According to Gallup, the Republican presidential race is the ”most volatile for the GOP since the advent of polling.”

The Gallup report says this is the first time since 1964 where the GOP front-runner spot has seen so many changes. Gallup counts four front-runners and seven lead changes since polling began in May with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, businessman Herman Cain, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Gov. Rick Perry all holding front-runner status at different stages in the contest.

A lot of people are calling the voters fickle because they have changed their minds so often.

But there is one constant, and I think that what they’re holding in Iowa can fairly be called the anti-Romney finals.

“Momentum” explains Santorum’s rapid rise to the top tier of the Iowa polls, because one fourth of the Iowa electorate is looking for little else than someone to beat Mitt Romney.

That’s fascinating in and of itself, and I’m not sure that fickle is the right word for this phenomenon.

If that 25% figure holds true for the entire country, that can translate into a lot of seemingly fickle results in other races. If that 25% could actually, finally settle on and unite around someone who stayed in the race and survived tough scrutiny, it could be big trouble for Romney.  I doubt it will be Santorum, though.

What also may be changing is the old rule that Republican candidates have to run to the right during the primary, then turn around and appeal to the center to win over the independents in the general election. At least, that’s what Holly Robichaud argues after citing the McCain example:

When Republicans select a moderate, the nominee cannot run to the middle to win over voters. Actually, the candidate has to do the opposite to make sure there is no base abandonment.

If she is right, then Mitt Romney will have pander to the Republican right wing in the general election. This guarantees that incumbent Obama will look like a centrist to the moderates and independents. (It won’t hurt that Obama remains under attack by the far left, either.)

I’m also wondering whether the old rule (of running to the right, then veering to the center) might also apply in reverse to the Democrats. It might. But I’m wondering whether Obama is uniquely privileged in not having to pander to the Democrats’ left wing base in the general election. I mean, he has already done much to throw them under the proverbial bus, but suppose he did something which really constituted thumbing his nose at them. This could endear him to independents and not cost him very many votes.  I’m not saying he will do it, but if that man can get away with dissing his base in a way that a Republican can’t, why, that’s unfair!

Really, if the old rule are not supposed to apply anymore, they ought to not apply equally.

Via Dr. Helen, I just learned about a legislative horror pending right here in my home state (Michigan).

HB 5882, would make it a crime for a man to leave, threaten to leave, file for, threaten to divorce or terminate support to, a pregnant woman (even if he is not the father) with intent to persuade her to have an abortion.

Writing at Fox News, Wendy McElroy points out the consequences:

…a man could be imprisoned for a year and fined $5,000 for ceasing to cohabit with his pregnant girlfriend.

HB 5882 should appall even zealous pro-lifers.

If a man impregnates a woman, he may be morally obliged to provide support. But even assuming a moral duty, how does that translate into a legal obligation to cohabit?

Moreover, HB 5882 places tremendous power in the hands of women at the expense of men. It is natural to view a man who leaves a pregnant woman as a lout…but there can be valid reasons to do so.

Asks Dr. Helen,

Why not criminalize the use of pregnancy by women to trap men into getting married? This makes as much sense as CAPA. Seriously, why aren’t the Nazis proposing these laws tarred and feathered?

Well, for starters, because no one knows about these laws. Hell, I live in Michigan and if I hadn’t looked at Dr. Helen’s blog I’d have never heard about CAPA.

Amy Alkon quotes Glenn Sacks on how the bill violates men’s rights.

HB 5882 [CAPA] actually makes it a crime for a man to “change or attempt to change an existing housing or cohabitation arrangement” with a pregnant significant other, to “file or attempt to file for a divorce” from his pregnant wife, or to “withdraw or attempt to withdraw financial support” from a woman who he has been supporting, if it is determined that the man is doing these things to try to pressure the woman to terminate her pregnancy.

