Today is May 11th. On this date in 1858, Minnesota became the 32nd state. Hey, that rhymed! I knew I should have become a rap person!! Also on this date, in 1949, the nation of Siam changed it’s name to Thailand. (Its ex was a stalker.) On May 11th, 1997, IBM chess computer “Deep Blue” beat world chess champion Gary Kasparov in the final match of a six-game set. After the win, IBM dismantled the computer. Its final words were “I can’t let you do that, Dave.” And finally, artist Salvador Dali was born on this date in 1904. He was a surrealist, best known for his painting “The Persistence of Memory.” When asked what the work really meant to him, he replied “I can’t recall” and then melted the recorder. And enjoy Twilight Zone Day everybody! OR ELSE YOU’LL END UP IN THE CORNFIELD! Consider this an Open Thread . Washington Post’s Romney Hit Piece Implodes | Big Journalism “So the Washington Post did what no reputable newspaper should ever do when caught falsifying testimony: it made a stealth correction to its own article.” The Real Dan Savage: The Bully Against Bullying | Newsbusters “Dan Savage is a bully. How ironic, since he heads the most high-profile anti-bullying campaign the United States. But for Savage, it only gets better if you support a rabidly liberal, ‘anything goes’ lifestyle.” Our Composite President | Free Beacon “As funny as the ‘Julia’ parodies and imaginary girlfriend jokes may have been, however, they skirted a larger issue: President Obama is a composite, too, and his carefully crafted political identity is coming apart.” Strassel: Trolling for Dirt on the President’s List | WSJ “Three weeks ago, an Obama campaign website, “Keeping GOP Honest,” took the extraordinary step of publicly naming and assailing eight private citizens backing Mr. Romney.” Today’s Word of the Day comes via Dictionary.com. jocoserious : adjective Mingling mirth and seriousness.
Link:
Daily Links – May 11, 2012
1. An incarcerated felon got 40 percent of the vote against the sitting president of the United States in the West Virginia Democratic primary. Barack Obama has trouble in coal country. 2. There was huge turnout in Wisconsin’s barely contested Republican primary for governor. Democratic nominee Tom Barrett has his work cut out for him against Scott Walker. 3. Barrett’s opponent Kathleen Falk actually had stronger union support, but they are getting on board now. 4. Despite his recent success in state GOP conventions, Ron Paul didn’t do any better than Newt Gingrich in consolidating the remaining anti-Romney vote in last night’s primaries. He even fell into third place in West Virginia. But Paul didn’t do very much in any of those states either. His campaign continues to deemphasize primaries as Mitt Romney is starting to roll up landslide victories. 5. Gingrich nevertheless advises Romney to pursue Paul’s voters, tying them to the discontent seen in the European elections. 6. Pretty striking that Obama waits until the day after North Carolina’s Amendment One passes to contemplate — and these are still just rumors as I write this — coming out in support of same-sex marriage. 7. A lot of the people lamenting Richard Lugar’s defeat are treating bipartisanship as if it were an end in itself. TARP, Medicare Part D, No Child Left Behind, the Iraq war, and the country’s descent into debt were all in varying degrees bipartisan.
