Oil Exploration

As the Left counters demands for more domestic oil exploration and production with, among other points, the length of time it will take to come online, it's important to keep two things in mind. One, oil production will come online much more quickly than any "alternative" energies the Left dreams of and two, when conservatives called for oil exploration in ANWR the Left said it would take ten years to come online... That was ten years ago.

GOP Turnout

While turnout in Iowa & New Hampshire slightly exceeded levels set four years ago, it was not as high as party luminaries were expecting/hoping.

This may be because Republican enthusiasm this cycle is not as high as first thought. Or, it just may be that the figure that most excites Republicans has not yet appeared on a ballot.

When he does, I suspect GOP turnout will cease to be an issue.

Bain & Romney

Being attacked over his tenure at Bain is a blessing for Romney.

For one, in a Republican primary being criticized for a successful business tenure is unlikely to sting. Republicans are not envious nor anti-capitalist. They prize business acumen and believe that government would be much more effective if run like a business.

If anything, a campaign narrative centered around Romney's Bain experience emphasizes his largest conservative bona fides and pushes him even closer to the nomination.

While this is happening, Romney also gets some free-time to develop an effective narrative of his experience at Bain and how it recommends him as a presidential candidate in the general election. It is no secret that Bain will be the focus of President Obama's purely negative re-election campaign, and so the earlier Romney develops a message on it the better.

Plus, the more Bain is the topic now the less it will be relevant when it comes time for Obama and the Left to attack it.

Iowa, Almost

It is essentially the eve of the Iowa caucuses and it is quite possible that the difference between the winner and the fourth-place finisher will be as little as ten points.

Such a result benefits two candidates: Gov. Romney and Sen. Santorum.

For the former, a win, however small, will leave him having taken a state he had not invested his campaign in going into another state in which he has a commanding lead.  Two wins in the first two contests going into South Carolina and Florida will constitute a sense of inevitability the rest of the field will be hard-pressed to overcome.  Gov. Romney will be the winner in a party desperate to win come November.  That means a lot.

A third place/15-18% finish for Sen. Santorum will mean that, unlike the other anti-Romneys who have sizzled and then subsequently fizzled months before any votes were cast, he is peaking at just the right time.  I doubt it would be enough to launch him past the apparent Romney coalescence, but it would position him to be the beneficiary should there be a late, desperate movement among conservatives to stop Gov. Romney.  (It's much more likely that, at that point, Republicans will get in line and set their sights squarely on defeating President Obama next fall, but you never know.)

Payroll Tax Extension

Substantively the House GOP is right: a two month extension is impractical, non-stimulative policy.

Politically, they lose too much and gain nothing from holding out for a year-long extension, at least not without approving the two-month version first.

The best thing to do at this point is let Obama-Senate Democrats hang themselves with their own rope: adopting another piece of legislation that will do nothing to encourage recovery of a stagnant economy of which they are complete owners.

We tried to do the right thing. See you in November.

A More German Europe

Fears of a "Fourth Reich" are not commensurate with a desire to save the EU from impending implosion.  The only way to save said Union -- for a time at least -- is for a common assumption of the overly indebted members' obligations.  The country with the resources to do this is Germany, meaning a common assumption of everyone's debt is a German assumption.

Germany will not agree to this without Brussels first receiving a veto over members' budgets -- nor should they.  Berlin will dictate the terms by which Brussels will enforce austerity on Greece, Spain, Portugal etc. as a precondition to Berlin underwriting all their debt.

He who pays the piper calls the tune.

The state of affairs in Europe will thus be Germany both subsidizing other nations and determining what their budgets and finance policies are to look like.

A European Union hence will be a Europe dominated in every relevant facet by Germany.  It is either that or disintegration.

Those countries who would be so subservient must decide if a total loss of self-determination and sovereignty is a price worth paying for a common currency that does not even benefit them.

Egypt & the 'Arab Spring'

Popular unrest has once again boiled over in Tahrir Square, directed in like manner at Mubarak's successors as it was at Mubarak.

Indeed, the fundamentals beneath the facially disparate circumstances are the same and must cause any but the wildly optimistic (or delusional) to question whether the "Arab Spring" is not really just a continuation of a centuries-long Arab Winter.

In the Land of the Pharoahs, as with most of the Arab world, the condition is autocracy -- the strong leveraging their strength to both seize and retain power.  To such an end all means are necessary.