This violates men’s rights. The U.S. constitution’s protected liberty interests safeguard privacy in areas such as contraception, marriage, procreation, child rearing and sexual conduct between consenting adults. Do Michigan legislators believe these protections don’t also cover the basic personal choices HB 5882 proscribes?…

The bill is also laden with unfair presumptions of male guilt. There are many legitimate reasons why a man might be unhappy over his wife or girlfriend’s pregnancy. He may leave because he doubts that the child she is carrying is his. He may want her to terminate a pregnancy because he felt he was deceived into getting her pregnant, and doesn’t want to be on the hook for 18 years of child support. He may leave because she blames him for not being a good enough provider, or lashes out at him during pregnancy-related mood swings. None of these behaviors are particularly chivalrous, but they are certainly understandable.

For those who are interested, the text is here.

A woman, of course, can leave or threaten to leave a man for any reason she wants, including his refusal to pay for an abortion, just as she can without penalty threaten to have an abortion or have the child in order to coerce the man into doing her bidding.

I think the bill is an outrage, and I’m surprised there has been so little reporting of it. I suspect collusion between pro-life statists on the right and feminists on the left.

But I do have a lingering question (albeit a rhetorical one).

Is there such a thing as men’s rights?

MORE: A commenter points out that HB 5882 is the earlier version of the bill (my error).

The current version is in several new bills which are discussed by Glenn Sacks here:

The current package of bills (HB 4799, 4798, 5132 & 5134) is largely similar to the 2006 CAPA, and the Michigan House Committee on Families, Children and Seniors is scheduled to hear the bills on Tuesday, December 6. Shelli Weisberg, Legislative Director of the ACLU of Michigan, has asked Fathers and Families to join them in opposing the bills. We want you to email Fathers and Families’ opposition letter to the relevant committee members by clicking here.

I want to amplify on some remarks I made in my very short discussion of the Ron Paul Foreign Policy. What I said was:

Ron’s Foreign Policy is perfect for dealing with Western Nations. But that is not where the problem lies. It lies in the other outlaw gangs that call themselves nations. And Ron has grown up in gentility. He should have spent a year or three living with outlaw bikers. Just to get some real world experience.

So let us look at it from a gang boss perspective.

There are always rivals. Some direct and some just content to shave at the margins. In order to keep the rivals wary of making too overt a move to threaten the boss’s stature not to mention control, the boss needs to take out an irritant every now and then so that the rest of the mob gets and keeps the idea that the boss is not to be trifled with. The power can’t be just potential. The boss has to show a willingness to use it. Frequently. Libertarians don’t like that and have a cute little label for anyone who has figured out how the world works.

There has to be waste or the waste gets too big to conveniently handle. It is called signaling. See 1919 to 1941 in American history. Then check out 1942 to 1954.

Distasteful? To be sure. Better than the alternative? You will never know unless you let the alternative happen. Supposedly that is what history is for. Far too few take an interest in it though. Generally Libertarians are utopians on the matter of Peace/War. It does not serve them well.

Godfather rules are the rules in impolite society. You are tired of Godfather rules? So sorry. My condolences. You don’t want to be the Godfather? Fine. Who did you have in mind for the job? And how exactly do you plan to give it to them without annoying greatly numbers 3, 4, and 5? Tricky that.

I’m about 25 minutes early. For the World. It will be 00:00CUT 1Jan2012 in the very near future. Happy New Year World! (an old programmer joke).

Passwords irritate the hell out of me. While I know they are a necessary evil, it is so easy to lose track of what password was created for what account, and this is even worse if I am on the road with a laptop. Unfortunately, I tend to become dependent on having the same computer remember my passwords, which is fine until I have to use another computer, and then my own lost memory system kicks in and sometimes I’m SOL.

On top of that is the growing problem of insecure and aging passwords. Ordinary names and phrases suck, as they can be easily defeated by a standard dictionary attack. So, converting part of the text to numbers or symbols is usually enough, but maybe not always.

Especially these days. Recently there have been a number of helpful columns featured in the online news, chiding the careless and offering friendly advice on how to create good passwords.

There are, of course, lots of random password generators like this, which just served up the following 8 character password for me:

Re4ASpuh

Which is fine but only as long as I can remember it. It seems that there ought to be a good way to use an easy-to-remember password to make a much more secure password, one which looks like gibberish, but is easily reconstructed from scratch if you forget it. So I thought if you just take a word, and use an easy to remember formula for encrypting it by hand, then change the resulting word with the usual symbol and number substitution, you’d have something which might not be bulletproof, but would at least survive the most common forms of attack.

