Mark Steyn's Blog, page 41

Gingrich: A Santorum Vote is Basically a Romney Vote

CNN reports:

During a press availability Monday, Gingrich pointed out why he's a stronger candidate than the former Pennsylvania senator.

"Evangelical voters would like to have a nominee that will win a general election, and somebody who set the all time Pennsylvania record for the size of their defeat has a harder case to make as to why they could be elected," Gingrich told reporters.

"If you vote for Sen. Santorum, in effect you're voting for Gov. Romney to be the nominee because he's not going to beat him. And the only way you can stop Gov. Romney for all practical purposes is to vote for Gingrich. That's just a fact and it's a mathematical fact now."

In the campaign event before the press conference, Gingrich hit Mitt Romney's electability, saying, "Ask yourself this simple question: Why would you want to nominate the guy who lost to the guy who lost to Obama?"

'How Long? Not Long'

In honor of the day, a great MLK riff.

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Life Lessons

I’ve been rereading examples of a feature the Pope Center started a few years ago called “If I Knew Then What I Know Now.” The aim was to create an “advice column” for students, written by Pope Center interns, who are typically undergraduates or  graduate students. Taken together, they offer a window into student life as practiced by smart young people in college (primarily flagship public universities). I have put some of the themes together into a column on our site.

So what do student mentors advise? Freshmen should speak up in class and get to know their professors, although the reason is not necessarily to learn more. Rather, a professor who knows you might give you a break on your grades in a pinch or write you a good job recommendation. Second, choose your major early if you can, but if you can't, work around it.

There’s also the matter of negotiating your social life. Don’t over-party; it will hurt you in the end. And stand up for yourself. The most poignant story in this collection is by a young woman who went to a mediocre school because her boyfriend was going there. Bored and uninspired, she changed her mind, got into UNC–Chapel Hill, and seems to have been happy ever since.

King: 'Every Candidate Should Be Pro-Life'

Dr. Alveda King, a niece of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., tells National Review Online that, like her uncle, “every candidate should be pro-life, and when they’re not, they should be challenged.” A pastoral associate and director of African-American outreach for Priests for Life, King is a Christian minister, and she expects to be less involved in politics this year.

Last year, she supported her friend Herman Cain for president. “He and his wife are wonderful community people,” King says. “They don’t live far away from where I live [in Georgia]. I supported him because of his pro-life views.” Now that Cain has suspended his campaign, King stresses that “‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ should be for every political party.”

Politics isn’t the only route for the pro-life movement, she says, though “every route is a good route. We should teach about it in schools. We should talk about it in the public square. We should challenge our public officials.” And the right to life doesn’t concern solely the issue of abortion. It also concerns the controversy over euthanasia.

On this Martin Luther King Day, King emphasizes that her uncle was pro-life, “contrary to the lies that Planned Parenthood tells every year.” In 1966, she says, the organization offered him an award, but his wife accepted it in his place. “He was pro-life; she was pro-choice.”

In conclusion, King offers, “When you see the political parties squabble, [remember] if a baby is not allowed to be born, all the other issues do not come into play.”

'Huckabee'

Sight those who followed the 2008 cycle likely didn't expect: Mitt Romney highlights Mike Huckabee's defense of his business record in a new web video. Watch:

Santorum to Air Ad Attacking Romney

Rick Santorum will begin this attack ad targeting Mitt Romney tomorrow in South Carolina, reports Time's Mark Halperin. Sample line: "Why would we ever vote for someone who is just like Obama?" Watch:

UPDATE: “We were very pleased to have Sen. Santorum’s endorsement of Gov. Romney last campaign and his advocacy of Gov. Romney as ‘the candidate who will stand up for the conservative principles that we hold dear,'" e-mails Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul in response to the ad. "As Sen. Santorum said himself, ‘Governor Romney has a deep understanding of the important issues confronting our country today, and he is the clear conservative candidate that can go into the general election with a united Republican party.’”

Re: The More the Merrier?

Okay, Andrew, as National Review's in-house demography bore and at the risk of wearying readers of both my recent apocalyptic tomes, I'll bite. You say:

It is a stretch to claim that Europe’s troubles stem from a supposed “demographic winter”.

Whether or not that's what Rick Santorum said, it's certainly the case that "demographic winter" makes Europe's troubles all but impossible to solve.

