[Posted by Karl]

Earlier today, I wrote that Team Obama had been AWOL on gay rights issues for campaign reasons.  This afternoon, Pres. Obama officially “evolved” into a supporter of same-sex marriage during an interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts:

“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama told Roberts, in an interview to appear on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday. Excerpts of the interview will air tonight on ABC’s “World News with Diane Sawyer.”

The president stressed that this is a personal position, and that he still supports the concept of states deciding the issue on their own.

Well, that’s semi-evolved, anyway. I suppose it remains to be seen how progressives will embrace states’ rights.

On Twitter (and elsewhere), a number of smart people have suggested that Obama benefitred from yet another distraction from the economy and the debt.  Yet gay rights are a classic wedge issue that divides Obama’s prospective coalition, which would seem to be an unwelcome distraction for Democrats.  Many have also suggested Obama found himself painted into a corner by comments from people like VP Joe Biden.  Allahpundit provides a decent elaboration of this thinking:

Looks like his strategy now is simply to get it over with ASAP and then let people forget about it over the next six months. Some key constituencies, like young voters, will cheer. Others, like black voters, might not be thrilled but given their overwhelming support for O the risk that he’ll lose many votes because of this is minimal. Meanwhile, Romney’s unlikely to make it an issue since it’d throw him off his core economic message. (See, e.g., Haley Barbour insisting yesterday that the gay-marriage chatter lately is a Democratic distraction.)

All true enough, but I continue to think “The Decision” here is driven less by pressure from Sheriff Joe than by broader campaign considerations.

Recall how Democrats think about the demographics:

[Ruy] Teixeira, writing with John Halpin, argues in “The Path to 270: Demographics versus Economics in the 2012 Presidential Election,” that in order to be re-elected, President Obama must keep his losses among white college graduates to the 4-point margin of 2008 (47-51). Why? Otherwise he will not be able to survive a repetition of 2010, when white working-class voters supported Republican House candidates by a record-setting margin of 63-33.

Obama’s alternative path to victory, according to Teixeira and Halpin, would be to keep his losses among all white voters at the same level John Kerry did in 2004, when he lost them by 17 points, 58-41. This would be a step backwards for Obama, who lost among all whites in 2008 by only 12 points (55-43). Obama can afford to drop to Kerry’s white margins because, between 2008 and 2012, the pro-Democratic minority share of the electorate is expected to grow by two percentage points and the white share to decline by the same amount, reflecting the changing composition of the national electorate.

What yesterday’s elections may have told Team Obama is that the bitter clingers out there are bitter enough to give 41% of the Democrat vote in West Virginia to a convicted felon and to ease a ban on same-sex marriage into the North Carolina constitution.  They may have concluded that their energies are better spent targeting more socially liberal white college graduates in the suburbs of northern Virginia, Philadeplphia, Denver, etc. than wasting time on trying to persuade Rust Belt Jacksonians to pull the lever for Barack Obama again while (as Allahpundit suggests) considering discontent among socially conservative African-Americans an acceptable risk now.  The establishment’s mockery of Obama’s unevolved position may have suggested to Team Obama that painting Mitt Romney as a right-wing extremist is made more difficult when the president shares Romney’s position on SSM.

Obama’s hastily-arranged interview with Roberts suggests his campaign was prepared to let SSM drift off the news radar, until facts on the ground drove a public (but controlled) flip on the issue.

–Karl

[Posted by Karl]

The right has had a lot of fun watching Pres. Obama, his administration, and his campaign contorting over the issue of same sex marriage.  But there is a serious message beneath the laughter.  The most powerful man in the world does not knowingly make a fool of himself (esp. against his presumed ideological leaning on the issue) without reason.  He does not pass up big campaign donations by refusing to sign an executive order barring same sex discrimination by federal contractors without reason.

