking about how he's used . I will not under any circumstances raise taxes on middle income Americans." Good for Romney, again.

9:25: Romney again gets concrete: talks about a small business guy he knows and what high tax rates do to him. So far, Obama hasn't talked about a real person yet. Romney successfully turns Obama's point around appealing to jobs. Obama answers in technical terms again. He's using abstractions: Romney's using stories. Stories beat statistics every time.

9:27: All the discussion is on Romney's plan and Romney is convincingly defending it. What is Obama offering? He hasn't made a case for the future he said at the debate's beginning that was so important.

9:32: The deficit a "moral problem." Another point to Romney. "Is the program so critical that it's worth borrowing money from China to pay for it." Great line! He's not going to pay for PBS, but likes Big Bird. President promised to cut budget in half, but doubled it. Good point by Obama on the deficit he faced when coming in from the Bush administration.

9:35: Romney looking authoritative in calling Obama on the carpet on saying he would cut the deficit but raising it instead. "You raise taxes, you kill jobs." I get more money by more people paying jobs. Romney making the case for his plan and sounding optimistic in a Reagan sort of way in doing it.

9:40: "I've been in business for ... years, and I don't know what you're talking about" on tax credits for moving jobs overseas. Romney sounding like he knows what he's talking about and the President doesn't. "Let states do this."

9:47: Obama finally refers to a real person (Grandma). Great defense by Obama of Social Security (because it puts a face on the issue), but it doesn't necessarily tell against Romney. Romney calls Obama on Medicare cutting funding for current retirees. Putting back $716 billion in Medicare. Romney sounds more pro Medicare than Obama. Good move. Obama attacks Romney on voucher idea on Medicare. Costing $6,000/year per retiree. Obama defending Grandma again. Romney needs an old person to match Grandma, but he hasn't introduced one yet. Romney needs a Grandma, quick.

9:50: Romney's response good because it sounds simpler than Obama's point, but this issue is not a good one to stay long on for those viewers from Florida. There's just no way to phrase it from Romney's perspective, no matter how good the plan is for Grandma. Grandma just wants her Medicare. Romney wants to stay on Medicare. Noooooo! This is not Romney's strong suit, even though I agree with him.

9:55: "I wouldn't designate five banks as too big to fail." "Try to get a mortgage these days." "I want to bring back housing and good jobs." The memorable lines are coming from Romney.

9:58: "Expensive things hurt families." "An economic crisis at the dinner table." "It (Obamacare) has killed jobs." Romney keeps saying thinks simply and memorably. Obama using subordinate clauses. BAD MOVE.

10:02: Obama defending Obamacare. Obama: "Gov. Romney did a good thing..." Great criticism by Romney on Obama not being bipartisan. Romney sounding convincing on favorably comparing his Massachusett's health care plan to Obamacare.

10:10: The government is not effective in bring down costs on almost anything." Romney scoring points on board of bureaucrats making medical decisions for people. Obama denies they can do this. Charges Romney's plan doesn't take account of pre-existing conditions. "Is Romney keeping secret his plan to replace Obamacare because it's so good?" Good line.

10:13: So far nothing about the 47%. Is Romney not going to bring it up? So far, none of the gotcha stuff. This may be the most substantive presidential debates ever.

10: 17: Romney uses taking care of those who cannot care for themselves into the religious liberty point. Romney talking about happiness, dreams, making the case for freedom, putting Obama on the wrong side of the issue. College graduates can't find work, more food stamps. Good points.

10:20: Obama goes after Ryan budget. Doesn't answer Romney's list of Obama's economic sins. Obama's been allowed to talk for three more minutes total than Romney.

10:28: $90 billion would hire ... teachers. Good point. Romney winning on government control issue. Making education more effective and efficient. Massachusett's schools among most successful in the nation. Good points. Romney will be bipartisan. We need leadership. Romney arguing obvious, irrefutable points. Repealing Obamacare won't be popular with Democrats Romney wants to be bipartisan with. Good points on both sides.