For Mubarak the means were the "emergency laws" enacted (then never rescinded) in the confusion following Sadat's assassination.  For the generals it was Mubarak's ouster, encouraged by their heartfelt promises to be a faithful caretaker until Egyptian democracy went online.

Unsurprisingly, they are now reluctant to cede power, or to step aside without at least a strong guarantee of their continued place of privilige within Egyptian state and society.

To expect the Muslim Brotherhood, or whatever name Islamists choose to call themselves, to behave differently if and when they do assume power is, at best, naive.

The hope for democracy and a pluralistic society along the Nile is frustrated by this culture of power -- of using the most power to gain power and to secure power. 

Not only is this the way it has always been done, but in their efforts to preserve their power Egypt's rulers have always suppressed any and all civic elements that could possibly challenge their autocratic hold.  The upshot is that any kind of meaningful civil society is absent, leaving the Egyptian people feckless before the power struggles between the military on one hand and Islamists on the other.

Democracy, pluralism, and rights of the minority simply have no weight with which to throw a punch or the wherewithal to counter those thrown by the powers that be.

If anything in the Arab world is changing, it is simply the tools of oppression changing from the hands of tyrants to those who wield Islam's sword.

The long winter continues.

OWS, Still

The public's tolerance for OWS, as measured in opinion polling, is running out.

Surprising, this is not.

Weeks after these occupations began, nothing new has really developed from them.  No cause to action, no demands, no political organization.  They are just there, camped out in their own refuse, angry at an abject percentile.  To the extent that there was a point to be made it has been made.  Now they are are just occupying space.

Also, a populace that has endured sustained economic hardship for years now is entirely likely to show some empathy towards a movement fueled by economic grievance, however Marxist and misdirected it may be.  But once that movement, comprised of people who are generally not in search of gainful employment, begins to interfere with people and the pursuit of their own, empathy, sympathy and any other residue of common-cause quickly evaporate, replaced in their turn by anger, contempt and intolerance.

This is what OWS is becoming: a pointless, obstructive social nuisance.

Soon may it wither under the weight of the coming winter cold and wet.

Taxing or Spending?

As everyone mourns the failure of the Super Committee to achieve a grand bargain that would have saved the republic (not that anyone could have plausibly expected them to succeed; they wail for partisan positioning), we must all ask ourselves a fairly simple yet impactful question: Are we on the road to bankruptcy because we do not tax enough or because we spend too much?

Newt Ascendant

Observers have been speculating for weeks whether Newt Gingrich would eventually get a second look (and a spike in the polls) from conservatives looking for an alternative to Romney.  That has begun to happen and it is not hard to see why.  As the ever-wise and sagely Charles Krauthammer poninted out, this race has been shaped more by the debates and less by traditional retail-politicking.

That is to Newt's strength, for he has dominated the debates -- or, better said, his comprehensive knowledge on seemingly every public issue has shone through.  (His shots at the mainstream media moderators have not hurt him either.)

This coupled with the fact that each of the would-be alternatives have wilted in turn as soon as they've ascended the polls and Newt's newfound strength is easily explained.

What might be harder to explain is if he holds up under the inevitable scrutiny better than those before him.

Palestinian Statehood

It is hard to imagine a more counterproductive act in the Mid-East peace process than granting the Palestinians statehood.  Since Oslo, the premise of the entire process has been "land for peace" -- in return for Israeli cession of land and autonomy the PA is to crack-down on the terrorist elements within its society.

Land and autonomy have been ceded -- on multiple occasions, as it happens -- without peace being provided in return.  The PA, in other words, has gotten more and more of what it has wanted without being compelled to hold up its end of the bargain.

Now they ask for statehood with much of the international community's endorsement.  It will not happen now or in the imminent future (the United States will veto the initiative in the UN Security Council), but that the idea has so much support speaks to how little those global actors interested in peace in the Holy Land know how to achieve it.

By mistakenly believing that peace is just one more Israeli concession away without holding the PA accountable for itself, Palestinians have come to understand that no change in the way they operate is really needed: international pressure will eventually compel the Israelis to make every concession they desire.  Terrorism thus continues and a lasting peace slips farther away.

