Month: March 2012

Alex Massie studies it:

As Francis Maude, a former chairman of the Conservative Party and a key figure in the "modernization project," said in a speech this month: "The Conservative Party will always suffer if it's seen to be almost trying to turn the clock back to an imagined golden era. You can't drive policy looking through a rose-tinted rearview mirror. If we're seen as being defined by backward-looking social attitudes, we will be seen as unacceptable and unelectable." Perhaps the Republican Party has no need to make any kind of comparable gesture. But there is a sense, surely, that this primary season — choked with fools and charlatans and extremists as it has been — has tarnished the Republican brand to the point that it will soon need serious polishing. …

I fancy that the American conservative movement's hostility to same-sex marriage (and even birth control!) is severely damaging its standing with younger voters, especially those with college degrees. I suggest, too, that this damage hurts the Republican Party even with younger voters who might otherwise be sympathetic to conservative views. When the electorate moves, wise political parties think about moving too.

Video: David Cameron addresses the 2011 Conservative Party Conference. More on conservatism, Cameron, and marriage equality here. 

Harry Enten does some delegate math: 

Despite the probable split-verdict in the delegate count coming out of the South, Mitt Romney is likely to emerge with most delegates [today]. Why? Though not subject to much media focus, Romney's going to do very well in the American Samoa and Hawaii caucuses. American Samoa is 30% Mormon (the most Mormon-dominated contest this year, outside of Utah). Though the delegates are technically "unbound", the six in American Samoa are likely all to go Romney's way. Don't be surprised if any of the three American Samoan "automatic" delegates go over to Romney, as well.

Walter Kirn crafts a metaphor to characterize Romney's campaign:

[T]he firm of Romney & Associates is all about steady capital appreciation. When valued in the short-term, which is the term the media obsesses on, his portfolio seems to be lagging, underperforming, but measured over the medium-to-long-term it's done just dandy, thank you. Delegates show up in his account singly, in bunches, and sometimes not at all, but check out the man's monthly statements—he's getting rich.

Obama's sudden dip is mystifying some. Chait proffers this as an explanation:

The jobs report reflected good news, of course. But this may actually be the problem for Obama. A Democracy Corps survey from last month tested elements of Obama’s State of the Union address. The whole thing fared extremely well, except for one bit, where Obama boasted that “America is back.” Democracy Corps found: "Claiming that “America is back” is by far the weakest operative message and produces disastrous results.  It is weaker than even the weakest Republican message and is 10 points weaker in intensity than either Republican message."

I just don't think voters really absorb one day's television news clip as emphatically as Jon thinks they might. Israel? I don't think that issue moves approval ratings like that, especially given the massive fawning Netanyahu got last week. Gas prices seem much more plausible an explanation. Or maybe the gas prices and the message that "America is back." Mickey wants to believe it's the contraception/religious freedom debate, but Allahpundit rightly notes that the gender gap hasn't budged much at all, and that poll wording can change a lot.

All I can say is that, whether this is a blip or related to something real, we live in a country where Obama polls just a few points higher than Rick Santorum as a potential president.

An insight:

Newt cleans up with the ‘interracial marriage should be illegal’ crowd in both states. He’s up 40-27 on Romney with them in Mississippi and 37-28 with them in Alabama.

My friends made me watch it last night. It was much better than I'd been led to believe (memo to self: try to resist Pareene-bait). Capturing Palin in all her clinical crazy is not easy. And there's no way the movie could have included coverage of Palin's life and career previous to her being selected via Google. Without that record of constant lying, melodrama, and vindictiveness, the movie has to adopt the plot device of the movie Dave, in which a total stranger to politics is somehow spirited into the Oval Office.

The key figure is Schmidt. Harrelson does extremely well – but he doesn't get Steve's accent or bluster as well as he does his Catholic remorse and frustration. Culvahouse is rightly singled out as arguably the most incompetent vetter in the history of political vetting. And the dawning awareness that this woman "doesn't know anything" is funny in retrospect, however terrifying it was at the time. Hence the unprecedented media blackout.