To illustrate, take the easiest 8 character word to remember:

password

The easiest formula for scrambling the letters would be to substitute for each letter the one before it (going backwards). “password” becomes,

ozrrvnqc

Then by substituting numbers and symbols in whatever manner you use, that can be changed to

02rr^nq(

The only problem with using the alphabet letter just before each letter is it’s a relatively easy cypher — the so-called “Caesar Cypher” — and it could be easily decrypted. Repeated letters (like the rr) are bad too. A more secure approach (only slightly more difficult to, but still easy to remember) would be to use longer replacement positions in the alphabet, but not all the same distance away. So, if there are eight characters, use eight away for the first one, seven away for the second one, and so on. And Zigzagging backwards and forwards would add to the random appearance. So it would be eight before, seven ahead, six before, and so on.

“password” then becomes:

xtynaltc

Even though “password” is commonly used to create cyphers for demonstration purposes, the above does not show up online as a cipher, and seems relatively secure in and of itself.

But if you’re paranoid, you can add security by replacing the more obvious characters with their corresponding numbers and symbols, so it then becomes

xtyn@1t(

It looks random (it appears nowhere online), but it isn’t. And if you forget it, the “formula” is easy to remember.

FBFBFBFB
87654321
password

I’m sure it’s crackable, but I think the above method would be sufficient for everyday use, especially if you’re using a favorite word or phrase that’s easily remembered but not easily guessed.

Thanks to commenter Frank who alerted me, I left a couple of comments at Jade Haven discussing the coming election and Ron Paul’s place in it. I liked my last comment so much I’m repeating it here (narcissism only a blogger could love).

Daphne,

The US has taken over the role of the British Empire as the protector of commerce. Libertarians (mostly) just hate that. But OK. It is a thankless job and the pay is bad besides. So the US should quit. Fine.

That will leave a power vacuum. Who exactly would you prefer to fill it? China? Russia? And you will recall that the US took the attitude you favor (Not Our Problem) from late 1919 to late 1941. The results were not pretty. The system we have today (bases everywhere) was the response to that failure.

Domestically Ron is just brilliant. Foreign policy wise he is out of his league.

BTW why the viciousness towards Israel (people who actually share our values) when the US has not only been fellating the Saudis but rimming them as well for over half a century. In fact the pact with the Saudis is one reason oil development in the US has been less than aggressive.

You know that the Saudis have spent quite a lot promoting an ideology that is quite aggressive towards the west.

And yet being too friendly with Israel is a bad thing. Despite the medical advances, despite Raphael Mechoulam, despite where your last Intel Chip was designed, etc.

I’d vote for Ron again. But that is because I think our domestic situation is dire and Foreign Policy messes have a way of forcing themselves on you. Like it or not. If Ron gets elected he will have to deal. And theory will be of no use .

As long as I am at it: Ron’s Foreign Policy is perfect for dealing with Western Nations. But that is not where the problem lies. It lies in the other outlaw gangs that call themselves nations. And Ron has grown up in gentility. He should have spent a year or three living with outlaw bikers. Just to get some real world experience.

That is what I think about Ron Paul. For now.

The “420″ refers to the YouTube pixel count. Across. It is only 315 high.

Show some self-reliance and go f**k yourself.

Seen at Zero Hedge without the ellipsis.

So says Charles Krauthammer.

All I can say is that I’m having a rough time defending them (this was especially the case over the holidays), and I am getting sick of it.

I wish I could just get the hold-my-nose-and-vote part over with.

MORE: OTOH, the latest Rasmussen poll shows Romney handily beating Obama.

Here’s the problem I have. If I talk with Republicans, they carry on about how they can’t stand Romney, and if I talk with Democrats, they carry on about how loony the anti-Romneys are. It gets tedious.

Hating the left more than the right is hardly a formula for political happiness.

AND MORE: The comments below remind me of the syphilitic camel conundrum. And while yes, I would vote for one, and defend him against Barack Obama, I would rather not have to.

I believe in the big tent approach, but right now, I think the GOP has a syphilitic camel problem.

