Rick Santorum swept the Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado caucuses last night. Enough ink has been spilled on Rick’s “big night,” which indeed it was, and I think the political implications are fairly obvious: it will put increasing pressure on Newt Gingrich to get out of the race to leave just one non-Romney (whereas I incorrectly predicted that the pressure would be the other way because, frankly, I didn’t see this coming). It’s true that Mitt Romney spent no resources in Minnesota and Missouri, and he would be expected to shrug off those losses for that reason, though the magnitude of the losses was significant. After all, if Romney spent no money in those contests, then that means that he and Santorum spent similar amounts of money — leading to Santorum more than doubling Romney’s vote in Missouri (55 percent to 25 percent) with another major drubbing in Minnesota (45 percent to 17 percent, with Ron Paul taking second with 27 percent). But as a resident of Colorado, that’s the caucus I want to talk about. I attended my local caucus, but since it’s in Boulder, there were only about 200 people there. Also, since it’s in Boulder, it is not reflective of the larger, more conservative parts of the state. That’s why the results at my caucus location had Romney just barely beating Ron Paul, with Santorum and Newt Gingrich a distant third and fourth. Like I said, not representative of more Republican areas of the state — and obviously not representative of the more conservative caucus-goers in Minnesota and Missouri. Although Santorum’s victory in Colorado was narrower than in the other two caucus states last night, winning 40 percent to 35 percent over Romney, with Newt Gingrich taking 13 percent and Ron Paul taking 12 percent, anything other than a Romney win here is an important surprise. Rick Santorum did have a couple of high-profile endorsements, such as from former Congressmen Tom Tancredo and Bob Schaffer. But many big guns were out for Romney, including the popular former governor Bill Owens, former Senators Hank Brown and Wayne Allard, former Congressman Bob Beauprez, and current Attorney General John Suthers. Robo-calls featuring recorded voices of many of the above were received with annoying frequency across the state in the prior 48 hours. I got at least two robo-calls featuring Mitt Romney and two more from Ann Romney. Furthermore, Colorado was one of the strongest early pro-Romney states during the 2008 Republican primary contest, with Romney taking 60 percent of the vote, more than tripling John McCain’s 18 percent second-place finish. And the state Republican Party organized a live conference call (which I listened to) during which the very popular New Jersey Governor Chris Christie aggressively supported Romney as a true conservative, as most electable, and as a good person. If there were any state in which Romney should have been a prohibitive favorite last night, it was Colorado — and yet he lost. Perhaps the recent endorsement by the Denver Post of Romney as “right for Colorado Republicans” might have been the kiss of death, since the small number of conservatives on the editorial board there are routinely swamped by typical big-city newspaper liberals. So, what to make of a Santorum victory? At least in Colorado, it’s not just that Republican voters are worried that Romney isn’t a true conservative. They’re also sick and tired of “the establishment.” They’re tired of Republicans nominating the person who can claim to be “next in line”, who has diligently waited his turn, and who might lead to defeat against a beatable opponent, as we saw Bob Dole and John McCain, among others, do. Also, as a resident of Colorado, I didn’t see or hear a single negative ad aimed at Rick Santorum, quite out of character for Romney and the Super-PAC supporting him. Maybe they were around and I missed them, but there was certainly no saturation like we saw done to Newt Gingrich in Iowa. Maybe Romney was so confident that he decided not to spend money on advertising in that way. Maybe the fact that delegates won’t actually be awarded until April meant this contest was not worth buying airtime for. Who knows? But negative ads work, whether we like them or not, and it was surprising that there were so few here. But whatever the reason, losing Colorado should be a big wake-up call to Mitt Romney: He needs to show more passion and more principle. He has to be a better champion for conservative principles, not just technocratic “turnaround” expertise. He has to be more inspiring than his refrain of late that he “believes in America.” Heck, even Barack Obama can probably say that without his nose growing too much, just because it means so little. Romney has tremendous organization and a lot of money behind him. But as the country gets to know the candidates better, so that messaging in a particular state just before that state’s contest becomes a less dominant factor in voters’ opinions, he will have an increasingly difficult time winning if he doesn’t become a more appealing candidate to Republican activists. For this libertarian-leaning Republican, there