As you have observed, demographic decline doesn't have to be an existential threat. The population of my town in New Hampshire peaked in the 1820 census and then dropped steadily until 1940, and we survived it because (unlike the latter-day US and EU) we hadn't erected a system of government that depended on looting the future to bribe the present. Sovereign debt, like any other kind, presupposes there will be someone around to pay it off. In much of Europe, there won't be. In Greece, 100 grandparents have 42 grandchildren - in a land where far too many retire in their fifties and spend their final third of a century living at public expense. Is it remotely likely that the debts run up by 100 Mediterranean deadbeats will be repaid by 42 Mediterranean deadbeats? You follow Continental affairs as closely as anyone here, and you know the answer to that.

The Germans, French and Dutch have healthier trend lines, but only because, as you note, they've imported huge populations that will inflict profound transformational changes. That, too, threatens the basic social compact: A decade or two on, is it likely that Ahmed and Mohammed will agree to be ever more punitively taxed to maintain the lavish retirements of Fritz and François? Or that, in the south-western United States circa 2025, a young largely Hispanic population will wish to prop up Medicare for an elderly largely white Boomer population who've enjoyed a level of American prosperity their successors will never know.

You assure us that demographic obsession is:

...akin to arguing that the United States risks starvation because there are fewer farm workers than there once were.  Times and productivity have moved on.

Up to a point. At the republic's founding, it took 90 percent of the workforce to produce enough food to feed the nation. Now it takes less than three per cent. But you still need people to sell the stuff to. When 100 grandparents have 42 grandchildren, how do you grow your economy in an ever shrinking market? Where once were 100 babies for your diaper business, now there are only 42. And, fifteen years on, where once were 100 teens for your caterwauling gangsta rap record company, now a mere 42. And then only 42 potential car buyers, and maybe 21 home owners... You need a hell of an export market to beat back the arithmetic of a remorselessly withering customer base.

You have a point to this extent. Sooner or later, some or other nation will figure a way to buck demography. I would reckon the Japanese will be first, if only because they have no immigrants, don't want any, and are sufficiently unsqueamish about these things already to be racing ahead with robot waitresses and humanoid nurses for the old folks' home. It's not hard to imagine Sony, Yamaha et al cheerfully applying their ingenuity to developing post-humans for "the jobs humans won't do".

But the rest of the west? Old and broke seems the way to bet, still frantically kicking the can down the road, even as the leg becomes too wizened, clotted and arthritic to nudge it more than another inch or two.

The Ron Paul Faction

In the 2010 election the New Hampshire Republican party took 298 out of 400 house seats, 19 out of 24 state-senate seats, and all five seats on the executive council. A little over a year later, in the state’s presidential primary, the same (more or less) electorate gave over 56 percent of its votes to a couple of moneyed “moderates,” one of whom served in the Obama administration and the other of whom left no trace in office other than the pilot program for Obamacare. Another 23 percent voted for Ron Paul. Supporters of the three other “major” candidates in the race argue that, if only the other two fellows would clear off, a viable conservative alternative to Mitt Romney would emerge. In fact, even if you combine Newt Gingrich, Rick Perry, and Rick Santorum’s share of the vote, it adds up to a mere 19.5 percent: Were Bain Capital to come in and restructure the “conservative” candidates into one streamlined and efficient Newt Perrtorum, this unstoppable force would be competitive with Jon Huntsman.

#ad#According to George Mason University’s annual survey of freedom in the 50 states, New Hampshire is the freest state in the union, so one would expect there to be takers for Ron Paul’s message. On the other hand, facing a very different electorate in Iowa, Paul pulled pretty much an identical share of the poll. It may be time for those of us on the right to consider whether it’s not so much the conservative vote that’s split but whether conservatism itself is fracturing.

No candidate is ideal, and we conservatives are always enjoined not to make the perfect the enemy of the good -- or in this case the enemy of the mediocre: Sitting next to me last Tuesday on Fox News, the pollster Frank Luntz said that Romney in his victory speech was now starting to use words that resonate with the American people. The main word he used was “America.” On Tuesday night Romney told us he wants to restore America to an America where millions of Americans believe in the American ideal of a strong America for millions of Americans. Which is more than your average Belgian can say. The crowd responded appreciatively. An hour later a weird goofy gnome in a baggy suit two sizes too big came out and started yakking about the Federal Reserve, fiat money, and monetary policy “throughout all of history.” And the crowd went bananas!