Read more here:
Random Observations from Last Night’s Votes
Having listed a group of long-shots for Mitt Romney to consider as his running mate, we hereby continue a multi-column analysis of who Romney should pick, and how, and why. This column will examine those last two questions — the “how” and the “why.” First, let it be understood just how important it is that the vice-presidential candidate be qualified and prepared to be president on Day One of the administration. This isn’t just a pro forma, substance-less requirement; it’s crucial. Being president is an incredibly difficult job — or, at least, doing a reasonably decent job as president is very, very hard. It’s far more than mere instinct or mere belief in the right principles. High-level politics, like the top rungs in just about any other field, requires a highly developed skill set and a deep reservoir of knowledge of policy, history, personnel, and procedural rules, among other things. It is absurd to the point of stupidity to think that high-level experience doesn’t matter. It is absurd to the point of stupidity to think that familiarity with the ways of Washington is completely unimportant. And it shows a lack of understanding of both history and of human nature to think that just a year or two as a conservative reformer is an indicator that a potential candidate really will be a conservative reformer over the long haul. If Mitt Romney is inaugurated on January 20 but, Lord forbid, dies of a heart attack on January 21, will his vice president be ready to assume the office? Here’s my rule: Everybody without at least two full years in a relevant position should be ruled out. Period. The political graveyard is littered with the bodies of people who looked for two full years to be hugely successful reformers, only to lose either their political touch, their moral compass, or their commitment to political principle, once the bad-old-gang who had been temporarily vanquished by the would-be reformer has had a chance to regroup, re-plan, reload, and counter-attack. Former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer is a case in point: a good man and decent governor who bombed badly in his re-election campaign and in every subsequent run for office. Another was former Colorado Gov. Bill Owens, being touted as the nation’s best governor one year and effectively in oblivion the next. Just about anybody with moderate political skills can look good during a honeymoon period in office; what really tests the mettle is how one behaves, and fares, once the honeymoon has worn off. (Christ Christie fans: Take note.) Remember, too, that the two-year rule is a bare minimum, not an automatic qualifier. Nearly four years as governor of a homogenous state like Idaho might be far less relevant to the presidency than two full years as speaker of the state House in, say, Michigan — not that the latter would necessarily be a qualifier, either, but just that it might require better political skills and an admirably thicker political skin. The question then becomes, what experience is indeed valuable? Other than my hard-and-fast two-year bare minimum, what are the criteria? Alas, it’s a sliding scale, requiring a somewhat subjective analysis rather than arithmetical precision. But common sense, combined with experienced understanding of politics, should make this subjective task more clear than opaque. One thing to reject is the current vogue that insists there is some sort of magic in executive experience, combined with a denigration of a legislative background. We should also reject the “Washington is bad, elsewhere is good” school of thought. Case in point for both: Jimmy Carter. Governor, business executive, Navy officer. Never in Washington. Yet utterly inept. Was Bill Clinton any more adept at presidential leadership in his first few years because he had been governor for 12 years? No; in fact, the early years of his presidency were an utter amateur hour. Harry Truman, on the other hand, assumed the presidency just a few months after leaving his perch in the Senate — the legislative arena where, by virtue of chairing a key committee that provided essential oversight of military procurement during World War II, he developed highly valuable knowledge and experience. Yet despite often moving in the wrong direction philosophically (according to conservative tastes), Truman quite clearly had a skill set that allowed him to assert vigorous leadership and to navigate the shoals of the lawmaking process. Much of this, of course, is a measure not of experience but of personal characteristics — but that’s my point exactly: Once someone has inhabited the realm of high leadership for enough time, what matters is more the leadership than the forum: legislative leadership can be as valuable as executive leadership; Washington leadership as valuable as outside-the-Beltway bona fides . And vice versa. In theory, I would take a 14-year House veteran who has led the Budget Committee just about any day over a 20-month governor of Wyoming, if the adherence to conservative principle had continued with only a few apostasies during those 14 years. It is the totality and quality of the experience, not just the title, that matters. Which leaves us, in terms of the requirements of experience… where, exactly? Well, to use names sometimes mentioned, it would leave South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley somewhat beneath Florida’s U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio. Why? Haley has had a decidedly bumpy ride in less than two years as governor of a barely mid-sized state, before which she served just six years in the state legislature, including as a majority whip. Rubio too has served less than two years in his current post — but, as a U.S. Senator from a mega-state, his involvement with larger national issues is a bonus, plus he served eight full years in Florida’s legislature, including a full term as Speaker of the House. Being House Speaker in a large and diverse and intensely competitive state outpoints being whip in a smaller, much more overwhelmingly conservative state. Anybody who doesn’t understand that legislative leadership is a major proving ground of political skills, and who doesn’t understand that legislative chairmanships are often de facto executive positions, has no real sense of how republican (small ‘r’), American governments work. Likewise, major business leadership or military leadership or civic leadership, if it required a relevant set of personal skills, could also serve as significant