is plenty not to like about Rick Santorum, not least his repeated statements that “I support the 10th Amendment, but…” with the next words being about some social issue that he wants to make a federal issue. There is, of course, plenty not to like about Mitt Romney, too, though those things are better-known than Santorum’s less-than-conservative positions. And I continue to believe that when the “mainstream” media is done with Rick Santorum, he’ll have a hard time winning anything. But when no gloves are laid on him, he’s proven himself with last night’s results to be the last anti-Romney going through the GOP wringer. Whether he’ll survive better than Perry, Cain, Bachmann, and others is yet to be seen. While I (and political bettors) still expect Romney to be the Republican nominee, his loss to Santorum in Colorado is, more than any prior result in this political season, a signal to me of Romney’s inherent weakness, and the remarkable change from 2008 when he ran as the conservative alternative to John McCain. No doubt Santorum struck a nerve last night when he said ““I don’t stand up here claiming to be the conservative alternative to Mitt Romney. I am here claiming to be the conservative alternative to Barack Obama.” And as Rick Santorum was tossing that red meat to his Missouri audience, Mitt Romney was in Denver offering pablum about “restoring the values that have made America the greatest nation in the history of the earth,” calling for “fundamental, bold, dramatic change,” and asking supporters, with nary an ounce of passion, to “fight for the America we love because we believe in America and its Founding Principles…We have a long way to go, and I sure love this country.” Yawn. Come on, Mitt, you barely sounded sincere. The way you said “and I sure love this country” sounded as if you remembered a talking point which your consultants told you to mention every time you speak. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt that you believe in something, that you’re principled and not just a pragmatist. But you’re not making it easy. And with speeches like that, you’ll also start making me and others wonder whether you are indeed reasonably likely to beat Barack Obama. Everything Obama says is wrong, but at least he says it like he means it (his last State of the Union speech notwithstanding.) Colorado’s caucus results should be a slap in the face to the Romney campaign, perhaps the biggest one so far. Romney’s remarks last night show that at least in the minutes after he realized he was likely to be swept in three caucuses by a semi-appealing opponent with no financial backing, Mitt still hasn’t understood why.
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Romney’s Colorado lesson
Well, of course they’re going to smack me. The other day I looked into a post at National Review on Newt Gingrich by the estimable Elliot Abrams. In short, after reading the Gingrich Special Order cited by Abrams I found his post to be grossly misleading. And reporting what I found, so too did others who took a look at the same Special Order from start to finish. Mark Levin read it and agreed completely. He’s a Santorum fan… but he was incensed at the misrepresentation of Newt’s ties to the Reagan-era. He was there in the day, as was I. I heard from others as well, and not all Newt Gingrich people. Yes, Rush was so amazed he read a good bit of the piece on air, doubtless adding to the heat. Sean Hannity discussed, Mr. Levin was furious — and Mr. Hannity was more than kind to go on the Levin show moments before his own TV show to defend me. A personal and public thanks to all of them for
TAMPA — This week Florida has been sunny, as usual. The Republican presidential nomination race has not. But by tomorrow Floridians can safely answer their phones again, sure in the knowledge that the caller won’t be Mitt saying what a low-life Washington Insider lobbyist Newt is, or Newt calling to say what an anti-immigrant, job destroying robber-baron Mitt is. Floridians can also watch television again without seeing endless Democratic talking points masquerading as Republican ads. Almost all of the telephone interruptions are robo-calls. So it does the person who has just gotten up from dinner to take one no good to say into the phone: “That may be true, Sunshine. But you should hear what he just said about you.” The Gingrich and Romney ads carry more charges against each other than it’s possible for people who have lives to keep track of, let alone intelligently evaluate. Some of the charges are legitimate. One of these being why did Newt Gingrich loot Freddie Mac instead of working for its elimination? Others not so serious, or just false. Gingrich did not resign from Congress “in disgrace.” Romney is not “anti-immigrant” (though Democrats will be happy to repeat this charge if Romney is the nominee). Nor is he a Massachusetts liberal. In the accusation derby here, Romney may have the advantage because he has outspent Gingrich by almost three to one. Some of the charges have been downright trifling. Gingrich has even gigged Romney for hiring staffers who formerly worked for Charlie Crist, the former governor of Florida who went from RINO to independent while losing by 20 points to Marco Rubio in the 2010 U.S. Senate race and is expected to run for future offices as a Democrat. Of course Gingrich deserves any ridicule he gets for suggesting the Moon as the 51st
