One of the questions regarding the latest polling on the Republican race has to be the status of Mitt Romney and Rick Perry as regional candidates – whether each can compete feasibly outside of their traditional geography.

Here’s the latest data on that point from the Washington Post poll this week. First with Palin, then without.

Essentially, Romney and Perry’s numbers in the South are unchanged with or without Palin: 20/21 percent for Romney, 40/41 percent for Perry. The net non-South figures are slightly more liquid: 24/27 for Romney, 19/21 for Perry. But it’s the West where larger shift happens: 28/34 for Romney, a six point jump, and 23/26 for Perry.

My curiosity here is what Perry’s identification is like in the West, as it seems he has plenty of opportunities to appeal to that contingent. More interesting is the fact that Romney wins only one category among the ideological identifiers: his margin among self-identified Moderate/Liberal Republicans is 29% to Perry’s 12%, while Perry’s alignment is 37% to Romney’s 20% among self-identified Conservatives.

Subscribe to Ben’s daily email, The Transom.

One of the things few people seem to be mentioning when it comes to evaluating the 2012 field on the Republican side is the power of individuals to raise money and spend it wisely, which tends to be the hallmark of well-run campaigns.

The important thing is to understand that all this talk of dark horses and potential candidates is just that–talk–until any of these lesser names prove they can raise money. The power of Sarah Palin’s name is quite significant, of course–but that’s not necessarily the same as the power to gain money from followers who want to give it to you, as opposed to a candidate you’ve endorsed. Given that 2012 is going to easily lap 2008 in expenditures, we should be mindful of this power of the purse.

So please, keep the following numbers in mind. In 2010:

• Thune raised about $750k this cycle.
• Daniels raised about $1.4M.
• Huckabee raised roughly $1.8M.
• Pawlenty raised about $3.3M.
• Palin raised a little more than $3M for SarahPAC in 2010, about $5.4M since ’08.
• Romney raised almost twice as much as Palin, a bit more than $5M. He has raised roughly $8.8M total since the ’08 election.
• Gingrich raised more than $24M for American Solutions 527 in the 2010 cycle, and about $700K for his personal PAC.
• Perry raised nearly $38M, just for his personal campaign, from about 22,000 donors.
• Barbour raised a metric ton of cash — $9M in the first quarter, $19M in the second, and $31M in the third. Ultimately RGA raised more than $50M just this cycle, and could approach $70M if you look at the past 18 months. Haley’s personal PAC raised an additional $1M.

These are based on the numbers publicly available as of early October. Obviously, of all of these, only Perry was on the ballot. You could assign Palin more weight since she obviously did a ton to direct people to give to other candidates, but in terms of her personal cash haul, that’s a much smaller number than you might expect. Gingrich went by the ad strategy instead of donations to candidates, as is his wont, but he was the headliner for virtually all of their fundraising, and American Solutions is really defined as Gingrich, Inc. You could question how much credit is due to Barbour personally, since RGA was just promoting their candidates and he wasn’t the headliner a lot of the time (plus, a lot of money went to them that would’ve gone to the RNC), but still, his operation is incredibly impressive.

Candidates like Huckabee can always overperform their fundraising based on personal appeal and good operations, but that’s the exception which proves the rule–and without question, there is a need for a candidate who can match Obama’s warchest. While you can dither how much Gingrich and Barbour’s success indicates people’s dedication to them vs. dedication to their missions, the point is that Barbour, Perry, and Gingrich have fundraising operations which make their candidacies serious from the get-go if they run, despite any flaws they may have.

Update: It’s worth noting how much it effects your fundraising endeavors if you’re on the ballot and others aren’t. Michele Bachmann raised $13.4 million for her 2010 campaign, which means she raised more than Palin, Romney, Huckabee and Pawlenty combined in 2010, and roughly as much as Palin and Romney combined to raise since the 2008 cycle ended.

Follow Benjamin Domenech on Twitter.

[tweetmeme]

The rumors of Sarah Palin’s 2012 campaign are unceasing, and it’s possible there’s fire and not just smoke here. She’s demonstrated her power as an endorser in key primary states and across the country; she’s fundraised for everyone under the sun; she’s written one bestseller and is about to release another; and her celebrity star has been unceasing among the Tea Party set.

It remains my view that Palin would be incredibly foolhardy to run for president in 2012. She has a great gig now — no one is questioning her qualifications to be a national grassroots leader or talking head — where she’s making money and doesn’t have to take Q&A. Palin may well be overestimating her support — people give to her as donations to a martyr and as a way of sticking a thumb in the eye of the left. This doesn’t necessarily mean they want her to be president.

Yet let’s assume she does run in 2012 — who stands to benefit? In an odd way, of all the potential candidates, I think it’s Newt Gingrich who benefits the most.

It’s about the money, mostly. Gingrich may seem like old news to the insider class in Washington — David Paul Kuhn does a good job of explaining why — but he’s thriving as a fundraiser, with a set of supporters which overlaps the Tea Party set but is more traditionally conservative. His committed donor base at American Solutions overlaps with Palin’s, but to a lesser degree than Haley Barbour’s or Mitt Romney’s.

Gingrich, Barbour, and Palin are the proven national fundraisers in the race — Romney can still self-fund, and Pawlenty, Pence and Daniels have smaller national standings. So while Gingrich may be hurt, he may also benefit both by seeing some of his opponents suffer. There will be a mad scramble to become the coalescing force for anti-Palin sentiment on the right, and Gingrich’s brand of intellectual debating skill has a great deal of appeal for both an older set of Republicans, who view him as an icon, and a younger set, which has forgotten or never saw many of his failings as a legislative leader.