Yesterday, I opined in passing that Obama was backing off in hopes of keeping North Carolina in the mix of battleground states where the GOP has to spend money.  Others have suggested Obama’s concerns are bigger than that.  The Hotline’s Josh Kraushaar suggested Obama’s gay rights kabuki is more about the Rust Belt than North Carolina and Virginia, asserting that Obama has a much better shot at winning white votes in the former region than the latter.  Kraushaar tweeted this shows Obama is still playing for Ohio and Pennsylvania, casting doubt on the VA/NC model.  He believes it shows that Obama’s path to reelection remains challenging, because it relies on getting votes from working-class whites who oppose same sex marriage.

If Kraushaar is correct, he was understating Obama’s plight.  That is the lesson of the otherwise funny candidacy of federal inmate Keith Judd, who racked up an impressive 41 percent of the vote against Obama in the West Virginia Democratic primary.  The sort of Jacksonian, bitter clingers voting ABO in that state are also found in southwest Virginia, Western Pennsylvania and southern Ohio.

Moreover, Sean Trende suspects Obama’s reluctance to back SSM relates to the African-American vote and the importance of black churches in getting to his 2008 turnout numbers.  Trende suggests that if Blacks voted in composition and number at pre-2008 levels, Obama has little room for error.  Given that Black voters overwhelmingly backed the SSM ban on the ballot in North Carolina, despite Obama’s token opposition and a vigorous campaign against it by the NAACP, Trende is likely on target here.  Obama likely needs very strong Black turnout in the urban centers of states like Pennsylvania and Ohio (and perhaps Virginia and North Carolina) to balance projected losses among rural and working-class white voters in these states.

In one sense, this is not news.  But it gives needed perspective to the propaganda establishment outlets like TIME churn out about the confidence of Team Obama supposedly has in facing Mitt Romney.  The media can write for months about how many paths to victory Obama has, and how few Romney has.  But Team Obama is not campaigning that way.  They are projecting confidence, while campaigning as though November will be a nail-biter.  Team Romney would do well to follow that example.

–Karl

Guy robs police station:

If there was to be a list of places not to rob, I would think a police department would be at or near the top of that list.

Apparently not for Keithan Kennard Manuel, who faces charges he attempted to rob the Wilmer Police Department Headquarters over the weekend, according to police documents.

Manuel, 18, walked into the city’s police department offices in the 200 block of East Belt Line Road near Interstate 45 about 8 p.m. on Saturday with his hands covered by a white towel.

He walked up to the dispatch window and pointed a covered hand at a telecommunications operator, the documents said.

“Give me all of your money,” Manuel told the startled operator.

Your punchline below.

Hot Air has all the details. Probably the big news is that the racist Tea Party has driven Dick Lugar out of office. I didn’t even know he was black.

In other news, North Carolina has banned gay marriage and civil unions. President Obama was seen looking for the missing link in his “evolving” position on these issues.

[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: (more…)

The L.A. Times reports a Very Important Story that just happens to play into Obama talking points: Romney stands silent as Obama is accused of treason.

Mitt Romney drew criticism Monday after he failed to challenge a questioner who suggested at a campaign event that President Obama should be tried for treason.

The woman, in posing a question to Romney, asserted, “We have a president right now that is operating outside the structure of our Constitution.”

She was interrupted by applause from the crowd.

“I want to know,” she said before turning to another audience member and saying, “Yeah, I do agree he should be tried for treason. But I want to know what you are going to be able to do to help restore balance between the three branches of government and what you’re going to be able to do to restore our Constitution in this country?”

Romney, after waiting for the applause to die down, answered the woman’s question without addressing the treason remark.

So Romney didn’t correct a troll. Big deal. It’s about the same thing as when some yahoo makes a really dumb and inflammatory comment on this blog and I don’t say anything. I don’t have a responsibility to respond to every dumb comment. (Most of them are smart, by the way!) And Mitt Romney does not have a responsibility to take on every silly comment made by some citizen asking him a question.

Of course, the Obama camp jumped all over Romney for this, as does the L.A. Times. But remember when little Jimmy Hoffa got up on stage before President Obama and delivered this inarticulately nasty battle cry?