A ballot initiative is in the works in Michigan that would amend the state Constitution to legalize marijuana. An email from M. Simon alerted me to what I should have seen yesterday afternoon but missed because I was busy: local reporter Ryan Stanton’s excellent piece on the subject.

Whether it will make it onto the ballot, who knows? I hope they put together a broad, bipartisan coalition, and I’m glad to see Law Enforcement Against Prohibition is involved:

Charmie Gholson, communications director for the campaign, said actual collection of signatures won’t begin until the campaign officially kicks off in mid-January.

“We’re not launching a media campaign until the 12th,” said Gholson, co-owner and editor of the Midwest Cultivator and a former staff member for Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. “All we’re doing is organizing volunteers. We’re getting volunteers to sign up and say that they’d be willing to help the campaign.”

The group also is recruiting volunteers through a website. The group plans to collect the signatures from January through early July.

The web site puts the argument quite succinctly:

Marijuana prohibition in Michigan has:

• Made it easier for minors to obtain marijuana
• Wasted limited law enforcement and municipal resources
• Created massive profits for drug cartels and terrorists
• Decreased the health and public safety of Michigan families
• Removed the rights of parents to raise and discipline our children according to our own family values, rather than the values of the failed drug war
• Eroded the public’s relationship with law enforcement
• Denied relief to the suffering of seriously ill, injured, and dying citizens

The repeal of marijuana prohibition in Michigan will:

• Reduce criminal gang activity
• Reduce access to marijuana by minors
• Create jobs by allowing for a new hemp industry in the State of Michigan
• Reduce the fiscal and overpopulation burdens on the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
• Restore right relations with law enforcement
• Allow law enforcement to focus on violent crime

We must end this disastrous public policy.

No argument there. I’ll sign it, and I might help in other ways if I have time. Annarbor.com’s online poll shows support for legalization running 86% to 14% so far (out of 1100 or so polled).

It would be nice to see someone of importance in the Republican Party take a pro-legalization position. Maybe even a candidate aside from the usual Ron Paul. Is there anyone?

And what about states rights?

You know, like, “how’s that Tenth Amendment federalism stuff workin out for ya?” Personally, I like the Big Tenth approach, and I’d love holding the self-proclaimed constitutionalists’ feet to the fire.

Tenth or consequences!

Reading Michael Yon’s interview with General Barry McCaffrey (via Frank) reminded me that there are very powerful people who are hard at work establishing in the public mind an ineradicable connection between drugs and terrorism (and hence the need to do Whatever We Can). They have to, because otherwise the use of extreme remedies such as the Homeland Security Act, Patriot Act provisions, TSA Viper Squads operating on public highways, SWAT Teams, Predator drones, and the rest might be questioned by ordinary folks.

But if drugs are a military threat (as well as a huge money maker), then it all becomes a no-brainer.

For both “sides.”

As Hillary says, we can’t legalize drugs because there’s too much money involved.

And if you disagree with the official position, why, there’s a well organized movement that, intentionally or not, will keep you marginalized.

Opposing the Drug War means agreeing with Ron Paul, which means being a racist, a homophobe, and an anti-Israel bigot.

Being anti-Drug War has to mean being a kook. And if you oppose the Drug War and you cannot accept the status of being a Ron Paul kook, then you should be further marginalized — preferably by being driven into the Libertarian Party.  Which is one step away from being an unperson.

God forbid that opposing the misguided and statist war on drugs might ever become a conservative position, much less a respectable or mainstream one.

Thank God that William F. Buckley died, and his arguments have been relegated to the archives.

(Surely there must be a way to further marginalize such thinking.)

OK, I was going to ignore the latest round of recycling Ron Paul’s alleged racism (this all came up and was thoroughly discussed in the last election cycle), but this time there’s a new twist. Whether Ron Paul is in fact racist, homophobic, or anti-Israel, what galls me as a longtime libertarian is to see everything about Ron Paul being attributed to libertarians generally.

This sort of “analysis” is typical:

…Paulbots have been out on force at any blog that mentions them** to try and argue that the sky is green and thus Ron Paul and the Libertarian movement aren’t really racists.

Which of course “they” are, simply because Ron Paul “is.”