So you’re left with a contest of two divisive celebrities both with self-inflicted scars and both mustering preexisting national followings. Gingrich’s path for a nomination only works if he divides the support of social conservatives among other candidates (his baggage on this count being heaviest), something that I believe Palin would exacerbate — and in a field of governors, it diminishes his lack of executive experience to be pitted against someone whose tenure in office was so brief. The upshot is that I suspect a Palin candidacy would drive out Pence and Huckabee, force Romney and Pawlenty to the middle, shrink Daniels’ support to the non-Ron-Paul-minded libertarians, and steal away a host of donors who otherwise would’ve gone to Barbour. It pits Palin’s folksy quips against Gingrich’s history-drenched stemwinders. All this serves to help Gingrich’s standing, and cement him as the smart alternative to the Mighty She.

Of course, this list doesn’t include John Bolton. And that, my friends, could change everything.

Follow Ben Domenech on Twitter.

[tweetmeme]

The 2012 Republican Presidential nomination is already a matter of hot discussion in political circles, and after the November elections six months from now, the race for the White House will begin in earnest. So this month, The New Ledger ran the first edition of what we anticipate will be a monthly feature: a simple poll of 100 online influencers on the right. We asked leading voices from around the blogosphere, with writers from Redstate, National Review Online, The Weekly Standard, HotAir, Commentary, BigGovernment, individual bloggers, and others throughout the conservative/libertarian thinktank world to weigh in.

We have no way of telling who voted for whom, and the poll tags multiple votes. The results are below. If you would like to participate yourself and let your voice be heard in the survey, we’ll be publishing the results of that in the days ahead. You can participate here.

Online Influencers Survey: May 2010

We asked respondents two questions: first, to rank six different candidates for the 2012 Republican nomination we believe will run, and second, to select one choice from a longer list, including several dark horse candidates. Altogether, we believe this gives an accurate (and somewhat surprising) picture of what leading conservative/libertarian bloggers and thinkers believe about the 2012 stakes at this very early point.

Question 1. Please Rank the Following Candidates for the 2012 Republican Nomination in Order of Preference:

A few points of interest:

• Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana was the first place candidate, and has perhaps the most devoted following among the influencers, perhaps thanks to the fandom of National Review and other publications. An incredible 45% of influencers rank him as their first choice.
• Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty came in second in our poll, as the consensus candidate. Pawlenty was consistently the 3rd or 4th choice of each respondent, the fallback position from their initial preferences. Only one out of five respondents ranked him in their top two choices, but notably, he was never ranked 6th.
• Congressman Mike Pence, also of Indiana, was the last addition to our first six (and internally, his inclusion was subject to the most debate among our editorial staff). But he locks up the third spot with solid rankings.
• Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour is next, with the highest vote total as the second candidate. But as we shall see, that support seems to be relatively weak — Barbour does not break through in any other slot.
• Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney may be feeling the sting of Obamacare or of his recent endorsement of Utah’s Bob Bennett; he came in fifth despite being seen as the silver medalist in 2008. Not a single influencer responding to this poll ranked him as their first choice.
• Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich may be able to raise money, and he sure gives good speeches, but he has little stock with online influencers: he received the most fifth place and sixth place votes. It may be that his time is just too far past, that he carries too much baggage, or that he’s seen as having failed adequately to capitalize on the opportunity of 1994.

Now it gets interesting.

Question 2: Please Select One of the Following Theoretical Candidates for the 2012 Republican Nomination (Includes Dark Horses)

1. Paul Ryan 30%
2. Mitch Daniels 12%
3. John Thune 11%
3. Rick Perry 11%
5. Jeb Bush 9%
6. Jim DeMint 8%
7. Sarah Palin 6%
8. Tim Pawlenty 4%
8. Newt Gingrich 4%
10. Mike Pence 3%
11. Haley Barbour 2%
12. Mike Huckabee 0%

There were several additions to the field for the second question, including Sen. John Thune, Texas Gov. Rick Perry, conservative darling Sen. Jim DeMint, the ever-controversial Sarah Palin, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, and (the extremely unlikely to run) Jeb Bush. We also dropped Mitt Romney from this selection, just on the very slim chance that he does not run, and because no one’s really been asking the question of what would happen if he decides against it.

A few notes:

• As you can see, the respondents were overwhelming: the young Paul Ryan, who has not given much if any indication he is seriously considering running for higher office (and rejected calls to run for Senate or Governor in Wisconsin), received 30% of the total votes, more than double the next entry.
• It’s interesting that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin was such a non-factor. We expected her to dominate this section of the poll, and we were wrong. Even Jim DeMint ranked higher among influencers.
• There is a strong contingent for both Thune and Perry made up of defectors from Pawlenty, Pence, and Barbour, who all fell to single digits. Only Mitch Daniels retained the bulk of his supporters, coming in second.
• We will drop Mike Huckabee from this section of the poll in our June edition, as he attracted no votes, and likely add Romney, who we frankly can’t see sitting this one out.

We’re sorry if you’re a blogger who wasn’t included this time — we may expand the request list for June, and just take the first 100 respondents. If you’re someone famous and awesome and want to be included next time in this casual assessment of where things stand, please contact us at media [at] newledger.com.

Please note: We had great responses for our first survey, with 80% of our originally requested influencers voting within the timeframe. Because a few of the original requesters couldn’t participate (thanks to organizational restrictions) and a few didn’t want to yet, we extended the invitation to other bloggers and writers who had missed the cut on our original list. Due to a flaw in our poll settings (sorry, first time), while everyone answered the second question, a few people only ranked one candidate of the list of six, which is why the rest of the percentages are a bit odd.

Follow Ben Domenech on Twitter.

[tweetmeme]

Before a single town hall, debate, primary or caucus, Mitt Romney’s blown his chances for the presidency in 2012. What the 2008 also-ran had to say today on Fox News Sunday was the same thing I and others have witnessed him say a half dozen times over the past few months behind closed doors — a stubborn refusal to admit any similarity between President Obama’s national health care plan and his own disastrous solution in Massachusetts.