The push for Palestinian statehood is just the latest, and how anyone can support the idea given the present state of affairs strains reason.  Having felt no compulsion to pacify its society, the PA hasn't.  The state created would thus be saturated, nay controlled by elements seeking to destroy the state next door.

That this is so little understood only means that peace is as far away as ever.  The ball is in the Palestinians' court and they are the ones whom the international community should hold accountable.  No one else.

Romney On a Limb

The hang-up conservatives have with Gov. Romney is the conviction that he will say, support, oppose anything advantageous to him politically.  The upshot is a fear that, however much he may espouse conservative principles at present, he will abandon them if and when they become politically inconvenient.

His cautious, low-risk campaign has done little to assuage these fears.  If anything, it has exacerbated them.  Witness the "anyone but Romney" efforts that are intensifying within the conservative movement, all because he has declined to outline or defend conservative initiatives that address the paramount issues confronting the republic.

To address this the governor must continue to do what he did on Saturday: propose entitlement reforms similar in kind to those that have been proposed by conservative luminaries like Paul Ryan.  This is by its definition risky, something by which President Obama and the Left will bludgeon him in the general.

Accordingly, it will earn him credit with the Republican base.  He will be going out on a limb for something bold and conservative, tying his political fate, in other words, to the fate of conservatism and its prescriptions for improving America.

To be the standard-bearer of conservatives, he must bear the standard.  On Saturday he began to do this.

The Consternation

The consternation of the Republican Party this campaign cycle is that all of its best talent is unripe: recently elected and not quite ready to assume the White House.  (We've all seen what happens when you put someone who isn't ready into the White House...)

In 2016 many of them should be seasoned enough, but by then President Obama will have done four more years of damage or a Republican will be seeking re-election.

Greece & the EU

David Pryce-Jones stops just short of declaring that Greece will soon be the author of the EU's downfall today:

Everybody with a head on their shoulders has been forecasting for years that the euro was certain to come to a crisis like this. The sovereignty of nations is stronger than the Brussels mob. Union was a historic mistake. The Greeks invented democracy, and it will be poetic justice if they save it now and free us all"

That Eurocrats have reacted so harshly to Prime Minister Papandreou's referendum plan is hardly surprising.  Having sought for decades to consolidate total-authority in Brussels, Greek popular will stands to bring the whole edifice down in a single plebiscite.

That is fine.  Greeks have every right to assert themselves in such a manner.  It is their future and they cannot be blamed if they don't want to leave it languishing in the hands of Angela Merkel, Nicholas Sarkozy and their distant, would-be rulers in the capital of Belgium.

Rejection of the EU bailout is the only way to do this. As a consequence they would of necessity leave the Euro, reinstate and devalue the drachma, and slowly climb out of the huge catastrophe that is otherwise here to stay. Sure, Greeks will personally have to deal with the consequences of their recklessly-constructed and unsustainable social state, but in the long-run that is clearly preferrable to being stuck with a currency and economic model that prevents the country from embarking on a necessary restructuring.

Greeks would once again be their own masters, not the dictated-too subservients of their European neighbors. 

They defeated Xerxes -- they can and must do this.

Iraq Withdrawal

One can be forgiven for assigning political motives to the president's decision to withdraw from Iraq when scarcely anytime elapsed between his announcement and his campaign touting it to his base.

There are certainly no strategic reasons to justify it.

Iraqi democracy is real but fragile.  Next-door neighbor Iran has regional aspirations that hinge on both a nuclear program and influencing affairs in Mesopotamia.

American retreat makes this infinitely easier.  Coupled with the drawdown President Obama hopes to achieve soon in Afghanistan, America is on the verge of surrendering most, if not all ability to shape affairs in the Middle East towards our interests.  Not only are we declining to give support to incipient democratic elements but we are leaving a vacuum that Iran and other Islamist actors will not hesitate to fill.  This decision effectively gives those seeking to attack the United States greater latitude to do so.

As Frederick and Kimberly Kagan point out, America's retreat from Iraq is as shameful an abdication of responsibility and strategic sense as our retreat from Vietnam -- except that Iraq is at the center of the global region most pivotal to America's long-term national security.

For someone who has complained ad nauseum about the predicament his predecessor left him in, the president is inexplicably creating a mess that his successors will have to deal with for a generation or more.  All so he can keep a campaign promise he never should have made in the first place.