training. In short, again, the totality and quality of experience matters. OKAY, LET’S MOVE ON. Romney could probably compile a list of as many as 30 people who have the requisite combination of experience, personal and leadership characteristics, political smarts, attractiveness, and political principles strong and conservative enough to at least be considered as president-in-waiting-at-a-moment’s-notice. The hard part comes in winnowing down that list to a final five or six who offer the best of all of that plus a high ratio of political upside to political detriments. The reality is that, once the baseline requirements have been met, every single other consideration will be, and should be, purely political. Chris Christie might float your boat more than Tim Pawlenty does; Michele Bachmann might be more ideologically pure than Rudy Giuliani — but that doesn’t matter. Once it comes down to the final choice, politics should rule. Again, this applies only after winnowing the field to a select few. But once that has been done, the only relevant criterion is, who will best help Romney beat Barack Obama? Conservatives should not let minor differences obscure major goals. To determine this, Romney should use every tool in the political handbag. This should not be a bunch of insiders — the Washington conventional-wisdom cognoscenti who so often wouldn’t really recognize middle America if Dorothy’s cyclone set them down in front of a large-block signpost saying “Welcome to Middle America” — sitting around opining on who might help Romney win Ohio while not costing him Missouri, or on who they think will help attract single women without turning off blue collar men. Instead, this should involve serious, costly, comprehensive polling and focus-group testing, primarily in a group of about 21 states that might conceivably be competitive. Specifically ask respondents to rate a Romney-plus-X ticket versus an Obama-plus-Biden ticket. Also, do focus groups with voters from the key states. Give them brief biographies of the five or six top contenders and show them video of them speaking in public settings. Then feed them negative information about the candidates, as the Obama team will do, and see how their reactions change. And while the Romney camp should try to keep its polling and group interviewing quiet, it shouldn’t worry too much if the fact of its poll-testing gets out, as it certainly will. It is far better to get it right than to miss something because you are so worried about secrecy that you leave some homework undone. If this testing shows, for instance, that U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey boosts the Romney ticket so much in Pennsylvania that he makes the state a dead heat, while not costing Romney anywhere else, that should be a huge consideration. If focus groups outside of Ohio get turned off by a mock attack against U.S. Sen. Rob Portman for being born wealthy and being tied to both presidential Bushes, it almost doesn’t matter that Portman could help nail down Ohio because the overall drag on the ticket would be too big. (Again, these are purely hypothetical examples.) Now, keep this in mind: Polling in, say, Massachusetts or Utah is useless in this regard. No vice-presidential choice is going to move the former to Romney’s column or the latter to Obama’s. So too with Vermont, Maryland, Nebraska, Mississippi, and probably New York. The key thing is to help with the electoral map, not to help with overall opinion polls. The rest of us in the public will never know all the polling and group-testing results, but the Romney inner circle should know, and it certainly has plenty of time to find out, every single aspect of all of this. Finally, even after the choice has tentatively been made, the Romney camp should move heaven and Earth to prepare the new candidate for the madhouse that will ensue when the choice is announced. Sarah Palin, for example, never had a prayer of avoiding a horrid backlash because the McCain team did not have its, or her, ducks in a row. Now this part of it, unlike the fact of the polling, should be done in secret. The way to do it is to hold over any of the finalists who interview with Romney: Lock them in a room with Romney aides; grill them for hours; tell them what to expect and what to expect to be forced to answer, if they are chosen. Obviously, word of the meetings with Romney will leak out anyway; the key thing is to do all this prep work behind closed doors in conjunction with the meetings, and then tell the potential candidates that any loose lips on their end will automatically disqualify them from consideration. All of which is to say that, if the Romney folks do their jobs right, not a single bit of speculation or informed analysis from any of us on the outside, myself included, should matter. The Romney team, unlike McCain’s, should know exactly what they are getting and why. On the other hand, every single bit of public analysis has the potential to help Romney’s folks do their job better — because some new argument, some new consideration, might arise from these analyses that the Romney team otherwise would miss, but that they really ought to plug into their polling and interviewing and strategizing. That’s why, for example, former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour was dead wrong last week to tell all the outside analysts, in effect, to shut up. Barbour’s message was to let the insiders do all the work — ignoring how often the insiders get things wrong in large part because they ignore outside considerations and so don’t even put those considerations into their equations in the first place. So… to review: First, make a long list of about 30, based on both experience and political principles. Second, cut the list to five or six by rigorously combining those qualifications with overtly political considerations. Third, constantly reconsider the process and all available information, including from pundits that might otherwise be morons. Fourth, use sophisticated and targeted political tools, adjudging results on an almost brutally and purely political level, to make the final choice. Fifth, painstakingly prepare the nominee for the “roll-out” of the announcement. With that framework in mind, then, my next column on this topic will start naming names. First up: the qualified mid-range potential choices. After that, the semi-short list of those who should be in the top ten. Then two more columns, assessing five or six truly short-listers, any of whom should ably fill the bill for Romney. Stay tuned.