Here’s one quote:

There’s a big difference between what we did and what President Obama is doing. What we did, I think, is the ultimate conservative plan. We said people have to take responsibility for getting insurance, if they can afford it, or paying their own way. No more free-riders. And we solved this at the state level, not a federal plan, but a state plan.

James Pethokoukis, who blogs over at Reuters, had an interesting post the other day about Romney’s TARP problem — essentially arguing that Romney’s weak explanations for his continued support of TARP will function as a “scarlet T” for conservatives in the 2012 primaries. [Note: Both I and Francis have argued on Coffee & Markets that a vote for TARP is not only forgiveable, but justified. More than one conservative voted for TARP, and I think they can defend that vote today. Support for the auto bailouts and the stimulus package, however, are both completely unjustified.] But the blowback that will come for Romney’s support for TARP pales in comparison both to the stubborn silliness of his defense for the Massachusetts plan, and for his inability to recognize the opportunity this moment presented.

First, a simple statement of fact: the similarities between the current plan pending on Capitol Hill and what was proposed in Massachusetts’ Commonwealth Care approach are great indeed. The Boston Herald’s Michael Graham has even referred to it as “Obamacare: The Beta Version.” As Phil Klein has detailed on more than one occasion, there is very little daylight here:

For one thing, while the Romney camp would like to argue that the bill he signed did not raise taxes, in actuality, it did include a mandate that individuals purchase insurance or pay a penalty. In arguing against Obamacare, conservatives have described the mandate as a middle class tax hike. Republican candidates will spend all of 2010 describing it as such, and if anybody else were running against Obama in 2012, it would be used to argue that he violated his pledge to not raise the taxes of those making under $250,000. If Romney wants to spend the Republican presidential primary siding with Democrats and the Obama administration in arguing that the individual mandate isn’t a tax, I’m sure his opponents will be thrilled.

The CATO Institute put together a fairly definitive study outlining the poor outcomes of the Commonwealth Care plan, and Jeff Emanuel detailed the failings in cost and access on TNL last year in stark terms:

Far from reducing the cost of health insurance, Massachusetts’s individual mandate has driven costs up at twice the average national rate. This was entirely predictable; after all, what can possibly reduce downward pressure on a price more effectively than a legal requirement to purchase it, whatever the cost? According to the Connector, the least expensive price for an insurance policy for a 50 year old non-smoker in 2008 was $3,599 a year ($299.94 per month), with a $2,000 deductible. Next door in Connecticut, that price was just $1,468 a year ($122.36 per month, with a $2,500 deductible) – and Connecticut hadn’t even spent $1.3 billion on controlling and engineering their state’s health care marketplace!

This has had political ramifications, too — Soren Dayton and Mark Hemingway have both argued that one reason Massachusetts voters supported Scott Brown in his surprising upset were their negative experiences with Romney’s plan.

What should be most frustrating to Romney’s more intelligent supporters is that he missed a strategic opportunity to become the strongest voice against Obama’s plan, in a way that could’ve set him up as a defender of pro-market, pro-small business solutions. Romney could easily have given speeches along the lines of:

“Look, I did the best I could in Massachusetts, I tried a coverage plan along these models, and just look what happened. Higher taxes, higher costs, lower access, and only a marginal decrease in the uninsured. And that was the best plan we could get! This model didn’t work in my state, and it won’t work nationally. I’ve learned from my mistake, and President Obama should, too.”

Romney’s got a new book out, which I haven’t read yet but which Ron Brownstein suggests indicates he can’t decide between a reasonable campaign and an angry one (if you can’t do populist, do angry). From most reports, Romney has not yet decided how he’ll run in 2012 — though signs point to a more honest, pragmatic, pro-business approach than his attempt in 2008 to be all things to all right-wingers.

It’s early, of course — who knows who’ll even run — but even with a presumed advantage in money, name identification, and organization, when you consider Romney’s association with big business and Wall Street, his inability to connect with common people, and his refusal to reject his mistaken health care plan, it’s hard to see how he’ll navigate the primaries when he is sure to have stronger candidates to fend off than John McCain and Mike Huckabee. And if I recall, even with a massive lead in money, organization and endorsements, he couldn’t beat them, either.

Leon Wolf:

There are three possible explanations for this, none of which end with Sarah Palin in the White House.

The first is that Sarah Palin is really and truly sick of politics and has decided to hang up her spurs. It is disappointing to those of us who have stood by her, but it certainly isn’t a poor reflection on her personally. Not everyone is cut from the material that allows them to stand in front of the media glare that comes from running for national office, especially when the person in question is a Republican and their family comes into the crosshairs.

The second is that she has decided to focus immediately on running for President in 2012. This suggestion is not a serious one: any person with a whit of sense knows that resigning without even a full term completed takes her completely out of the equation. If she cannot finish a single term, or handle her national travel while finishing out her term, how can she combat the full force of the Obama machine? Only the most foolhardy or clueless would consider this the path that Palin is taking; it is thus no surprise to find Chris Cilizza peddling it as a viable theory. If it is true, it demonstrates that she lacks the political judgment to run a national campaign in any case.

The third is that there is another shoe that has yet to drop, whether scandal, undisclosed health or personal issue, or other. It is probably pointless to speculate on these matters until they become known: if another shoe is set to drop, then drop it will, and we should expect it soon. The longer time goes past without word of it, the less likely it is that it exists.

Christopher Badeaux:

The takeaway from Sarah Palin’s resignation today is that if you’re a Republican (especially but not only a woman) with children under the age of 18, don’t bother.