Sorry, but that won’t cut it. First, Ron Paul denies being a racist and a longtime staffer says he isn’t. And no matter what he thinks, the logic is appalling. It’s like claiming that if Rick Perry supports sodomy laws, and he’s a Republican, therefore all Republicans support sodomy laws (including yours truly). Libertarians being a minority, it is easy to paint them as kooks, but to say they all think alike is a huge mistake. In that respect, libertarians are like that old joke about how if you put three Jews in a room you’ll get five arguments. (I don’t know whether that’s anti-Semitic, but a Jewish friend told it to me, and I think it applies to libertarians.)

Anyway, I’ve been a libertarian for a long time and this reductio ad Ron Paul stinks so much that I thought it deserved a post.

After all, I was already roused enough to leave a comment at Ann Althouse’s blog, so the least I could do is say something here even though I am entertaining guests and out of time.

As one of my longtime favorite politicians here is Senator Chuck Schumer, I am shocked — SHOCKED — to learn that he his brother in law is becoming a federal judge.

“SOME SUSPECT CRONYISM,” said Glenn Reynolds earlier.

No way. That would never happen.

I mean, we’re talking about the man who said,

“I think Fannie and Freddie over the years have done an incredibly good job and are an intrinsic part of making America the best-housed people in the world. If you look over the last 20 or whatever years, they’ve done a very, very good job.”

With Schumer’s help, of course…. (“Where would Fannie Mae’s massive portfolio of mortgages be without those campaign contributions to people like Chuck Schumer?”  And “Schumer’s top nine campaign contributors are all financial institutions who have contributed over $2.5 million to the senator.^[73]“)

So… cronyism? No way!

You can point out that they’re wrong, and tell them what the truth is, but that approach falls on deaf ears if what is wrong is what they want to believe. Also, there is a well established meme that there is no such thing as truth. Each person has the right to his own truth! And if you question his truth, you are being disrespectful!

“By now most people have heard the news and seen the picture of the boy who was killed over the new Nike sneakers. There are Facebook pages devoted to fist-shaking protests about materialism and greed. Yada yada yada. But while the scuffles over the shoes were real, the death was not. The photo was just a stock photo of some kid in a lab. We know this because of some old school reporters — Steve Earley and Justin Fentin of the Baltimore Sun. In the rush to celebrate crowdsourcing, many of us pooh-pooh the old media as ‘gatekeepers,’ but there are times when keeping that gate locked is a good idea. After all, if one of the crowd discovered the error, the signal would barely rise above the noise. There are people claiming that anyone questioning the facts is being disrespectful. Is there something we can do about the mobocracy? How can we support the best traditions of journalism while fixing the worst? How can we nurture accuracy?”

There are a lot of people who think that anyone questioning their facts is being disrespectful. And they have a point — particularly if their facts are wrong, because why should anyone have respect for lies, or for people who adhere to them?

I find myself in this position all too often, because I get the usual lying or greatly exaggerated emails that are forwarded endlessly, and I have trouble resisting the temptation to debunk them. And when you do that, no matter how politely you try to be, feelings are hurt, and if the matter involves politics (which most of them do), anyone who questions the facts becomes not only disrespectful, but something worse — an ideological suspect. If you are throwing cold water on something a lot of people want to believe,  they will not be grateful. Some of them might even hate you. (Especially if you’re dumb enough to hit “reply all” to a group email.)

So I’m reaching the point where in many cases I just ignore them. If people want to believe lies and don’t care whether they are true, is it my responsibility correct them?  I don’t see why, nor do I see how I could hope to persuade anyone who believes only in whatever “facts” favor their side — the truth be damned.

Better to just complain in a blog post than be disrespectful.

I missed this from earlier in the previous week. China hacks 3 million Chamber of Commerce records.

Hackers in China broke through the computer defenses of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce last year and were able to access information about its operations and its 3 million members, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

There are some who claim we are already at war with China. What do I think? It is probably just the usual low level sparring going on all the time between governments.

A lady who is the flack for a gun blog asked me to mention her blog and send them some traffic. I said I’d be glad to. “Send me a link to a post where one of your writers makes the connection between Drug Prohibition and the War On Guns and I’ll do a post on it,” I said. It has been a couple of weeks. I’m still waiting.