Read the original:
Veep, Veep: The How and the Why
[Posted by Karl] With the GOP presidential nomination a near-certainty for Mitt Romney, today’s big elections concern the fates of US Sen. Dick Lugar in Indiana and same-sex marriage in North Carolina. Taking the latter first, Gallup reports 50% of Americans are in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage (down marginally from last year’s 53%). However, the latest PPP poll suggests a SSM ban will pass, with only 39% opposing the idea. Although I tend to doubt Obama will win North Carolina in November, he undoubtedly would like to keep it in the mix of battleground states where the GOP has to spend money. Accordingly, while much will be made of the fact that SSM is backed by Democrats and Indies but largely opposed by Republicans, White House flack Jay Carney spent yesterday looking like a Dancing With The Stars contestant regarding Pres. Obama’s stated opposition to SSM. Turning to the Indiana primary, where recent polling suggests the incumbent Lugar may get knocked off by state treasurer Richard Mourdock, I found the defense of Lugar by Peggy Noonan highly instructive, although not for the reasons she hoped: What Washington needs is sober and responsible adults. We are as a nation in a moment of real peril, facing challenges that are going to become existential—maybe already are—if we don’t do something about them. We won’t be able to ignore them—an unsound tax system, increasing and highly ideological regulation, an entitlement system whose demands will crush our children—for long. So right now, and more than ever, we need mature folk involved in our governance, people for whom not everything is new. People who know how to do things, who began studying a complicated issue 25 years ago and have kept up, who know it backward and forward. People who know the ways of the chamber backward and forward, and who know how to talk across the aisle. There is value in experience, in accomplishment and expertise. There is value in the ability to take the long view, and do your best with modesty and with an eye toward all the big jumbly categories of America, which are not limited to “rightist” and “leftist.” The question that argument provokes is: “What exactly has Dick Lugar done about these issues that are possibly already existential?” In explaining the main reasons Lugar may lose, Noonan manages a fairly honest answer: If Mr. Lugar loses on Tuesday it will likely be due to two things. The first is a number: 35. That’s how many years he’s been in the Senate, how many years he’s lived and worked primarily in the environs of Washington, not Indiana, where apparently he no longer has a home. That was a mistake. Thirty-five is a big number. Nonideological people might look at it and think, “It’s time for a change.” Please mentally underscore that Lugar apparently no longer has a home in Indiana, because virtually every establishment media account of this primary notes that Mourdock’s campaign is fueled by support from “outside groups.” Dick Lugar has become an “outside Senator,” unlikely to return to Indiana should he lose. I find it difficult to summon big, salty tears over his treatment at the hands of “outside groups.” Noonan continues: The other reason is a fact. What fuels conservative frustration is not only legislation like ObamaCare and scandals like Solyndra, but a growing sense that for 40 years, members of the party have sent Republicans to Washington and Washington—its spending, its regulating, its demands—keeps getting worse, not better. How could this be? It’s not just that Democrats have their Democratic ways, it’s that the Republicans they’ve sent haven’t waged a good enough fight. Everything bad there happened while they were there. So—tear it all down, remove everyone and start over. This is a hard argument to counter because there is some truth in it. No matter who you send, Washington keeps growing. But Mr. Lugar remains as what he is, exceptional, and in his case there are many factors… In short, the answer to the question of what Lugar has done about the possibly already extential threats to the nation is: “not much.” Indeed, Noonan praises his bipartisanship, when the go-along, get-along approach has actually fueled these threats. You know who has written eloquently about this problem? Peggy Noonan : For conservatives on the ground, it has often felt as if Democrats (and moderate Republicans) were always saying, “We should spend a trillion dollars,” and the Republican Party would respond, “No, too costly. How about $700 billion?” Conservatives on the ground are thinking, “How