Seriously, what’s the point? John Roberts’s kids became a talking point, and he was nominated to an appointed office. Sarah Palin’s freaking maternal records became a subject of debate — what reporter would come up to a man, say, like her husband, and say to his face, “Isn’t it true that child isn’t yours?” No jury outside the Bay Area would find him guilty or liable for literally dragging the little worm’s face across fifteen feet of concrete. Barry Obama’s medical records release was a one-page note from his doctor — “All’s Well! Thanks for asking!” — and we’re talking about the heartbeat keeping Joe Freaking Biden from the Oval Office.

Anyone remember all that talk about Sasha and Malia’s likelihood of teenage sex based on race, age, and economic strata? How about Al Gore’s kids? John Edwards’s? Can you remotely imagine any mainstream news reporter even giving air or print time to the theory that Chelsea Clinton had had multiple abortions, regardless of the truth? Can you imagine any of those politicians’ children, if born with Down Syndrome or autism or anything remotely equivalent, being a hate object and being called a political prop?

Had I the talent, looks, charm, and ambition to run for political office (which I do not), I’d have learned over the last year not to do so. My children and my wife mean too much to me. My opponent’s teenaged daughters could be running a lesbian brothel and there wouldn’t be a peep; my daughter could be caught kissing a boy and there’d be rumors he’d knocked her up and I forced her to get an abortion, and those rumors would get mainstream press play.

This isn’t even to get into the insanity of a State ethics system that allows complainants to make repeat, baseless charges against an official, incur no costs, and watch as the official runs up hundreds of thousands in legal bills for which she is personally liable. This is nauseating, stupid, and proof that we’ve crossed some line: Republics work. Things like this are why pure democracies don’t.

Pejman Yousefzadeh:

If Palin has decided she doesn’t want her family to be in the crosshairs, and is therefore getting out of politics, I understand. If she thinks that she is going to become President, or achieve some higher office as a consequence of this move, she has another think coming. If the Left continues to believe that she will try to be a political figure, they will continue to launch ethics investigations, and ex-governors can’t defend themselves as well as governors can. In any event, the Left will now be encouraged to try the same tactics on the next up-and-coming Republican star, or perceived one.

Benjamin Kerstein

I may be naive, but it seems like it could work for her if she’s planning a presidential run. It seems to me that Sarah Palin is the only possible candidate the Republicans have who shares an essential quality with Obama: she gets the conservative base excited and riled up to a near-religious degree. That’s an intangible quality, and you either have it or you don’t. I don’t think the Republicans can even hope to beat Obama if they can’t find a candidate with that kind of charisma. So, for Palin, the real question should be, will this work for the base? I think it will. They’ll see her as a small town woman viciously wronged by the political and media elite, including those in her own party. I think this will arouse even more sympathy for her and increase her appeal. Whether this is good for the Republican Party on a national level, however, is something else entirely.

Ben Domenech

Sarah Palin is the most divisive political figure in America. She has been for the past year. Just the other day — before we knew of her impending resignation announcement — a few friends and I discussed some points made by Jim Geraghty on a particularly loathsome series of articles and statements by major media and online figures with pretenses of rationality.

For my part, I argued that there’s really little difference between the reaction to Palin and the reaction to other good-looking conservative women — as exemplified by the recent Playboy scandal and the litany of examples provided by the online left over the past few years. But perhaps what is different, in Palin’s case, is the assistance of the mainstream media. And in this case, I don’t blame them as much as some do. Palin is great for magazines. She sells. She’s sexy, controversial, and has plenty of local enemies to give quotes. A third of America loves her to death and a third wishes she would die in a fire. That’s gold, Jerry.

I confess, I don’t understand the motivations of some of this hatred. Palin is by all accounts a fairly normal politician; if anything, it’s hard to see the ideological differences between her and, let’s say, Mike Huckabee, who charms many on the left (heck, even Stewart and Colbert). This makes me think it’s a lot more about style than substance, about who she’s decided to be, about her accent, and about that wink. It’s all just a matter of personal reaction, exaggerated by personal experience — I have a friend who also decided to give birth to a child with Down Syndrome, and so the accusations that Trig Palin is nothing more than a political prop of his mother is the sort of thing that make my skin crawl, even when they come from individuals known far and wide for their ability to spew inhuman excrement from their keyboards. Maybe others don’t have this experience, but hypothetically, if Michelle Obama had been confronted with the same situation and made the same choice Palin did, my admiration for her would be astronomically higher, and I don’t hesitate to say that questions about her pregnancy would be considered unacceptable across the pro-life right. But that’s beside the point.

The divisiveness Palin represents could be a reason to think she’s not done with politics, or as Erick Erickson rightly draws the distinction, only done with electoral politics. She’s on the cusp of a massive book tour and her popularity among Republicans remains very high:

Palin’s biggest strength is her enduring popularity among the Republican base. A recent Pew Research Center poll showed that while she remains divisive among the general public, some 84% of white evangelical Republicans, and 80% of conservative Republicans, give her high marks.

But as Jonah Goldberg notes, and Ace echoes, this is just not a decision that will bolster her support among these corners. With all the freedom it grants to work politically in the lower 48 and escape the multiple frivolous complaints lodged against her in Alaska, that freedom comes with a major penalty: she now legitimately will lose any political experience arguments against any other potential primary candidate in 2012, and certainly against President Obama. It is just not conceivable to view her as a national candidate for the presidency matched up against others in the race.

Resigning at the end of her term in 2010 — I could see that. She’d have as much elected experience as Romney, and the race for the presidency takes two years anyway. But now? I think the idle chatter about an impending scandal is just that — she’s been so heavily monitored over the last year, I think everything that’s there has already been turned over. If it is a scandal, I’m more likely to believe it’s something involving one of her children rather than Palin herself. She withstood the attacks, the vile innuendo, the Photoshops, and the pornos (yes, pornos, multiple) for the last 10 months, after all. I doubt the problem is a lack of personal toughness from the self-described “mama grizzly.”