Juan Williams : The language of GOP racial politics is heavy on euphemisms that allow the speaker to deny any responsibility for the racial content of his message. The code words in this game are “entitlement society” — as used by Mitt Romney — and “poor work ethic” and “food stamp president” — as used by Newt Gingrich. References to a lack of respect for the “Founding Fathers” and the “Constitution” also make certain ears perk up by demonizing anyone supposedly threatening core “old-fashioned American values.” Yeah, any time I hear someone talk about the “Constitution” I can tell they’re racists. The fact is, if you hear the n-word every time someone talks about our entitlement society, the person with the race problem is YOU. If you hear “American values” and think “bigot” then the person with the race problem is YOU. If talking about the Founding Fathers seems racist, the person with the race problem is YOU. If everything sounds like racism to you, Juan Williams, you might be a racist.
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You Might Be a Racist If…
This week President Obama handed down what may prove to be one of the most fateful decisions of his entire administration when he rejected the plan to build the Keystone XL Pipeline carrying oil from the tar sands of Canada to the refineries of Houston. The decision did not win him one new vote but was crucial in protecting his environmental flank. The movie stars and Sierra Club contributors were getting restless and had drawn the line in the sand. In turning down Keystone, however, the President has uncovered an ugly little secret that has always lurked beneath the surface of environmentalism. Its basic appeal is to the affluent. Despite all the professions of being “liberal” and “against big business,” environmentalism’s main appeal is that it promises to slow the progress of industrial progress. People who are already comfortable with the present state of affairs — who are established in the environment, so to speak — are happy to go along with this. It is not that they have any greater insight into the mysteries and workings of nature. They are happier with the way things are. In fact, environmentalism works to their advantage. The main danger to the affluent is not that they will be denied from improving their estate but that too many other people will achieve what they already have. As the Forest Service used to say, the person who built his mountain cabin last year is an environmentalist. The person who wants to build one this year is a developer. Environmentalism has spent three decades trying to hide this simple truth. How can environmentalists be motivated by self-interest when they are anti-business? Doesn’t that align them with the working classes? Well, not quite. You can be anti-business as a union member trying to claim higher wages but you can also be anti-business as a member of the aristocracy who believes “trade” and “commercialism” are crass and not attuned to the higher things in life. Environmentalism is born from the latter, not the former. It has spent decades trying to pretend it has common cause with the working people. With the defeat of the Keystone Pipeline, this is no longer possible. Too many blue-collar and middle-class jobs have been sacrificed on the altar of carbon emissions and global warming. In 1977, I wrote a cover story for Harper’s called “Environmentalism and the Leisure Class,” my first story for a national magazine. Environmentalism was very young at the time — born supposedly on Earth Day in 1970 — but had already achieved a seat in the upper echelons of the Carter Administration. These freshly appointed bureaucrats began canceling dams, preaching the sins of fossil fuels, and raising obstacles to nuclear power. In its place they promised distant, over-the-horizon technologies of wind and solar energy. I remember one iconic photograph of Andrew Young, Carter’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, holding a pyramid over his head on Earth Day in the fashionable superstition that pyramids had mysterious powers to concentrate the sun’s rays. My story in Harper’s was built around the devastating 1977 New York City blackout (the subject of the book The Bronx is Burning ) and the almost forgotten fact that Con Edison had been trying for 15 years to construct an upstate power plant designed to prevent blackouts. The Storm King Mountain facility was a pumped storage plant 40 miles up the Hudson that stored power overnight by pumping water uphill and then releasing it the next day to generate hydroelectricity. The idea was to avoid building more coal plants in New York City. As an added attraction, the utility never failed to mention, the floodgates could be opened in an instant to provide power in the event of an emergency, while ordinary generators took the