And then this morning I’m reading a bit on corruption in America (I already blogged it at The Corruption Of America) and what do you know? The biggest corruption going on – narco corruption – is not even mentioned by the author, Porter Stansberry. Mr. Stansberry goes on at length about the dysfunctions of the inner city and yet fails to mention Drug Prohibition even once.

When society is so out of joint that the very biggest and totally obvious issues cannot even be mentioned – we are in a very sick place.

Oliver K. Manuel in the comments at Climate Etc. alerted me to this post about the Corruption Of America.

These problems manifest themselves in different ways across institutions in all parts of our society. But at their root, they are simply facets of the same stone. They are all part of the same essential problem.

The corruption of America isn’t happening in one part of our country… or in one type of institution. It is happening across the landscape of our society, in almost every institution. It’s a kind of moral decay… a kind of greed… a kind of desperate grasp for power… And it’s destroying our nation.

Say. Didn’t I write something about that just hours ago? Yes, I did.

I had some hope that Palin might do something about it. But she seems to have retired from politics. The best thing I can see to do for now is to just let go and wait for the pain levels to rise. The collapse to become harder. The point where people are willing to listen. While I’m waiting you can ponder this:

I might add that the biggest government corruption I know if is Narco Dollar Recycling.

The banners are up to their tired old tricks.

Here in the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration is considering whether to exercise its authority to ban menthol cigarettes, even though studies repeatedly have found that they are no more harmful than non- mentholated cigarettes. Drunk with power, regulators and those encouraging them are using catchy slogans such as “Menthol: it helps the poison go down easier.”

Prohibitionists ignore or belittle concerns that a ban on menthol cigarettes would turn citizens into criminals, increase unregulated youth access to cigarettes, and even encourage people to make their own mentholated cigarettes (all it takes is a regular cigarette, a cough drop, and a ziplock bag).

It is hard to miss the similarities between current prohibition campaigns and their historical predecessors. The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union’s “stated desire was to ‘reform, so far as possible, by religious, ethical, and scientific means the drinking classes.’?” Likewise today, says Snowdon, self-righteous activists and their allies in government do not seek to improve public health by following the dictates of science but rather use pseudoscientific arguments and “subtle deceit” to advance laws that dictate how we live.

It is easy now, as Ken Burns has masterfully done, to ridicule the prohibition of alcohol. But Snowdon does the heavy lifting of catching modern-day Carrie Nations in the act. Despite a long history of failure, the public always seems ready to enlist in prohibitionist campaigns, perhaps believing, as Snowdon puts it, that “utopia is only ever one ban away.”

Which reminded me of this.

Let me conclude, and again this is my prediction — I will tell you I don’t think it is subject to opinion. Just look at it. Just take a look at what has happened now and what will happen. I will tell you how inexorable it is. If we get together here in the year 2005, I will bet you that it is as likely as not that the possession of marijuana may not be criminal in this state. But the manufacture, sale, and possession of tobacco will be, and why? Because we love this idea of prohibitions, we can’t live without them. They are our very favorite thing because we know how to solve difficult, social, economic, and medical problems — a new criminal law with harsher penalties in every category for everybody.

Drunk with power is probably the most dangerous addiction known to man. And there are those who would feed it to combat lesser addictions. It will not end well.

(The following is a guest essay, sent to me by a friend whose pen name is “Liberty Guardian.”)

Which contemporary political figure claims to be a Teddy Roosevelt Progressive, extols FDR as the best 20th century President, and lavishes praise on SEIU leader Andy Stearns? Who sat down on the couch with Nancy Pelosi to help with her global warming/climate change agenda? Who was promoting the individual mandate for national health care insurance before Obamacare was even named? Who cautioned that Paul Ryan’s “far right solution” to our economic problems was no better than those of the far left? Who has recently flip-flopped on abortion within the span of one day and has proposed amnesty for illegal aliens within the last month?

Good answers to the above questions might be Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, or Joe Biden. But the correct answer is much closer to home and much more shocking. It is the GOP’s new fair-haired boy and the current flavor of the month: Newt Gingrich!