Personally, I now think she’s really had enough. She has, in the past, always spoken of preferring motherhood to politics. Regardless of Mark Halperin’s smart points to the contrary, I believe that’s the path she’s taking. She’ll raise a ton of money for like-minded Republicans on the circuit, her book will sell well, she’ll continue to inspire affection from devoted fans and anger from her enemies, and Andrew Sullivan almost certainly won’t stop writing about Trig whenever she pops up to do an interview. But this is not 1962, and she is not Richard Milhous Nixon. Absent another successful run for office down the road, I can see no situation where Palin is ever in the serious conversation for the presidency.

South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford today admitted to having an extended affair with an Argentinian woman, and announced his resignation from the Chairmanship of the Republican Governor’s Association, effectively ending his political prospects for higher office.

When the initial news story of Gov. Sanford’s mysterious absence began to trickle into the national press, I called a longtime political hand and friend in South Carolina, from my childhood years in Charleston, and asked about what he thought of the whole thing.

“[Sanford's] kind of an odd guy,” he said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he was off hiking alone, he’s done this sort of thing since he was younger, back before anyone was paying attention. But it could be something else. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was something else. Like I said: good guy, but odd guy.”

An “odd guy” is apparently not even the half of it. What would possess a governor with such good prospects, and such a sterling resume, to throw it all away on a tacky mid-life crisis jaunt to Buenos Aires? For the social conservatives, the immorality of it is abhorrent. For others, it’s not even the immorality — it’s the gaucheness of it. In the old days, the crusty politicos intone, the politicians knew how to keep this stuff clean.

Considered one of the leading candidates for 2012′s Republican Presidential nomination, Sanford is just the latest in a long string of conservative Republicans to admit unfaithfulness to his spouse. Marital infidelity squelched the slim possibilities of a John Ensign 2012 run just a week ago — but before that there was Senator David Vitter and Larry Craig, and before that Bob Livingston and Bill Owens (who never admitted an affair, but who divorced his wife of 28 years amidst a long litany of rumors), and before that — well, the list is a long one. And while reports indicate that Gov. Sanford may have headed to Argentina to end the affair (it had lasted over a year, and his wife had known of it for several months), he is now on that list of derailments as well.

Today in Washington, multiple social conservatives — tired of raising money and investing volunteer hours for candidates who engage in such rampant marital sin — are talking about the concept of a “Fidelity Pledge,” along the lines of the long-running “Tax Pledge” taken by Republican candidates. While it’s a demonstration that the social right is tiring of this hypocrisy, it also begs the question: shouldn’t that “forsaking all others” vow be enough?

Of course, both parties engage in this sort of thing — 2004 Democrat Vice Presidential nominee John Edwards’ adultery with Rielle Hunter produced a child. Barney Frank had a prostitute working out of his apartment. Democrat San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom canoodled his former deputy chief of staff, made all the more uncomfortable by the fact she was married to his campaign manager. There was Eliot Spitzer’s Valentine’s Day gift to himself of a young New Jersey call girl, leading to his resignation – only to be replaced by David Paterson, who had his own infidelities. But the king still has to be Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, who went from speaking to the 2004 Democratic Convention to the jail cell following an affair with his chief of staff, numerous corruption charges, and an attempted coverup of the targeted murder of a stripper his wife found him cavorting with (always an uncomfortable evening in the mansion after that). And this, too, is but the tip of the iceberg of sexual scandals on the Democratic side.

Yet it’s not as if any of these folks (other than perhaps Edwards, who put his supposed devotion to his ailing wife at the center of his public image) are considered hypocrites. Why exactly is that? Well, that’s an interesting question. Let’s just leave it at that.

There can be, of course, political life after affairs. Newt Gingrich is on his third wife — by all accounts, an excellent woman — who he carried on with during his prior marriage and during the Lewinsky trial, and is looking more and more like a possible candidate in 2012 for a Republican Party which, lacking the chance to win the presidency, may at least be interested in winning policy arguments.

Looking forward, the two potential 2012 candidates likeliest to benefit from Sanford’s implosion are Mitt Romney, who will presumably get a nice slice of Sanford’s fiscally conservative supporters, a happily married Mormon with a family of perfect hair and tans — and Texas Governor Rick Perry, a dark horse candidate at the moment who could emerge from a divisive Republican primary in Texas as one of the last men standing three years hence. Sanford’s absence, as a candidate who could’ve potentially united the warring factions of the party, makes the entire 2012 roster all the weaker.

Keep your zippers up, fellas. The GOP is running out of feet to shoot.

So here we are, at the turn of the tide: one vote from winning the court; two-to-three good years from winning the largest stage of the war; the pressures of the Oval Office at their dramatic peak. A critical moment in our nation’s history, time for an individual with the strength and courage to do what the moment demands.

In 2008, I support John McCain.

“But…but…” my friends say incredulously, “But John McCain is crazy!”

“Perhaps,” I answer. “But you say this as if it’s a bad thing?”

It’s true: stubborn and irascible, John McCain’s living rendition of Don Quixote has been infuriating to watch. He always had a bit of the mad saint of the valley to him—a quality that has only increased with age. His breaks from conservative doctrine are manifold, but fewer in number than those of several of his fellow Senators. Yet McCain’s breaks seem so much greater than those of, say, John Warner—why? Because when he goes on his separate path, he damn well wants you to know it, and know that he thinks you and his other conservative opponents to be inches from Lucifer for your damnable orthodoxy.

Or as Lileks put it: “I like John McCain. He seems like the sort of guy you could have a beer with, right up to the moment where he smashes the bottle on the table and jams it in your face over something you said six years ago.”

