The granting of Secret Service protection following Mitt Romney’s decisive Florida victory did not prevent him from immediately shooting himself in the foot. “I’m not concerned about the very poor,” he explained. “My campaign is focused on middle-income Americans.”

It is problematic for a politician to declare any group of citizens beneath his attention — either the bottom 1 percent or the top 1 percent. But those in the top 1 percent, at least, can fend for themselves.

There are few things more powerful in politics than the confirmation of a stereotype, which is Romney’s main political risk. A wealthy man can prove that he empathizes with average people — see the examples of aristocrats such as Teddy or Franklin Roosevelt. But Romney has yet to prove it. He could start by making the economic advancement of the very poor a central concern of his campaign.

Republicans are still getting accustomed to Romney as their nominee. For many, the failure of Newt Gingrich was like sidestepping a falling anvil. It has inspired more relief than jubilation. Now Republicans are left to ponder the Romney-Obama matchup.

Romney’s strengths: His political skills — his mastery of policy details and his ability to extemporaneously explain his views — are superior to those of recent nominees such as Bob Dole and John McCain. He is seldom stumped or flustered. He learns from his mistakes. His responses to attacks on his personal wealth, for example, were poor initially but quickly got better. He eventually proved himself capable of tough attacks on Gingrich — a distressing but important qualification in a presidential contender. Romney is a fairly moderate candidate who emerged from a conservative primary process, giving him the ability to appeal to independents in the general election. He can claim the role of economic fixer at a time when there is much to be fixed. Solid majorities of registered voters view Romney as possessing the leadership qualities to be president and as capable of managing the government effectively.

Full post here

                          

In politics, the timing is often the message. On Jan. 20 — three days before the annual March for Life — the Obama administration announced its final decision that Catholic universities, hospitals and charities will be compelled to pay for health insurance that covers sterilization, contraceptives and abortifacients.

Preparing for the march, Catholic students gathered for Mass at Verizon Center. The faithful held vigil at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. Knights of Columbus and bishops arrived to trudge in the cold along the Mall. All came to Washington in time for their mocking.

Catholic leaders are still trying to process the implications of this ambush. The president had every opportunity to back down from confrontation. In the recent ­Hosanna-Tabor ruling, a unanimous Supreme Court reaffirmed a broad religious autonomy right rooted in the Constitution. Obama could have taken the decision as justification for retreat.

And it would have been a minor retreat. The administration was on the verge of mandating nearly universal contraceptive coverage through Obamacare without public notice. There would have been no controversy at all if President Obama had simply exempted religious institutions and ministries. But the administration insisted that the University of Notre Dame and St. Mary’s Hospital be forced to pay for the privilege of violating their convictions.

Obama chose to substantially burden a religious belief, by the most intrusive means, for a less-than-compelling state purpose — a marginal increase in access to contraceptives that are easily available elsewhere. The religious exemption granted by Obamacare is narrower than anywhere else in federal law — essentially covering the delivery of homilies and the distribution of sacraments. Serving the poor and healing the sick are regarded as secular pursuits — a determination that would have surprised Christianity’s founder.

Full post here

                          

Francoise, age 16, talks quietly, revealing a shy smile only after praise for her tight cornrows. While walking to school four years ago, she and some classmates were captured by the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA). The girls were distributed to soldiers as “wives.” In the mornings, Francoise cooked. In the afternoons, she carried packs on the march. When she tried to escape, the soldiers melted a water container and poured the plastic on her shoulders. Once, when the fighters saw two infants along the path, they crushed them with a pestle. “I witnessed that,” she says.

She recalls seeing Joseph Kony “maybe once a year.” Kony is the leader of the LRA and perhaps the most hated and hunted man on earth. His followers, she explains, think that “he is a supernatural being. He has a power over them.”

Francoise describes a six-week walk to an LRA camp in a remote part of the neighboring Central African Republic (CAR). Then the sounds of an attacking plane and helicopter. In the chaos, she escaped, arriving home just before Christmas.

Her story is eyewitness confirmation of an important event. During the summer, Kony recalled his commanders to the CAR for his first major leadership meeting in two years. On Sept. 12, forces of Uganda’s military (known as the UPDF) scattered the LRA fighters. Kony survived and fled. But the net around him tightens.

Full post here

                          

Some persistence is merely doggedness. Newt Gingrich’s persistence is a form of confidence — the firm belief that, given enough time and enough debates, his skills will prevail. He knows how to probe an opponent’s weakness, how to humiliate a journalist, how to employ an applause line and how to parry an uncomfortable question. The anti-Romneys who came before him were chosen more or less at random. Gingrich has earned his surge that produced a 13-point victory in South Carolina on Saturday.

Yet Gingrich is more than a performer. He is the GOP’s chief diagnostician, specializing in the vivid explanation of public challenges. Other candidates struggle to recall three points on a 3-by-5 card. Gingrich struggles to suppress the dissertation that might emerge at any moment. The ability to think in public is a rare political gift — more common in Britain than in America. Bill Clinton would shine during prime minister’s question time. So would Gingrich.