Newt Gingrich: the Iowa Tea Party darling who has just won their most recent straw poll! Newt Gingrich: the knight in shining GOP armor who will crush Obama in Presidential debates! Newt Gingrich: whose brilliant analysis and panoply of ideas overwhelms the competition!

I hear what Conservative/TP callers are saying about Newt on the talk shows:

“I can’t wait for Newt to get a crack at Obama in the Presidential debates!”

“Wow! He really dressed down that debate questioner!”

“Gee! He is an awesome thinker!”

If that’s all that mattered in the upcoming GOP nomination and Presidential election and the four years of leading our country that followed, Newt might be just fine. Unfortunately, there’s a lot more that we need to consider. Mark Steyn said on the Bill Bennett show recently that we should just all show up at the primaries and vote our consciences and everything will turn out dandy. Sorry, Mark, but I couldn’t disagree more.

For me, there is one overriding goal of the 2012 elections. It is to stop Obama and his totalitarian, Marxist, run-away Federal freight train before it derails us all. When I show up at the poles, I’m going to be asking one question: Which of these candidates can beat Obama in the general election? If there is only one, I’m voting for that one regardless of my personal preferences because nothing is as important as stopping Obama in 2012.

The good news for me is that all of the GOP candidates live on a different political planet from our current President. Any one of them would be such a vast improvement that I would be dancing in the streets for any one of them who defeated this Democratic regime which is trying so hard to enslave and destroy us. The bad news is that many of our candidates have little chance of winning the general election against a skilled and well-funded Democratic incumbent constantly campaigning for his re-election amidst his message of hope, change, government hand-outs, class warfare, and fundamental transformation of our country.

There is only one candidate who consistently has poll numbers that are competitive with Obama’s. That is Mitt Romney. If I had to vote tomorrow, I would vote for him because he is the only one who satisfies my goal for the 2012 elections. He is the only one who gives evidence of being able to beat Obama. For me, then, the choice is simple.
Is Mitt my personal preference? No. Is he closest to Tea Party values? No. Will he do everything I want as President? No. Yet, he is our only candidate who looks electable at this time. In every credible national poll, he is ahead or behind by a few points but always within the statistical margin of error. No other candidate can make that claim. Recently, I heard that Mitt was polling ahead of Obama in all 12 battleground states by a whopping +5 (Obama won all of those states in the last election). Now, that’s impressive!

What about Newt? The last poll that I saw had him losing to Obama by double digits. That’s really all I need to know about Newt. But, let’s go further. Let’s examine the debate strengths that he has exhibited. Let’s assume that Newt creams Obama in the debates in terms of points and policy. Obama is still going to come off as a really nice family guy who’s just trying to do his best to look out for the little guy and the minorities and the women and the LGBT and the illegals and the unions. Newt is going to come off as an unlikable, arrogant, smarty-pants elitist. Newt will win the battle and lose the war.

Another argument for Newt is that he will generate a plethora of brilliant ideas. I’m sure he will. The problem is, when Newt is good, he is very, very good but, when he is bad, he is awful! So we don’t know if we’re going to get his brilliant Contract with America or his repugnant couch promotion with Nancy Pelosi. This is aggravated by the fact that Newt knows he is a superior intellect which tends to insulate him more than would be wise. He is too confident that the wisdom of his own counsel is sufficient. He would do better to first bounce his ideas off trusted advisors rather than to proclaim them unvetted to the world. This forces him to issue apologies and retractions much more than one would like and leaves him often with a disconcerting amount of egg on his face.

I have friends who say you can’t trust the polls. OK. Then let’s look at other factors such as fund raising and organization. Newt’s staff has already abandoned him once. My understanding is that he lags far behind Romney in both funds and organization. We know that money greases the wheels of politics and that the price of winning the Presidency may be as high as a billion dollars. If you don’t have the money, you had best have the most boots on the ground. It appears that Newt is lacking not only in poll numbers but also in money and troops as well.

Given all this, Newt would probably serve us better as a cabinet member where we could take advantage of his good ideas without being prisoners to his bad ones and where he could serve as a spokesperson for the President when called upon. As such, we receive the benefits of his virtues without suffering the consequences of his vices. But, as far as choosing him as my Presidential candidate at this time, I say no Newt is good Newt!