It all used to have an endearing Abe Simpson quality to it—“Dear Mr. President: There are too many states. Please eliminate three.”—but there is a ferocity that has emerged in recent years that has led to countless run-ins, of the sort staffers share in loud whispers after too many drinks. They tend to remind me less of the befuddled Abe than of Richard Burton as Henry VIII responding to Woolsey in defiance of Rome—“How far would I go, you ask? I would cleave the earth in two like an apple, and fling the halves into the VOID!”

Yet this is also what I’ve always admired about McCain, even if conservatives curse him in the course of legislative battle: he is the same man, whichever side he is on. He brings that same infuriating passion to our cause when his inner compass has led him to alliance. His support of the surge confounded the glitterati of the MSM, who gave him every opportunity to break with the president in a fashion that would’ve led to countless more cover appearances for the late-night self-pleasuring of pimply interns of the New Republic. And yet he could not be agreeable to them, as tempting as the doyennes and the cameras were: he rambled through, grousing yet triumphant, middle fingers raised to Rumsfeld on the right and the New York Times on the left. Even if you dislike McCain, you have to admit: It was a glorious moment for him.

Of course, there is another candidate who shared many of these admirable traits: Rudy Giuliani. It might surprise a few of you to know that hizzoner was my first choice, and first choice by a mile, in this election. No, Rudy’s not a full-bore conservative, but we thought George W. Bush was, and we’ve all seen how that has turned out. The rationale for me was simple: the next four years will be very, very rough for the Republican Party as a whole. The next President will likely be working opposite large Democrat majorities in the House and the Senate. In such a scenario, having a President who does not fear telling Nancy Pelosi to shove it—in fact, ENJOYS the very act and revels in the consequences—is enormously advantageous. In New York City, he survived by keeping his head on a swivel, which is what you gotta do when you find yourself in a vicious cockfight. We could use that in Washington.

Nearly two years ago, I started working in a voluntary capacity alongside others to share the perspective of a dedicated social conservative with the nascent Giuliani campaign, arguing that—with a few internally consistent moves rightward on matters of judicial policy—Rudy could establish himself as the consensus second choice for many social conservatives. He could issue a sterling call for a New Federalism, as Dan McLaughlin has eloquently offered—that while personally pro-choice, he believed Roe to be bad law, wrongly decided, and that every American should have the right to have their voices heard on such an issue by voting in their state. He could argue that it was high time the federal government got back to the business of defending the country, not squabbling over marriage and stem cell funding. With such a position, I still believe that after Brownback, Huckabee, and others inevitably faded, Rudy could have been the consensus pick.

Of course, Rudy’s campaign could easily ignore me or any of the other dirty web folks saying this, but it was advice echoed publicly by genuinely smart people: Patrick Ruffini, Michael Barone and Fred Barnes among others. His campaign chose to ignore all this advice. Instead, they started believing their own name-ID-elevated tracking polls about their frontrunner status. I sat and watched in Houston as Rudy unequivocally passed on the opportunity to become a consensus candidate. They ran the most short-sighted, parochial, and—frankly—flat-out wimpy campaign I’ve ever seen at the national level without the inclusion of Dick Lugar. And that’s saying something.

It’s not like Rudy was the only disappointment, of course. This cycle has been full of them. The only candidate to overperform, as you look over the field, has been Huckabee. As a naturally gifted communicator with good instincts and an evangelistic temperament, I think that people need to recognize that Huckabee represents the views of a significant number of people in the Republican Party, whether they like it or not. If he isn’t chosen for Veep this time, I have no doubt he’ll run again for POTUS in the future, and probably with the Tom Joad impression tempered a bit. A McCain-Huckabee ticket would make Rush Limbaugh’s head explode, as it would for many of our readers, but it’s a ticket that would fully satisfy a good 75% of Republicans, if not more. That’s the reality, folks, and if you don’t like it, then get to changing it.

With Rudy’s ship sinking, Fred a non-factor, and Huckabee hampered by lack of foreign policy chops and a shoestring budget, the opportunity was there for McCain—once the establishment pick, imploded and then reborn, to once again don the armor and save the unseen Dulcinea and her doubtless properly filed FEC paperwork.

We are left with two realistically possible nominees, with hopes for a brokered convention dashed. In 2008, the question has become: do you support the calculating unprincipled friend, or the passionate principled foe?

For me, it came down to three choices, made on three critical fronts: McCain’s decision to side with President Bush on the surge, with President Bush on Alito and Roberts, and against President Bush on the largest entitlement in the history of America. In each of these areas, we were and are agreed—and in each, McCain displayed the courage and patriotism he has always possessed—the strength of character to do what he believed was right, regardless of whether it was popular.

There are other areas, yes. It’s true that when history calls out for a strong choice, I often say “No!” as McCain, onscreen, declared “Yes!” And in response to that same demand, Mitt Romney has answered loud and clear in his four years in elected office: “Present!”

We may rightly ask: what would John McCain’s first 100 days look like? I’m sure any of us could sit down and outline them in rough but accurate fashion—the good and the bad are well known to us by now, and we can anticipate them with all the regular rhythms and sound effects of a 1980s sitcom. We would have to balance against him on some things and cheer him on in others. We know him as a foe and a friend, and know him well.

On the other hand, what would Mitt Romney’s first 100 days look like? I cannot begin to answer that question, because it’s ludicrous to conceive of this as even a possibility. It simply will not happen, ever. The man has the highest negative ratings of any candidate in the field not named Hillary, and she still beats him by an easy margin—one that will only increase as the Oprah-fueled excitement gap widens.