The Trig question? I think the movie did a great job in exploring what we know – and didn't pretend this wasn't a key issue in the drama at the time. The issue was the off-the-record central one as the news of her nomination rippled across the political universe, and the movie shows the press actually asking questions about it – something that never came through in the mainstream media at the time. And those questions remained unanswered, despite being asked.

A nice touch: John Heilemann himself asks the final unanswered question on the bizarre details Palin provided on Trig's labor and birth. Make of that what you will.

Michael Tesler claims it’s not his Mormonism:    

[T]he evidence suggests that Evangelical opposition to Mitt Romney’s bid for the GOP nomination is rooted in perceptions that he is not sufficiently conservative on social issues, rather than in aversion to his religious faith.

Not to belabor a point, but there is nothing conservative about instantly reversing decades of settled law on abortion and criminalizing it federally, effectively divorcing thousands of gay couples, and rejecting out of hand the massive accretion of scientific evidence for man-made climate change. If evangelicals are not rejecting Romney because of Mormonism – and who would admit that in a poll anyway? – they are rejecting him for his insufficient radicalism.

Well, we’ll see tonight. It’s a real mystery, given the polling weirdness in the Deep South. We may see the primary effectively concluded tonight – or thrown into yet more agonized confusion.

A reader writes:

The letter from the former Benedictine monk mirrors my experience as a gay teacher at a Catholic high school in Los Angeles. I, too, can look around me at any gathering of educators in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and lose count of my gay and lesbian colleagues. As our Benedictine friend wrote, "We are their lifeblood; we are their priests, we are their brothers." And their teachers.

Sadly, five years ago, a new uber-orthodox, collared superintendent took the reins of the secondary school system from an enlightened lay person – she had allowed same-sex couples at Catholic high school proms!

In the aftermath of the Prop 8 campaign, as progressive Catholic students and teachers joined the inspirational street protests, the new superintendent issued a memo. In addition to suggesting "reparative therapy" for students with "same sex attraction" and implicitly threatening the livelihood of gay teachers, the superintendent declared, "Use of the words 'gay' and 'lesbian' should be avoided because they are political words and their use implies acceptance of the agenda behind them. It is also not wise to label people by their perceived sexual identity. They are children of God made in the image and likeness of God."

In the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, they cannot even speak our name, and they have ordered the rest of us to follow suit – or else.

Glen Ellyn, Illinois, 10 am

"Unfortunately, many conservatives are driving themselves crazy over Barack Obama’s past. This did not work in 2008 and it will not in 2012. In 2008, there was more and better ammo against Barack Obama. If his association with the Weather Underground and Jeremiah Wright could not sell him as a radical how can a video that shows him hugging a college professor prove that he is some sort of Manchurian Candidate for the Black Panthers now that he is in the fourth year of his presidency? This won’t work. Derrick Bell did not throw bombs, not even verbal ones. … This is birtherism again. This is a loser issue," – Don Surber. 

(Hat tip: Instapundit) 

Noah Millman strokes his chin:

John McCain, the last Republican nominee, was well-known to be a strong proponent of liberal immigration reform. George Bush similarly. Romney, on the other hand, has made a point of endorsing restrictionist positions in the primaries, and of attacking his opponents (Perry and Gingrich, most notably) for "apostasy" on this question. Romney is certainly not a restrictionist’s dream candidate – his overall pro-business orientation makes it unlikely he would propose or support immigration measures that business opposes, and he has said many times that he supports increased legal immigration. But I would argue that, based on the positions he’s taken in the primaries, he would be positioned further in the restrictionist direction than any recent nominee of either party.

Chart from Steve Benen, who captions:

On the left, those columns show Obama's edge over the GOP nominee in 2008, when exit polls showed McCain losing [Latino voters] by 36 points. On the right, those columns show Obama's advantage over Romney based on the Fox News poll.