Hope No More

A President who came to office one way has decided to pursue re-election in quite another. "Hope," "Change," and post-partisanship replaced by cynically scapegoating every ominous force imaginable -- the rich, Republicans, events.

In fairness, he cannot run on much else. As a would-be he could run on promise. As an incumbent he must run with a record -- a record that isn't very good. The economy is as bad as the one he inherited (more Americans are out of work), he has expanded government beyond Constitutional limits and most American's comfort zones, our debt has increased exponentially and our credit decreased inversely, and we are slowly but steadily retreating from the world.

This or any president cannot win with popular focus fixed on such a record.

And so he tries to deflect the spotlight, redirecting it towards those nefarious Republicans and plutocrats who are the true culprits, the authentic masters of our present misery.

Not him. Not Barack Obama. Not the One.

Our chief executive, in other words, plans to win this election at the lead of an angry mob of sorts.

"Change we can believe in" gives way to "To the lanterns!"

Herman Cain

The problem with Herman Cain is that Republicans cannot do anything more than make an educated guess about him.  He is entirely likable, understands the need to dramatically reduce the federal government's footprint, and is a happy warrior akin to the Party's patron saint, Ronald Reagan.

But he struggles with specification.  He has failed to go in depth defending "9-9-9" or refuting the substantive concerns raised about it, nor has he given much indication that he has thought out his positions on other relevant issues like foreign policy or the judiciary.

Of less reassurance is the fact that he is just now beginning to assemble something approximating a campaign structure.  Heretofore it has been entirely ad hoc.

Going into an election we cannot afford to lose, Mr. Cain asks Republicans to make a large leap of faith.

Iowa & New Hampshire

The current presidential nomination process of both parties has justly received criticism for the dispositive roll it gives to the small, idiosyncratic states of Iowa and New Hampshire.

To be fair though, if you are going to have such an intensely flawed and unrepresentative system there is at least the minor consolation that the two states given such absurd preference are fairly distinct from each other ideologically.

On the Republican side, the rural social conservatism of Iowa is balanced in short-order by the individualistic, libertarian-conservatism of New Hampshire. The Midwest is countered by the Northeast, which is then countered by the South in South Carolina.

There are better ways to do it (a string of regional primaries perhaps), but the system does have some Madisonian logic undergirding it.

OWS

The naked, in-your-face sense of entitlement of the OWS protestors is of a certain kind with the recent rioters in London and the indignant hordes in the streets of Athens.

These are the children of the welfare state; a generation conditioned by state largesse to neither expect nor desire being masters of their own fate. It is to the state to provision for them, and it is upon the state to make some kind of restitution when they do not enjoy the standard they feel is their right. Thus the demand for the federal government to take actions such as taxing wealth to a greater degree or to forgive all student debt.

It is, in many respects, the reverse of JFK's inaugural exhortation: not what you can do, but what society is supposed to do for you.

The Charmed Campaign of Mitt Romney

National polls of Republican voters now place Herman Cain either dead even or slightly ahead of putative frontrunner Mitt Romney.

So continues Romney's charmed candidacy.

Cain's sudden and soaring ascension from fringe to front means one thing: the scrutiny the other contenders began to direct towards him in the last debate will increase exponentially in the next.

Not by Romney, mind you.  He has no political need right now to so much as cast a sidelong glance towards Cain, at least not when all the other would-be nominees have every need to do so.  It is Cain who now occupies the space the rest of them seek: tribune of the conservative movement and principle challenger to the establishment's favorite, Romney.  Unless and until they are able to assume the ground Cain now treads upon, they have no plausible path to the nomination.  Their political lives depend upon them attacking Cain and taking the support among movement conservatives he presently enjoys.

Romney could not ask for more.  As has been the case throughout this campaign, movement conservatives continue to attack each other and splinter that constituency.  His new nearest competitor Cain -- as with Perry before him and Bachmann before him -- will now face the preponderance of that scrutiny (the charge that his 9% national sales tax will provide the government a new avenue to raise taxes in the future has the potential to be especially damning).

To Romney's triple benefit he continues to enjoy a reprieve from heavy scrutiny, he is saved from having to dirty his hands attacking his nearest competitor and, in turn, his nearest competitor will be forced to spend his time defending himself instead of going after him and his heresies, principally "Romneycare."

It is as if the field is going out of its way to clear a clean and even path for Romney to the nomination.

With enemies like these, who needs friends?