better part of an hour to get up to speed. Pumped storage was considered an engineering marvel of the time and many were built. There are now about 30 around the country. In the Hudson Highlands, however, Con Ed had unwittingly disturbed a nest of New York aristocrats who had escaped from the city in the 19th century. As Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. (who now lives in the area) would write 30 years later without a trace of irony: The committee [the Scenic Hudson Preservation Conference] quickly found support among the well-heeled residents of the Hudson Highlands. Many of its founding members were the children and grandchildren of the Osborns, Stillmans, and Harrimans, the robber barons who had laid out great estates amid the Highlands’ spectacular scenery and whose descendants had fought fiercely since the turn of the century to preserve the views for themselves and the public. [John Cronin and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., The Riverkeepers , Scribner, 1997.] Well-connected both in New York society and the editorial pages of the New York Times, Scenic Hudson began an opposition campaign that eventually engulfed the entire city. The battle to “Save Storm King” was the nation’s first great environmental crusade, becoming a legal landmark when the Federal District Court allowed Scenic Hudson to intervene on environmental grounds for the first time in history. The case is still cited. Several Scenic Hudson members went on to found the Natural Resources Defense Council. Throughout the campaign Scenic Hudson insisted they were not opposed to electricity but only this particular way of generating it. There were plenty of alternatives — fuel cells, mine-mouth coal generation, gas turbines and even nuclear power, which they supported briefly before turning against it. What became obvious, however, was that at bottom they were opposed to everything. Industrial progress itself was the enemy. This was a useless undertaking that only tore at the fabric of nature in order to produce “common kilowatts.” The attitude was fairly new at that time in America. What finally focused my attention on the aristocratic roots of environmentalism, however, was a chapter in Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class. Although the book is justly famous for coining “conspicuous consumption” and “conspicuous waste,” there is a lesser-known chapter entitled “Industrial Exemption” that perfectly describes the environmental zeitgeist. Veblen posed the question, why is it that people who are the greatest beneficiaries of industrial society are often the most passionate in condemning it? He provided a simple answer. People in the leisure class have become so accustomed affluence as the natural state of things that they no longer feel compelled to embrace any further industrial progress : The leisure class is in great measure sheltered from the stress of those economic exigencies which prevail in any modern, highly organized industrial community.… [A]s a consequence of this privileged position we should expect to find it one of the least responsive of the classes of society to the demands which the situation makes for a further growth of institutions and a readjustment to an altered industrial situation. The leisure class is the conservative class. My article generated 150 letters, including a response from a member of the Federal Power Commission who said that construction of new power plants wasn’t necessary. I was often criticized, however, for claiming only affluent people are concerned about the environment. The one response I ever got from the press was in the middle of Three Mile Island when National Public Radio called to ask, “What do you say about all those farmers worried about radiation? They’re not aristocrats, are they?” But that was not the point. It is not that the average person is not concerned about the environment. Everyone weighs the balance of economic gain against a respect for nature. It is only the truly affluent, however, who can be concerned about the environment to the exclusion of everything else. Most people see the benefits of pipelines and power plants and admit they have to be built somewhere. Only in the highest echelons do we hear people say, “We don’t need to build any pipelines. We’ve already got enough energy. We can all sit around awaiting the day we live off wind and sunshine.” Environmentalists have spent decades trying to disguise these aristocratic roots, even from themselves. They work desperately to form alliances with labor unions and cast themselves as purveyors of “green jobs.” But the Keystone Pipeline has brought all this into focus. As Joel Kotkin writes in Forbes, Keystone is the dividing line of the “two Americas,” the knowledge-based elites of the East and West Coasts in their media, non-profit and academic homelands (where Obama learned his environmentalism) and the blue-collar workers of the Great In- Between laboring in agriculture, mining, manufacturing, power production and the exigencies of material life. It’s going to be very difficult to erase that line during the election.