10:30: This has been a wonkish, but substantive debate and Obama gives wonkish conclusion. Obama admits being imperfect, but has good intentions. Weak appeal: "If you re-elect me, I'll be just as sincere and well-intentioned as I was during the first term." [my words] Is this the best he can do? Romney points to specific be effects of Obama first term, talks specifically about what he will do. Romney has made clear points throughout the debate, saying "First, ... Second, ... Third." He does it here. Still wonkish, but clearer points.

Final Comments: Romney clearly won this debate. He was more energetic, more confident, clearer and simpler in his points, was on the offensive the whole time (in stark contrast to the media coverage of the campaign), used more personification. I don't think there was a single area in which Obama did better than Romney. Romney didn't even need to win to win. He just had to hold his own and look equally good as the President. That's all. He did more than that. He needed to exceed expectations, he did more than that. This was Romney's finest hour.

Is the traditional lobe of the conservative brain becoming a vestigial political organ?

I normally find David Brooks a bit maddening. One day he says something really insightful and the next he will say something so boneheaded as to warrant reparative cultural therapy. Last Monday was one of his good days.

In his column, "The Conservative Mind," Brooks recalls the conservative days of yore in which those who wore that political label were not only concerned with numbers. In addition to economic calculation, conservatives were also concerned with economy in the ancient sense of that word. Oikos meant "home" and nemein meant "management." The modern neoconservative would bristle at this, and warn of the dangers of government intrusion into private life.

The trouble is, this is all they worry about—which is why we worry about them. Here is Brooks, who refers to the old National Review, which, before its present incarnation as a most libertarian periodical, once bestrode economic and cultural conservatism:

On the one side, there were the economic conservatives. These were people that anybody following contemporary Republican politics would be familiar with. They spent a lot of time worrying about the way government intrudes upon economic liberty. They upheld freedom as their highest political value. They admired risk-takers. They worried that excessive government would create a sclerotic nation with a dependent populace.  

But there was another sort of conservative, who would be less familiar now. This was the traditional conservative, intellectual heir to Edmund Burke, Russell Kirk, Clinton Rossiter and Catholic social teaching. This sort of conservative didn’t see society as a battleground between government and the private sector. Instead, the traditionalist wanted to preserve a society that functioned as a harmonious ecosystem, in which the different layers were nestled upon each other: individual, family, company, neighborhood, religion, city government and national government. They may know politics, but the idea of the polis is foreign to them. 

... The economic conservatives were in charge of the daring ventures that produced economic growth. The traditionalists were in charge of establishing the secure base — a society in which families are intact, self-discipline is the rule, children are secure and government provides a subtle hand.

The is was the conservatism of Ronald Reagan, who himself was a product of the William F. Buckley, Jr.'s magazine. Brooks argues that this kind of conservatism is in eclipse. In eclipse, yet, but not deceased.
I would argue the even stronger position that any conservatism that concentrates exclusively on economic liberalism is not conservatism at all. When conservatism evacuates itself of the principles of cultural conservation, it has become something else altogether.

Which is just another way of saying that any conservatism that does not conserve should call itself something else.

Obamacare in one sentence

Here is Dr. Barbara Bellar, an Illinois state senate candidate, summing up Obamacare:

So let me get this straight: ... We're going to be gifted with a health care plan we are forced to purchase, and fined if we don't, which purportedly covers at least 10 million more people without adding a single new doctor, but which provides for 16,000 new IRS agents, written by a committee whose chairman says he doesn't understand it, passed by a Congress that didn't read it (but exempted themselves from it), and signed by a President who smokes, with funding administered by a Treasury chief who didn't pay his taxes, for which we will be taxed for four years before the benefits take effect, by a government which is already bankrupted Social Security and Medicare, all to be overseen by a Surgeon General who is obese, and financed by a country that's broke.

