I made a big deal about the polling in Iowa being skewed. However I have no reason to suspect oddness in the New Hampshire polling going into today. Open primaries are much easier to poll than closed caucuses.

Jon Huntsman has rebounded rapidly, but he’ll likely finish behind Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.

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On today’s edition of Coffee and Markets, Ben Domenech is joined by Ryan Ellis and Scott Lincicome to discuss the details of Rick Santorum’s tax plan, how manufacturing plays a key role, and whether or not we need to simplify the US tax code.

We’re brought to you as always by BigGovernment and Stephen Clouse and Associates. If you’d like to email us, you can do so at coffee[at]newledger.com. We hope you enjoy the show.

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[Full disclosure: Until the Holidays, it has been years since having sworn never to step into a church again. However, as Life's Rich Pageant has a way of throwing curves, over the Holidays, I found myself doing the unthinkable and stepped into church for the first time in a long, long time.  Having family members who have attended this church for years, I had only heard about it. However, seeing is believing (so to speak). Once inside The Life Christian Church (more on the church in a moment), I found a warm, welcoming and enjoyable environment and were it not for that visit (and one or two since), you would not have the chance to know about this book.] 

Over the next several paragraphs, I’d like to share a little about TEN: How Would You Rate Your Life?, it’s author, Pastor Terry Smith, his church, and, as importantly, its missions.

The Book — First and foremost, Pastor Terry’s recently-published book is not a “self-help” book, it is more a self-fulfillment book.  TEN: How Would You Rate Your Life? is a book about Life for oneself, as well as for others.

Yes, it is Christ-centered. However, even the more secular among us will appreciate it.

“I couldn’t agree less with the idea that most of our problems result from wanting too much. I think we should want more. Not more stuff, but more life,” says Pastor Smith. “I believe a more fulfilling life—a life in all its fullness—is the future that we are created to have. I also believe we have the ability to tap into this potential and create that more and better life for ourselves and others.”

What is unique about Smith’s book is that it is also a book about leadership that speaks equally to the heart of the day laborer, the pro-football player (see below) as well as the highest executive.

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I have to be honest that I do not have a problem with or feel the level of outrage some of you do about Newt Gingrich attacking Bain and Mitt Romney. It’s not because I necessarily agree with Newt on the attacks, but because these are the attacks the left will throw at Mitt and, should he be the nominee, the early attacks help him refine his message.

The Perry attacks are, actually, a bit more carefully nuanced and, I think, work better. According to Perry, “There is nothing wrong with being successful and making money, it’s the American Dream. But getting rich off failure and sticking someone else with the bill is indefensible.” His attack was based on one aspect of Romney’s work, not the entirety of it.

All that said, I think it is important for us on the right to remember that we typically have an intrinsic faith in the free market and understand the creative destruction of capital in a way most voters do not. We eat, breathe, and sleep this stuff. The typical voter does not. The typical voter does not understand private equity, leveraged balance sheets, etc. They see it as some mystical black magic abused by greedy people on Wall Street.

There are, frankly, a lot of Republican primary voters who view it that way too.

We can disagree with the strident attacks against Romney as a greedy vulture capitalist, but the reactions of many on our side surprise me because many are premised on the idea that no person could agree with the attacks and the attacks are inherently wrong.

First, I am willing to bet there are a lot more people in the country who are likely to agree with the attacks than most of us realize and second, there are a lot of people even on the right who see private equity as a collaborator in the economic mess.

While we should be prepared to defend capitalism, we should not be caught unprepared by the attacks and act as if no one could think differently from us on the issue when, I venture to say, we are in the minority on this issue. Frankly, I think these attacks are what Barack Obama is going to use to try to win the election. And I think they are going to work much better than Romney backers expect.

Just wait for the Batman tie ins over the summer with Bain. You ain’t seen nothing yet folks.