President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let’s take these son-of-a-bitches out and give America back to America where we belong.

Obama’s reaction? He came on stage and named a bunch of union leaders, including Hoffa, and said: “we are proud of them”:

How does the L.A. Times portray that episode?

The Romney campaign called foul, pointing to a 2011 Labor Day rally in which Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa used foul language to refer to Republicans and said Democrats should take them out. Obama later took the stage and made no mention of the comment.

Technically accurate, I suppose. But how about telling readers that Obama also praised the guy who made the comment?

And why must editors portray it as the Romney response, rather than putting the institutional weight of the paper behind the observation that it happened? The spin would be very different if the article portrayed this as “Obama camp makes big deal out of Romney silence. But Obama was silent in the past in a similar situation.” Instead, we get: “Romney was silent. But he says Obama was silent in the past in a similar situation.” See the difference?

At least the Times article notes the blatant hypocrisy coming out of the Obama camp, which was all over Mitt Romney for failing to denounce the “treason” comment — but which was singing a different tune back when Jimmy Hoffa was calling us all “son-of-a-bitches.” Let’s pick up where we left off:

The Romney campaign called foul, pointing to a 2011 Labor Day rally in which Teamsters president Jimmy Hoffa used foul language to refer to Republicans and said Democrats should take them out. Obama later took the stage and made no mention of the comment.

Asked later if the president should have disavowed the remark, White House adviser Dan Pfeiffer said the president shouldn’t be expected to “serve as the speech police for the Democratic Party.”

Hahahaha. Hypocrites.

P.S. Let’s keep in mind that there is a sound basis to say that Obama is operating outside the structure of the Constitution. ObamaCare is a solid example. Somewhere between 4-5 members of the Supreme Court agree with me that the law is an overreach and is not tenable under our structure of government.

[Posted by Karl]

Paul Krugman and other lefties are rejoicing over the results of the French and Greek elections (even if markets are not) as a rebuke against European “austerity” programs.  However, it is worth remembering that those attacking ”austerity” programs in Europe are also fond of claiming Congressional Republicans are backing “draconian cuts” in the size of government, all evidence to the contrary.  As the Mercatus Center’s Veronique de Rugy notes in a new paper:

If there is austerity in Europe, in most cases it hasn’t taken the form of massive spending cuts.

Following years of large spending expansion, Spain, the United Kingdom, France, and Greece—countries widely cited for adopting austerity measures—haven’t significantly reduced spending since “austerity” supposedly started in 2008. When spending was actually reduced—between 2009-2010 in Greece, Italy, and Spain—the cuts have been relatively small compared to the size of bloated European budgets. Meaningful structural reforms were seldom implemented. Instead, whenever cuts took place, they were always overwhelmed with large counterproductive tax increases.

This so-called balanced approach—some spending cuts for large tax increases—has been proven to be a recipe for disaster by economists. It fails to stabilize the debt, and it is more likely to cause economic contractions.

That summary excludes Ireland, but as Kyle Wingfield notes, the top marginal tax rate there rose 17 percent amid a global recession.  In contrast, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia have bounced back strongly after adopting strict austerity measures and vastly reducing government indebtedness.  The finding that the big-tax, “balanced” approach to fiscal consolidation generally fails is consistent with prior studies from the OECD and IMF.

So what is the effect of the Greek and French elections? Maybe not much.  As Rick Ackerman reminds us, “even the socialists in Greece’s parliament were forced to support austerity measures a few months ago, because without such measures the country would have been unable to borrow enough cash to meet payroll.”  As for France, even Jukebox Mafioso Matt Yglesias acknowledges:

[O]ne very plausible story of what happens next is simply that the European Central Bank will decide it needs to bring the continent’s newest leader to heel. If the ECB signals that it will only support the French banking system and the French economy if Hollande sticks with the status quo program, then Hollande may well have no choice. Elections in Europe aren’t necessarily what they used to be.