HT: Catholicvote.org

Reviving Romney: Five things the Republican presidential campaign should do

The Republicans made a mistake using their convention for the primary purpose of trying to show that Mitt Romney is just like the rest of us. He's not. Get over it. They could have done the family thing and all that and showed how he's nice and caring. No problem. But everyone knows he's a rich guy. A smart rich guy, and a rich guy who knows how to get things done. There's no problem with that.

But convention organizers missed a huge opportunity to tell Americans what Romney and Ryan were going to do for the country. Or, better yet, to tell the country that they were going to tell them over the course of the ensuing weeks.

The eulogies are already being written about the campaign, but in reality it is far from over. Newer polls show Obama's convention bounce deteriorating and the race tightening in key states. But something is going to have to change with the campaign because there is just no coherent message coming out of it right now.

Here are five things Mitt Romney should do:

1. "Location, location, location" is not just a sales slogan. In every town he stops in, Romney needs to go to the now desolate location of some business that has closed down sometime during Obama's tenure and give his campaign speech there.
2. Simplify the message. Take Bill Kristol's advice: Begin every campaign speech with the statement: "This country is going bankrupt." Then follow it up with a positive message like: "We're going to bring America back" (Okay, it sounds cliched, but the high priced consultants should be able to jazz it up a little).
3. Walk softly and let Paul Ryan carry a big stick. Use Paul Ryan like vice presidential candidates have always been used: as the attack dog. It wasn't inappropriate to criticize the current administration for its failings in foreign policy after the embassy killings, but it was not a good idea for Romney to do it. He should have stood up and acted presidential and expressed sorrow for the loss of lives on the day it happened while Paul Ryan was delivering the blows. Then, next day, Romney should have explained how he would have handled it, while Ryan continued to attack the administration. Do that for the rest of the week, then get back to the economic message.
4. You can't ignore events. The Middle East is in crisis. Get used to it. He should announce that he is going to make a major foreign policy address next Monday (he should have done it this last Monday) and give the two things he is going to do to make America more respected around the world.
5. Flesh out your main message. By the end of next week the protesters will get tired and need a breather. At the end of that week, announce that, starting the next week, you are going to announce three things you are going to do for the economy. Announce that you are going to announce it, and then announce one every Monday for three weeks. Have Ryan there to underscore the importance of the announcement.

Right now the media by and large is not covering the campaign; they're just lying in wait for gaffes. Part of the problem is that nothing is happening. There's nothing new. Just going around repeating what was said during the convention doesn't cut it. Romney needs to make something happen. The media only covers things when there is an event, and an event in which something new is going to be said or done. Doing this will give reporters something else to cover other than simply look for mistakes.

A reason for Republicans to be thankful

It is now time for Republicans to pause and reflect on their good fortune in not having nominated the gaffe-plagued Newt Gingrich.

Obama elaborates on his courageous public stand on the Chicago teachers strike

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Obama's courage (relative to the people who actually have to pay the price for his inaction)

Mark Stein, on Obama's foreign policy--or lack thereof:

In a rare appearance on a non-showbiz outlet, President Obama, winging it on Telemundo, told his host that Egypt was neither an ally nor an enemy. I can understand why it can be difficult to figure out, but here’s an easy way to tell: Bernard Lewis, the great scholar of Islam, said some years ago that America risked being seen as harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend. At the Benghazi consulate, the looters stole “sensitive” papers revealing the names of Libyans who’ve cooperated with the United States. Oh, well. As the president would say, obviously our hearts are with you. 

Meanwhile, in Pakistan, the local doctor who fingered bin Laden to the Americans sits in jail. In other words, while America’s clod vice president staggers around pimping limply that only Obama had the guts to take the toughest decision anyone’s ever had to take, the poor schlub who actually did have the guts, who actually took the tough decision in a part of the world where taking tough decisions can get you killed, languishes in a cell because Washington would not lift a finger to help him.

Read the rest here.

Obama's Economic Policy

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Obama's Foreign Policy

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