It’s traditional at this point for non-Paulites to say that, while broadly sympathetic to his views on individual liberty, they deplore his neo-isolationism on foreign policy. But deploring it is an inadequate response to a faction that is likely to emerge with the second-highest number of delegates at the GOP convention. In the end, Newt represents Newt and Huntsman represents Huntsman, but Ron Paul represents a view of America’s role in the world, and one for which there are more and more takers after a decade of expensive but inconclusive war. President Obama has called for cuts of half a trillion dollars from the military budget. In response, too many of my friends on the right are demanding business as usual -- that the Pentagon’s way of doing things must continue in perpetuity. It cannot.

America is responsible for about 43 percent of the planet’s military expenditure. This is partly a reflection of the diminished military budgets of everyone else. As Britain and the other European powers learned very quickly in the decades after the Second World War, when it comes to a choice between unsustainable welfare programs or a military of global reach, the latter is always easier to cut. It is, needless to say, a false choice. By mid-decade the Pentagon’s huge bloated budget will be less than the mere interest payments on U.S. debt. Much of which goes to bankrolling the Chinese People’s Liberation Army. Nevertheless, faced with reducing funding for China’s military or our own, the latter will be the easier choice for Washington.

#page#So the assumptions of the last 60 years are over -- and not just because of the cost. If America’s responsible for 43 percent of global military expenditure, why doesn’t it feel like that? Why does the United States get so little bang for the buck? It is two-thirds of a century since this country won a war (and please don’t bother writing in to say what about Grenada? or Panama?). In the days after 9/11, many Bush-administration officials assured us that this time it would be different, and even liberals believed them. A decade later, Washington can’t wait to get the hell out of the Hindu Kush, and the day after they do it will be as if they never set foot on that benighted sod. Illiterate goatherds with string and fertilizer have tied down the hyperpower for twice as long as it took America to win the Second World War. Something is wrong with this picture.

#ad#Ron Paul says he would pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan “as quickly as the ships could get there.” Afghanistan is a landlocked country, but hey, that’s just the kind of boring foreign trivia we won’t need to bother with once we’re safely holed up in Fortress America. To those who dissent from this easy and affordable solution to America’s woes, the Paul campaign likes to point out that it receives more money from America’s men in uniform than anybody else. According to the Federal Election Commission, in the second quarter of 2011, Ron Paul got more donations from service personnel than all other Republican candidates combined plus President Obama. Not unreasonably, serving soldiers are weary of unwon wars -- of going to war with everything except war aims and strategic clarity. I would hazard that the recent video of U.S. Marines urinating on Taliban corpses is a coarser comment on the same psychosis, and the folly of fighting a determined and murderous enemy by distributing to your officers bulk orders of that charlatan’s bestseller Three Cups of Tea. There is a logical progression from three cups of sweet tea to those acts of micturition that the Pentagon would do well to ponder.

That said, the isolationists are delusional. Two centuries ago, when Napoleon sold a constrained Appalachian republic the port of New Orleans, he crowed, “I have given England a maritime rival who sooner or later will humble her pride.” Instead, a young America enjoyed (excepting one or two hiccups) the blessings of the Pax Britannica for over a century. It’s relatively easy to be a romantic isolationist republic when the Royal Navy’s out there enforcing global order. Likewise, after 1945, Britain’s imperial decline was cushioned by Washington’s assumption of the old lion’s role as order maker. But the notion that America can retain all the comforts and prosperity of global dominance while shrugging off all the responsibilities is fantasy. “Fortress America” is less a fortress than a state of denial, yet it’s one with increasing appeal to many Republican voters.

With characteristic timidity, Mitt Romney says that as commander-in-chief his Afghan strategy would be determined by the “commanders in the field.” More tea and sympathy! But a lazy deference to the inviolability of the present arrangements for another two-thirds of a century of unwon wars will not suffice. I am in favor of a leaner, meaner military -- emphasis on both adjectives. A broke America will perforce wind up with the first. But, if we want the second, the foreign-policy Right will have to make a better case than it has this primary season.

--- Mark Steyn, a National Review columnist, is the author of After America: Get Ready for Armageddon. © 2012 Mark Steyn

Bloomberg's Law

One of the most disturbing features of the US justice system is its ever more grotesque loss of proportion, at the federal level and in far too many states and municipalities. On his radio show this week, Derb discusses the case of Meredith Graves, the Tennessee nurse who, upon visiting the 9/11 memorial in New York and seeing the signs forbidding firearms, asked the staff if she could check her pistol (lawful and licensed in her home state). She was handcuffed, arrested, and now faces three and a half years in jail for firearms possession - for the crime of being unaware that the Second Amendment does not apply in New York City.