After two-plus years of having Candidate Mitt before us, conservatives have barely scratched the surface of this candidate’s remarkable political liabilities. His weaknesses are not just small or needling—they are epic. More troubling for those who value winning, though, is the fact that Romney campaign’s reactions to assaults are easily foreseen and more easily outmaneuvered; the predictability of out-populisting Huckabee in Michigan followed by blasting John McCain’s conservative position on Medicare in Florida is the hallmark of this movable feast of a campaign (corn dogs here, caviar there, and be sure to peel the skin off that fried chicken).

As general election strategy goes, Barack Obama would have Romney twisted in all directions, with strong words and an easy smile; the Clinton machine would dismantle him piece by piece with a singsong sledgehammer, leaving bits of bone and blood as bleak warnings to future would-be CEO-politicians. The end result is the same: when he’s been chewed by the machine, Mitt Romney will come to symbolize every worst cliche of corporate greed and offense, be reviled as out of touch and inconsistent, and be mocked at length as the whitest white man in America.

Allow me a moment to be blunt: The Democrats will hand Mitt Romney his ass on a silver platter, and force him to wear it as a hat. His sunny demeanor unchanged, he will give a strong farewell speech thanking his supporters, and give the experience a solid B+.

In 2000 I wrote that Joe Lieberman was a man forever at war with his conscience—Mitt Romney battles his very self on what seems like a daily basis. At least Lieberman’s struggle was interesting and soulful—with Romney, one might as well watch varying shades of astroturf compete for territory. Find me the one issue that Mitt Romney will fall on his sword for, and it would be the first. He is not just untested and unmeasured by adversity or serious political firefights (people speak about him “saving the Olympics” as if it was something that mattered; guess what? I’ve been to the Olympics; the Olympics are the United Nations of sport, where everybody gets together to hate on America; nobody actually likes the Olympics, not even Costas), he has the CEO’s strong aversity to the very concept of things falling apart. Equipped with the flat, even optimism that only the gift of a silver spoon and prep school makeout sessions in the bushes near the quad at Cranbrook-Kingswood or Phillips-Exeter can bring to a man’s life, he comes before us as one who has never risked his all for any cause without having a fallback, who has never overcome a vice, who has never wanted for anything.

American voters are fickle creatures, but with great consistency, they recognize such poll-tested waffle-patterned on-demand candidates as being either naïve, otherworldly, or false. With Mitt Romney, would-be heir to the “once adamantly pro-choice” Ronald Reagan (“I was an Independent during Reagan-Bush, I don’t want to take us back to Reagan-Bush”), they may well judge him as all three combined. In another political day, candidates of his ilk won with regularity; they still develop a train of guppy fish lackies in some circles—yet that was before people’s inauthentic comments were fodder for the internet grind, and Romney talking about “seeing the Patriots win the World Series” would get repeated on CNN, Comedy Central, and ESPN News for the next 48 hours, and sent via YouTube to 100,000 people in mere moments. “Conservatives are such rich white idiots,” they will say, and move on.

The Reagan coalition has and will survive many things. But can it survive the total loss of one of its strongest remaining assets—the authentic, consistent, principled leadership it represents? Make no mistake: Clinton or Obama know Mitt Romney’s weaknesses, and they know those of the Republican base as well. They know the opportunity he represents to slice the Reagan legacy away from the Republican Party—a well-manicured pretender to the mantle who gets by on pancake makeup, eyebrow waxing, and hair gel.

So here we are, at the turn of the tide—and you go to the polls with the candidates you have, not the candidates you want. Saint John McCain of the Campaign-Finance Cross versus Willard of the North, well-mannered Ken Doll? The choice is an easy one for me. Let’s help old Don Quixote into the saddle one more time, and set him on his merry way, to win or lose with him.

The Reagan coalition survived Read my lips. It survived Bob Dole’s peanut butter. It survived compassionate conservatism and its kid stepbrother national greatness. And it will survive John McCain and everything he will do as our nominee and as president. In fact—in a twisted version of the ancient Vulcan proverb “Only Nixon could go to China”—only McCain can save it.

They will say the coalition is dead—but we will know better. We know it only sleeps. We will cast our votes knowing that the day will come, four years from now, when a new leader, one who knows what the shining city truly means, stands in front of the fresh-dug tomb, and calls into the blackness, as if to Lazarus—”Come out!”

And when we hear it, we will rise from out of our stupor, dust cobwebs from our arms, stumble to the door, our eyes blinking in the sunlight … and we will know our day has come.

It’s okay, you can smile. The bastards won’t know what hit ‘em.

crossposted at redstate

As the Iowa voters prepare to go to the polls and their places of caucus, the individuals and organizations conservatives respect are raising endorsement flags above their heads, declaring their allegiances. It is time for me to follow suit. And there is no question in my mind that there is one candidate in this cycle who truly stands above the others in several significant areas.

That candidate is Mitt Romney.

I share so many opinions with my colleague Thomas, but on this one I must break from him. All of the candidates in this nomination battle have important and significant qualifications that cannot be underestimated. Yes, they have their flaws—but surely we could trust Rudy Giuliani, the man who fixed the unfixable city, to be an effective Commander in Chief; surely we could trust John McCain, patriot, war hero, old man who shakes fist at clouds, to be a just if irritable POTUS; surely we could trust Fred Thompson, irascible conservative hewn from old growth timber and stained with single malt, to slug the hippies and cut the size of government; surely we could trust Mike Huckabee to use his silver tongue to make NARAL and the ACLU’s collective heads explode on a daily basis; surely we could trust Ron Paul (albeit in an alternate parallel universe where human nature does not exist and there is no need for interstate highways) to rule his idyllic Randian paradise with a soft yet perfectionist touch, fanned with palm fronds by volunteer Oompah Loompahs who sing glorious songs about the gold standard that would make your heart break.

These are good, committed men. There is much in them to appreciate. Yet these candidates all pale when compared to THE Man, Mitt Romney.