about nothing? How about we don’t spend more money but finally start cutting.” *** The second thing is the clock. Here is a great virtue of the tea party: They know what time it is. It’s getting late. If we don’t get the size and cost of government in line now, we won’t be able to. We’re teetering on the brink of some vast, dark new world—states and cities on the brink of bankruptcy, the federal government too. The issue isn’t “big spending” anymore. It’s ruinous spending that they fear will end America as we know it, as they promised it to their children. While Lugar deserves credit for his work on issues like nuclear disarmament, he has contributed to the current existential threat and until now displayed no awareness of this. Had he spent more time among Hoosiers, perhaps he would have noticed their discontent. Should he lose today, he will seek solace from his real constituents in the Beltway, who will condemn the excessive partisanship of the Tea Party movement, conveniently forgetting Sen. Evan Bayh (D-IN) retired in 2010 because the leftwing agenda of a Democratic Congress made getting re-elected too difficult. –Karl
Read more from the original source:
Today’s main electoral events: IN & NC
“Every person in Indiana who wants me to continue, every person wherever they might be at this point, I encourage them to come out,” the six-term senator exhorted. “Come out immediately, as fast as you can.” So the Indianapolis Star quotes Richard Lugar, first elected to the Senate in 1976, as saying the weekend before his state’s Republican primary. Are those the words of a confident candidate? The Star reports : As a bell rang each time a volunteer won a commitment from a voter, Lugar pleaded with groups that he has helped over the years to now help him salvage his political career…. He appealed to veterans, Jewish voters who cared about his work to help Russian Jews, women who might have benefited from his program to build political networks and minority students who were helped by his scholarship program. Most of all Lugar is hoping for an inflow of Democratic and independent voters to rescue him from the Republican base. “I’m not asking anybody to cross over,” Lugar said. “I’m just saying positively, ‘Register your vote, because if you do not, I may not be able to continue serving you.’ At this point, help.” How the mighty have fallen. Six years ago, Lugar was returned to the Senate with 80 percent of the vote. The Democrats didn’t even bother to run a candidate against him. Now the Democrats are looking past him entirely. In a Jefferson-Jackson dinner speech to 1,200 party activists Friday night, Rep. Joe Donnelly, the presumptive Democratic nominee for Senate, didn’t even mention Lugar’s name. He trained all his fire on the longtime senator’s primary challenger, state Treasurer Richard Mourdock. “Richard Mourdock has said he is opposed to bipartisanship. I am the fifth of five kids. As the fifth of five kids, if you are not bipartisan, you do not eat at night,” Politico quoted Donnelly as saying. This country works best when we work together as a family.” Peggy Noonan also stressed family ties when making the case for sending Lugar back to the Senate: “What Washington needs is sober and responsible adults.” Noonan didn’t disclose who the children were in this relationship. But it is the sober and responsible adults who have accumulated a national debt larger than the country’s economy. There are two ways to demonstrate one’s sobriety and responsibility in Washington: to be as supportive of druken sailor-style fiscal irresponsibility as possible or to be as timid as possible in opposition to it. Noonan’s brief misses a larger point: The very reason Lugar is in trouble is that many Hoosiers see him as a creature of Washington, not Indiana — to the point where his residency has actually been challenged. Perhaps the handwriting was on the wall when Dan Coats, a former senator turned lobbyist, was barely returned to the Senate when two Tea Party candidates split the conservative vote in the Republican primary. This time, there is no split. Mourdock has Lugar’s right flank to himself. Lugar has recently been aggressive in defending his own conservative credentials and casting doubt on Mourdock’s. The Democrats are already keying in on Mourdock’s resistance to the unfunded Obama stimulus package. Lugar has specifically hit Mourdock on the flag-burning amendment and a comment in which the state treasurer seemed to open to consolidating military service branches. A late April Lugar statement asks: “Which military branch do you think is no longer necessary in the 21st