Or, as Iowahawk bluntly tweeted to Greece: “[Y]ou can vote against austerity all you want. Austerity doesn’t give a sh*t about election results.” Also: “French vote out austerity, gravity; prompts new fears of airborne flocks of rich, drunk flying Frenchmen.”

–Karl

In an article about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s complaints that his tribunal is unjust, I saw a nugget I found interesting. Namely, one of the defendants’ lawyers is complaining that the women on the prosecution team aren’t dressing according to his standards:

[Army Brig. Gen. Mark] Martins [the chief prosecutor] also defended women on his prosecution team who he said were dressed appropriately at the arraignment Saturday. He was responding to complaints from Cheryl Bormann, a Chicago defense attorney for Walid bin Attash who wore a long black abaya to court.

On Sunday, she said her client was offended by women who did not dress in conservative Islamic attire, feeling that it caused him to sin. “It is distracting to him to see a woman who has anything bare other than her face,” she said.

She added that she had met with her client a dozen times and always dressed respectfully. “He is that conservative,” she said.

Well, sure. I’m quite sure he’s also “conservative” enough that he disapproves of the women being lawyers to begin with. Better that they cover themselves from head to toe and remain uneducated.

And as for this business of the government trying to give him the death penalty? An outrage! Why, the death penalty should be reserved for women who are raped! It is culturally insensitive to suggest otherwise!

Walid bin Attash and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed can go to hell.

The sooner the better.

The story is at Twitchy.com. In it, O’Keefe reports that he plans to subpoena all communications between the New Hampshire A.G. and Eric Holder, to see if the U.S. Attorney General is behind this.

UPDATE: Corrected a typo. O’Keefe is not subpoenaing his own communications.

[Posted by Karl]

After rounding up blogger opinion on the campaign season’s “dumb distraction derby,” Jim Geraghty draws upon a “fairy tale liberals tell themselves” he first recounted in 2010:

The fairy tale is that Americans, deep down, really agree with liberals on all of these issues and would heartily embrace their agenda if only these side issues, scandals, and manufactured distractions would just get out of the way.

Geraghty noted that Dems were playing the politics of distraction in 2010.  The midterm elections did not end well for them.  Pres. Obama seems bent on trying it in a nationwide campaign for 2012.  The good news is that independents tend to base their vote more on the economy than partisans do.  The bad news is that voters often care less about issues than they do about a candidate’s character, broadly defined.  This is why Team Obama is fueling media coverage of the supposed likeability gap between Obama and Romney, stories about how the candidates treat (or eat) dogs, and so on.  And this is ultimately why it’s probably a good thing if some on the right fight those battles, while Romney and the GOP focus on the economy.  The right does not want to buy into the inverse of the liberal fairy tale.

On the other hand, the fact that the 7%-10% of voters who end up deciding elections are almost by definition not swayed by ideology does not lessen the importance of making the case for smaller government, economic freedom and personal responsibility.  As Jonah Goldberg points out in The Tyranny of Cliches, one of the fundamental cliches of the progressive left is pragmatism, i.e., that they are simply doing “what works.”  It is also one of the progressive left’s fundamental falsehoods.

The past century has been one in which progressives have put forth the idea that Soviet communism is what works, that Eurofascism is what works, that Maoism is what works, and that Eurosocialism is what works.  The actual history of the past century is one in which Eurofascism was defeated in WWII, Soviet communism was defeated in the Cold War, Maoism has degenerated into a fascism and crony capitalism that only Tom Friedman finds attractive, and Eurosocialism is taking its own road to the dustbin of history.  To be sure, voters in the UK and France are resisting, the Germans less so.  But fiscal realities will continue to intrude, regardless of which governments they elect.  They will eventually figure out what the OECD and IMF already have about the solution to their problems: spending less is the answer.

Voters in America — even the non-ideological, low-information voters — will end up absorbing these lessons as they move through life.  The right should not adopt pragmatism as its own cliche, but the decay of 20th century progressivism will continue to push the electoral mainstream rightward.

–Karl