But Gingrich regularly gets into trouble when moving from analysis to prescription. Nearly every problem that crosses the threshold of his attention becomes historically urgent, requiring a fundamental solution. This is the reason for his most revealing verbal habit. Systems are “fundamentally broken” and require “fundamental change.” Opposing views are “fundamentally a lie” and “fundamentally alien to American tradition.” Only the biggest ideas are sufficient to his self-regard.

So Gingrich diagnoses the genuine threat of terrorism and radical Islam. Then he calls for a federal law against sharia, which would address a nonexistent crisis while stigmatizing an entire faith.

Full post here

                          

It is commonly argued that Mitt Romney has benefited from a weak Republican field, which is true. And that the attacks of his opponents have been late and diffuse. True and true.

But the political accomplishment of Willard Mitt Romney should not be underestimated. The moderate, technocratic former governor of a liberal state is poised to secure the nomination of the most monolithically conservative Republican Party of modern history.

Some of this improbable achievement can be attributed to Romney’s skills as a candidate. In 14 debates, he delivered one gaffe (the $10,000 bet) and once lost his temper (with Rick Perry) — neither lapse particularly damaging. Under a barrage of awkward formats and dopey questions, Romney has been calm, knowledgeable and reassuring. The slickest network anchor could not have done better.

Romney is the varsity — a far better candidate than, say, Bob Dole or John McCain. A Republican nominating process that swerved again and again toward silliness — alternately elevating for consideration Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann and Herman Cain — seems ready to settle on a serious, accomplished, credible candidate. Republicans, it turns out, are choleric and fractious — but not suicidal.

The nominating process has also revealed Romney’s limitations. It would be awkward for anyone this stiff to pose as a working-class stiff, and Romney should not try. But if he gains the nomination, Romney’s rival in connecting with average voters will not be Bill Clinton. It will be professor Barack Obama. Again, Romney benefits from the luck of the draw.

Full Post Here

                          

The outcome in Iowa was both electorally inconclusive and politically clarifying. There is a Republican Party, supporting Mitt Romney, that wants to win an election. And there is a Republican Party, supporting Ron Paul, that wants to make a point about limited government.

This division is not entirely ideological. There are rock-ribbed conservatives who believe that the highest political priority is the early retirement of President Obama. There are evangelicals — uncomfortable with libertarianism and the foreign policy of Charles Lindbergh — who have nevertheless joined Paul’s protest against swollen government.

Based on recent history, the party of electability will eventually prevail. Activists rooting for the new (and more extreme) Barry Goldwater will need to explain how he avoids the political fate of the first one.

But perhaps the most surprising result of the Iowa caucuses was the return of compassionate conservatism from the margins of the Republican stage to its center. Rick Santorum is not just an outspoken social conservative; he is the Republican candidate who addresses the struggles of blue-collar workers and the need for greater economic mobility. He talks not only of the rights of the individual but also of the health of social institutions, particularly the family. He draws out the public consequences of a belief in human dignity — a pro-life view applied to the unborn and to victims of AIDS in Africa.

Full Post Here

                          

My prediction: Mitt Romney in first, with the stable, unspectacular support of party regulars that has survived every fit of anti-Romney exuberance. Rick Santorum in second, taking much of Mike Huckabee’s evangelical and social conservative support from last caucus season. Ron Paul narrowly behind in third, with a strong showing from supporters whose ardor makes them impervious to the Iowa cold.

After a less-than-overwhelming Iowa win, Romney hopes Newt Gingrich and the two Ricks (Perry and Santorum) persevere until the South Carolina primary to again split the conservative vote. Gingrich stays in through South Carolina and Florida in order to hear himself at GOP debates. Santorum’s support, though not sufficient to gain the nomination, proves durable. The former Senator is neither a novice nor a Tea Party caricature. Displaying rare policy creativity, he talks about the need for economic mobility among the disadvantaged and defends foreign assistance as essential to American interests.

Meanwhile, Tim Pawlenty will continue to kick himself for his early departure from a winnable race.

Post Published Here

                          

Let us count the ways in which the nomination of Ron Paul would be groundbreaking for the GOP.

No other recent candidate hailing from the party of Lincoln has accused Abraham Lincoln of causing a “senseless” war and ruling with an “iron fist.” Or regarded Ronald Reagan’s presidency a “dramatic failure.” Or proposed the legalization of prostitution and heroin use. Or called America the most “aggressive, extended and expansionist” empire in world history. Or promised to abolish the CIA, depart NATO and withdraw military protection from South Korea. Or blamed terrorism on American militarism, since “they’re terrorists because we’re occupiers.” Or accused the American government of a Sept. 11 “coverup” and called for an investigation headed by Dennis Kucinich. Or described the killing of Osama bin Laden as “absolutely not necessary.” Or affirmed that he would not have sent American troops to Europe to end the Holocaust. Or excused Iranian nuclear ambitions as “natural,” while dismissing evidence of those ambitions as “war propaganda.” Or published a newsletter stating that the 1993 World Trade Center attack might have been “a setup by the Israeli Mossad,” and defending former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard David Duke and criticizing the “evil of forced integration.”