Some may point out that Mitt Romney has the least political experience of any candidate in this field. This is of course a bigoted lie. The least politically experienced candidate in this field is, after all, Alan Keyes. And Mitt Romney’s achievements in his lone electoral victory in Massachusetts cannot be underestimated in any respect. As everyone who knows anything knows, Massachusetts residents speak of the Romney years with a mournful fondness unmatched in human history, except perhaps of Adam and Eve speaking in their old age of the lost Garden of Eden. Most cannot speak of it without breaking into a fountain of regretful tears, crying on street corners, wearing sackcloth and ashes as they beg for the return of their lost executive. In the waning days of the Romney rule, one fellow I know actually took to standing outside of the governor’s mansion holding a boombox above his head playing “In Your Eyes,” begging the governor to stay, wailing as if pining for a lost lover.

But Massachusetts’ loss will be America’s gain, as our golden hero brings his unique amalgam of talent in such a critical time in our nation’s history. He has run the best statewide healthcare insurance plan in the country, the best investment capital group in the global economy, and the best Olympics pageant in the history of mankind. Imagine what such a man can do with the United Nations! I know I, for one, am very excited.

Some may say that Romney is merely Steve Forbes circa 2000, a wealthy man attempting to buy a nomination, with few principles but a better face. This is a shallow, bigoted lie. Mitt Romney’s other physical features are also far more attractive than Mr. Forbes’, as anyone could tell you. Mr. Forbes also showed himself to be an inflexible and non-representative politician what with his loyalty to the so-called Flat Tax and his dedicated work on behalf of fiscal conservatism. To be charitable, perhaps it is true that in one area, and one area only, Mitt Romney lags behind Mr. Forbes—Mr. Forbes has an obvious and ironic sense of humor and wit, as displayed with verve on Saturday Night Live, while Governor Romney’s laugh has been called “robot-like,” “less human than Al Gore,” and “like a horse coughing on a large fly” by some. But no worries, he is cognizant of this minor personal flaw—we are continuing to work with the focus group on this and will have the Romney laugh resolved into a smooth, hearty guffaw in time for the general election.

Some may say that Romney’s endorsement by the National Review was a dark moment in the history of that fine journal. This is yet another bigoted lie. The truth is that the New York offices of the National Review have been very even handed throughout this entire process. They have weighed each candidate equally, and found the rest wanting. They do have high standards—the National Review famously declined to endorse Dwight D. Eisenhower, after all—but in each and every way that was meaningful, Mitt Romney represents their views.

This brings us to an important point. Some may say that Romney is not a candidate who can be trusted. This is another bigoted lie. On the contrary: we can absolutely trust him! We can trust him to follow the path that our country charts for him. Are we not interested in representative government? Of course we are! And Mitt Romney is perhaps the most representative of all the candidates to ever seek the presidency of any nation, ever, even the imaginary ones with the aforementioned Oompah Loompahs—there is nothing untrustworthy about this man, not even his hair. When the electorate wants him to believe something, he believes it! When they want him to oppose something, he opposes it! When they are divided, he waffles! This is man is not just the one to lead our nation—he symbolizes it in all its indecisive, fickle greatness, just as Ronald Reagan did when he stopped being pro-choice!

Some may say that comparing Romney to Reagan is like comparing 98 Degrees to The Beatles. But they are by that very argument revealing themselves as nothing more than shallow bigots who have allowed their bigoted minds to overwhelm their slightly less-bigoted hearts to create a bigoted bigot-fest of bigotry.

The example, however, provides some interesting comparisons. It is true that America loves all things processed and manufactured—one need only note the aisles of meats, cheeses, music, television, and grande lite vanilla soy frappucinos. But it is also true that for every giddy, screaming fan of such sparkling pre-packaged talent as Ashley Simpson, Jamie Lynn Spears, or Hannah Montana, there are also “player-haters” who denounce these nipped, tucked, remastered and vacuum-sealed productions as “sickeningly sweet” or “almost repulsive” or “no-talent assclowns.”

Yet as the Republican brand faces an identity crisis, shouldn’t we take a cue from reality television and the boy band mafia? The American people LIKE things that are processed, predictable, and fluctuate as needed. Don’t we believe, as free market conservatives, that the market should get what it wants? This is an on-demand culture, and it’s time we met the demand with the man who understands how to adapt the best, and the fastest, to suit the needs of the moment.

Don’t you see? When the bigoted liars attack Mitt Romney for saying things like “let me check my notes” on an issue as important as the tactical surge in Iraq, they are merely confusing a negative with a positive. Aren’t you tired of the tone-deaf administration we’ve got right now? Under a Mitt Romney administration, our president will understand America enough to know that he needs to check the polls up to the very minute of the State of the Union address to determine what he ought to say about our Global Warming policy. Want to make it illegal to drive cars? Want to make it illegal NOT to drive a Hummer? America, now you too can decide! Just dial the number and press 1 or 2 respectively to make your voice heard.

Some may say, such as Redstate’s own Dan McLaughlin in his well-written but clearly wrong-headed series on the Unbearable Lightness of Mitt, that Romney is a liability for the Republican Party—that he has the highest negatives of any potential nominee, rivaling Hillary Clinton’s. Some may say that Mitt Romney’s path to the nomination would be a victory for the lowest common denominator. And some may say that given the power of the Executive Branch, Mitt Romney’s cadre of loyal supporters will be like Clintonites on speed, leaving a path of vindictive destruction as they target bigoted liars to be investigated, audited, and personally embarrassed.

These are all bigoted lies, and if you believe them, please register your complaint below while including your email, permanent address, and SSN for our files. We will contact you after the election.

I have chosen not to listen to such fools. Fie upon them. It is the dawn of the age of the pre-packaged candidate. Look on Mitt Romney’s works, ye mighty bigots, and despair.

crossposted at redstate