Occasionally, I will hear someone say that the amount of attention paid to Iowa and New Hampshire in the nominating process is ridiculous. However, on the Republican side of things, it turns out there is a good reason for that. Since the institution of the modern primary system (and even before), no Republican has won the nomination without winning one or the other of the early contests. Observe the chart below:

A couple of observations are in order here. First, disparaging comments by Jon Huntsman aside, New Hampshire does not have a remarkably better record of picking Presidents than Iowa. New Hampshire and Iowa have disagreed on a total of five contests – in those, the candidate who won New Hampshire went on to win the nomination 3 times, the candidate who won Iowa went on to win twice. This is hardly a clear signal that Iowa can be disregarded in favor of New Hampshire in all cases.

Second, South Carolina’s role in picking the nominee is at least largely due to the fact that the race has usually been all but decided by the time New Hampshire is over. Remember that South Carolina was not moved up to “third place” until 1988. It is believed by many that Atwater bumped SC up because it was thought to be friendly to Bush who was facing possible embarrassment – not necessarily of defeat, but of at least a long, difficult slog – against an insurgent Dole campaign (stop and relish the absurdity of that statement for a moment) and a stronger-than-expected showing from Pat Robertson. Since that election, there have only been three seriously contested Republican primaries – the fact that South Carolina has been the deciding factor in these elections is likely only symbolic of the fact that unlike Democrats, Republican primary voters tend to prefer settling down much earlier in a campaign and avoiding the long, drawn out debacles for which the Democrats are famous. If you look at this list, not only are there no nominees that come from outside the IA/NH column, but there are very few candidates who have even survived (in any meaningful sense) to Super Tuesday outside the IA/NH winner columns. Conclusion: Republican primary voters like to settle things early in the process.

It seems like every election cycle people tend to believe that some candidate can win the Republican nomination while breaking the mold and waiting until South Carolina (or later) to claim their first victory. Evidence suggests that this is highly unlikely to be successful. Certainly I wouldn’t rule out such a thing ever happening, but I’d lay long odds against it happening any time soon. Which, you would have to assume, is bad news for anyone in the current GOP field not named Mitt Romney.

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I have made known my thoughts and objections to the various candidates in the field. I have come to accept that the ones I think would be best are the ones running the most perplexing campaigns. I think we will wind up with Willard Mitt Romney as the nominee.

I see a path to victory for Rick Perry. I don’t see him taking it.

I see a path to victory for Newt Gingrich. I see him taking it so zealously that it winds up hurting him.

I see a path to victory for Jon Huntsman if he makes it out of New Hampshire with a respectable showing and I’d rather him than Romney or Santorum.

Ironically, I do not see a path to victory for Rick Santorum. He made the Illinois ballot, but without a full slate of delegates, and I think he doesn’t have the ability to build out as it took so long for him to rise.

I see the clearest path for Mitt Romney and barring him underperforming in New Hampshire, I suspect he could sweep the races.

I am as excited as a fly flying through a frog filled swamp.

But ultimately there is this — Barack Obama is worse than even Jimmy Carter in that Obama, in addition to being an economic menace, peddles a brand of liberal social politics that even Jimmy Carter dared not peddle. Should he win re-election, Barack Obama might have the opportunity to fill more seats on the Supreme Court including, potentially, Antonin Scalia’s and Anthony Kennedy’s seats.

We cannot let that happen.

The regulatory regime an Obama second term would unleash, no longer restrained by the fear of electoral defeat, would be economically destructive to the free market and the middle class.

Any and all of the Republican candidates would be better than Barack Obama. We have an obligation to support the nominee whoever it may be.

I just hope the voters choose wisely.

As for me, in focusing on Campaign 2012 for President, I have neglected the fight against SOPA, the fight to election conservatives to the House and Senate, and the on going battles at the state level. It’s time to refocus a bit on those and let this primary season where good friends are at each others throats over the nominees sort the season out. I will have to necessarily chime in on Presidential politics, but don’t want it to be as all consuming as it has been.

RedState Morning Briefing
January 6, 2012

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the Morning Briefing every morning at no charge.

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Lamar Smith, Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is using his committee to further his bill, SOPA. SOPA is very bad. It threatens due process and prior restraint of speech as it censors the Internet, and risks putting Internet-based business out of business.

Darrell Issa is leading House efforts to oppose SOPA. He’s on the Judiciary Committee, but he’s not in charge. However he does head the Oversight Committee. So guess what? Oversight is looking into the effects of DNS filtering, which is one of the more egregious provisions of SOPA. Nice play, Mr. Issa.