Asked about the case, New York's thuggish mayor decided to add insult to injury:

Let's assume that she didn't get arrested for carrying a gun. She probably would have gotten arrested for the cocaine that was in her pocket.

There was no cocaine. The white stuff in her pocket was analyzed by Bloomberg's cops and found to be, as the nurse had said it was, aspirin powder. So this loathsome slug of a man has slandered an ordinary American citizen on tape in front of the world. Why? Because he can.

As Kevin Williamson wrote:

You can be confident that Meredith Graves will be locked up, because it is far easier to lock up law-abiding types such as Meredith Graves than it is to police the criminals who actually do the murders and muggings. This isn’t a question of whether the government’s behavior is constitutional or unconstitutional, but of whether the government’s behavior constitutes government, of whether it makes any sense at all, and of whether government can establish elementary priorities and exercise elementary discretion.

Anyone with any knowledge of New York City's standard operating procedure could have guessed the answer to that. But we might have known that Bloomberg would effortlessly sink to new depths. It is outrageous that his enforcers are obtuse enough to seek jail time for Meredith Graves. But it is entirely unacceptable for the chief executive of a major American jurisdiction to slur innocent private citizens as coke snorters simply because he's in power and they're not. Like Derb, I hope Mrs Graves sues the pants off this tinpot toad. 

A Tie in New Hampshire

Voting starts in Hart's Location and Dixville Notch in just over an hour, so most of these New Hampshire primary notes will be too late to have any impact. Nevertheless:

1) I had the pleasure of meeting the hottie Huntsman gals the other night and I hear good things from my neighbors about turnout and reaction to the Governor lui-mème at the Horse Meadow Senior Center in Haverhill over the weekend. The standard line on his TV debate appearances is that he's "condescending". He's less so on the stump. Not sure why, but I notice that, when he's in diners and Elks' Lodges, he's usually open-necked, and with a dark blue shirt that makes his neck and chin come over less Foggy Bottomesque. He appears relaxed and real, and (by the standards of this presidential field) kinda cool. Yet, when he climbs into the white shirt and tie for the telly stuff, he looks like a snotty Foreign Service stiff who's having a pineapple twisted up his bottom. This is the precise inversion of most candidates: a tieless Newt comes across shifty, a tieless Mitt as if he took his tie off because a consultant told him to. Don't know what difference it would make, but, if I were his daughters, I'd try to persuade him to try the open-necked look on TV.

2) Now we've got the important stuff out of the way, on to Bain Capital. I broadly agree with Ramesh, but the logic of the assaults matters less than the politics. Romney has presented himself to the electorate as a private-sector businessman, but most folks don't have a clear understanding of what it is that something like Bain actually does. Microsoft makes computers [UPDATE: Whoops! Okay, computer-type stuff] and McDonald's makes hamburgers, but what does Bain do? Private equity, high-yield assets ...golly, that sounds less like Main Street lingo and more like Wall Street; less to do with the kind of business built on the virtues of making and doing, and more to do with the kind of too-clever-by-half monkey business that came close to taking out the global economy in 2008. Whether or not that's fair, that's the role Mitt the "businessman" is being maneuvered into. Up against the Dems, he'd need a deft and effective response. Up against Newt, he's yet to find one.

3) We don't do a lot of limbo dancing in New Hampshire, but Rick Perry is doing his best to introduce it to the state. In this poll, he attracts the support of six voters. Buddy Roehmer has eight. Roehmer polls thrice as high as Perry in this poll. No disrespect but this is less testament to any late-breaking Roehmentum, and more to do with the extraordinary achievements of the Perry campaign. Who knows? If the networks had done him the favor of banning him from the debates, today Rick might have Buddy's numbers.

4) I greatly enjoy the way (as I'm sure even dear old Derb is discovering today) the merest disagreement with Ron Paul attracts a ton of email from his supporters jeering, "I always knew you were a neocon/Rino/Beltway squish/closet liberal. You're dead to me, Steyn. I'll never read you again, and neither will anyone else." Nothing like demanding ruthless conformist collectivist prostration before the candidate of individual liberty.

On to Hart's Location...