Each of these is a disqualifying scandal. Taken together, a kind of grandeur creeps in. The ambition of Paul and his supporters is breathtaking. They wish to erase 158 years of Republican Party history in a single political season, substituting a platform that is isolationist, libertarian, conspiratorial and tinged with racism. It won’t happen. But some conservatives seem paradoxically drawn to the radicalism of Paul’s project. They prefer their poison pill covered in glass and washed down with battery acid. It proves their ideological manhood.

Full Post Here

                          

Oh, how I love humanity,

With love so pure and pringlish,
And how I hate the horrid French,

Who never will be English!

— G.K. Chesterton

Under the strain of the debt crisis, Europe is revealing cracks it has long tried to plaster, paint and ignore.

British Prime Minister David Cameron’s recent veto of a tighter European fiscal union brought angry criticism. Some continental legislators called for a European Union without the inconvenience of the United Kingdom. French leaders, with their own country’s credit rating under threat of downgrade, tried to direct the attention of rating agencies to British economic failures — a blame-shifting strategy practiced by guilty children on playgrounds everywhere. “There are few more comic spectacles,” responded the Daily Mail, “than Frenchmen throwing fits of Gallic pique against the victors of Waterloo.” In hours of national need, England still turns to the Duke of Wellington. History persists.

British officials report that diplomatic tempers have begun to cool. Few contemplate a decisive break along the English Channel. The United Kingdom will continue its decades-long tightrope walk — seeking free access to a single European market without joining a single European superstate.

Full Post Here

                          

As the heroes of the Cold War walk off into the mist — Ronald Reagan, then John Paul II, now Vaclav Havel — each departure makes that world more distant and foreign. But it is too early for forgetfulness, which would also be ingratitude.

Once in a nightmare, European dissidents lived in prison, in whole nations that were prisons. They were confined to mental hospitals by governments sustained through the promotion of mass delusion. They were forced to make confessions of imagined crimes by regimes that were criminal enterprises.

And then the government of Czechoslovakia went a step too far. In 1976, it arrested a band called The Plastic People of the Universe for offenses against cultural conformity. This was a perfect symbol of communism: a system that could not tolerate the unauthorized singing of songs. The regime’s stupidity undermined its capacity to intimidate. Havel — a countercultural intellectual and rock fan — co-founded the Charter 77 human rights movement. Never has bad popular music been put to better use.

In history’s great refutation of historical pessimism, Europe’s nightmare turned out to be a “fairy tale” — a phrase Havel used to describe his experience. On Oct. 27, 1989, Havel was sent to prison for the fourth time. That December, 300,000 Czechs turned out in ­Wenceslas Square to chant, “Havel to the Castle!” By New Year’s Day, Havel could declare, “People, your government has returned to you!” In February, he addressed a joint session of Congress as the leader of a free Czechoslovakia. It was four months from prisoner to visiting president.

Havel helped overthrow communism by discrediting its central tenet. Scientific socialism taught that history is the outworking of massive economic and social forces that the individual could not hope to budge. Ideals, Marx sniffed, were “phantoms formed in the human brain.” As Winston Churchill might have said of Havel: Some phantom. Some brain. Havel relentlessly exposed communist ideology as a confidence game, a Ponzi scheme, dependent on broad deference to obvious lies. One ideal — a commitment to truth — proved to be a lever long enough to move the world.

Reading back over Havel’s landmark 1978 essay, “The Power of the Powerless,” is like wading through molasses scattered with diamonds. The intellectual jargon is thick — and then comes a crystalline phrase, a perfectly polished insight. Communist regimes require people to “live within a lie,” demanding dehumanizing rituals of loyalty. He describes his country as plastered with slogans but lacking in genuine belief. “Each person,” he says, “somehow succumbs to a profane trivialization of his inherent humanity.” They drift together “down the river of pseudolife.”

Yet in a society ruled by lies, truth gains a “singular, explosive, incalculable political power.” The desire to live authentically is the equivalent of a fifth column — a revolution hidden in a whole society. Truth advances in a political speech, in a hunger strike, in a play, in a song. “It is a bacteriological weapon, so to speak,” says Havel, “utilized when conditions are ripe by a single civilian to disarm an entire division.” Havel was a historical prophet of the first order — and the fulfillment of his own prophesy.

“Living within the truth,” according to Havel, is an inherently moral enterprise. It requires sacrifice, which presupposes a “sense of responsibility” for others — a belief in love, friendship and compassion. In the company of John Paul II and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Havel believed that political renewal starts in moral and personal renewal. In one letter from prison he wrote, “But who should begin? Who should break this vicious circle? The only possible place to begin is with myself. . . . Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost.”

Full Post Here