I love it when a conservative gets clever, because I hate that Republicans are looking to give more tools to the already out of control Obama regulators.

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Let us set aside for a moment the many crazy things that Ron Paul says and the ways in which they might damage the GOP brand. We’ve given people passes for saying crazy things before. I mean, I’m not thrilled to have the guy up there on national television representing the GOP in any form or fashion, but on the merits as far as his support, he deserves to be there no matter what sort of crankery he decides to subject the public to. The problem with Ron Paul’s continued participation in the debates is that, having used the GOP as a free publicity vehicle, he will not commit to refusing a third party run:

NASHUA, N.H. — Ron Paul inched further away on Friday from any unequivocal promise not to run under a third-party banner if he fails to win the GOP presidential nomination.

In a brief interview with The Huffington Post on Friday, Paul acknowledged he will have a decision to make if he loses the GOP bid come August.

In his conversation with HuffPost, Paul noted that he had won nearly as many delegates in Iowa as Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum had, and that he was likely to pick up a good share here in New Hampshire and — having hauled in $13 million last quarter — in other contests to come.

With many delegates in a bloc heading into the convention in Tampa, didn’t that mean he would remain committed to the GOP and not run an independent candidacy in the fall, even if he did not secure the nomination?

“I’ll decide that later,” Paul said while he was waiting for his son Rand Paul, a GOP senator from Kentucky, to finish an interview with the press.

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In the course of reading this subtly bitter (and thus subtly entertaining) story (via Instapundit) about the effective collapse of the anti-gun movement on the grassroots level, I came across this passage: “In November the Republican House approved a measure that would require states to respect concealed carry permits issued by other, less restrictive states; it now awaits action in the Democratic-controlled Senate, where its fate is uncertain.” This refers to HR 822, which passed in the House with bipartisan support and is now awaiting action from Judiciary in the Senate. As people reading this probably know, reciprocal respect of other states’ right-to-carry laws is a hot topic: it recently came to the forefront when a Tennessee woman got arrested for trying to check in her firearm at the 9/11 Ground Zero site. I should also note in passing that Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s (INDEPENDENT) attempt to smear said woman by claiming she was also in possession of cocaine backfired: the woman didn’t have any. But she’s still facing several years of jail time – no, really – for a ‘crime’ that more enlightened portions of the United States of America decriminalized some time ago*.

But that’s a different post – although conservative/Republican groups should take note that New York City is not a safe tourism/convention destination for their members under Mayor Bloomberg – the real question is what the Senate plans to do about restoring civil liberties. Particularly all those Senators from Shall-Issue states (i.e., states where firearm possession is a right to be exercised, and not a privilege to be granted).

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This election—including the Republican primary contest— is about a fundamental question in American politics: We have an opportunity to decisively turn away from big government in Washington. Do we want to take it?

Conservatives across the country are fed up with President Obama’s Washington approach to governance. Massive, budget-busting, deficit spending (except on defense, where he proposes cuts that are downright dangerous). Bailouts. An ever-mounting national debt. A federal government that has reached its tentacles further into Americans’ lives, by virtue of Obamacare with its noxious individual mandate to purchase health insurance. Excessive, bureaucratically dictated, job-killing environmental regulation. Dodd-Frank. The actions of the National Labor Relations Board, the Federal Communications Commission, and countless other agencies. A President who has engaged in offensive recess appointments to pay back his political allies ahead of a race he could well lose. And so on.

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Let me go ahead and stipulate that Mitt Romney has presidential height and hair, and appears to have presidential composure in debates and interviews (at least, when not being mauled by the Great Grizzly of Interviewers, the always fearsome Bret Baier). He also has a history of business success and has the longest private sector career of any participant in the GOP primary – though it’s obviously worth noting that his lengthy private sector career has largely been the result of his utter failure to enter and remain in the public sector, despite trying over and over and over and over again to do so.

However, leaving aside the fact that his positions on most issues have a history of being “multiple choice,” as Ted Kennedy once said, Mitt Romney has two major vulnerabilities to attack – and it just so happens that they are the top two issues of this entire election.

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