Things are running along speedily over at The New Ledger, and I hope you’ve been reading our work. I’m very happy with where we’re at in terms of meeting our benchmarks for traffic and links - and I also wanted to be sure you saw a few of the pieces I’ve written over there. You can always find the pieces I’ve authored at TNL’s Ben Domenech archive, but here are a few of the ones published over the past month:

Our Cosmopolitan President
Do the Wrong Thing: Obama’s War on Giving
The Centrist President
Burning Down Detroit
The End of Starbucks
Don’t Stop Believing
The War on Philanthropy

Hope you enjoy these.

A few colleagues of mine got together to launch a new web publication, The New Ledger. I encourage you to check it out - it’s got a neat combination of hand-picked aggregated content, sorted Daily Reads each morning, and longer form opinion pieces from smart folks and good writers.

I have the feature today, on The Right and the Challenge of the Environment. I hope you’ll check it out - I’ll be editing the Conservation section of the site going forward.

It’s true that the free market is, oftentimes, the enemy of the environment. It’s one of the greatest forces for freedom in the world, yes – but when it comes to many of the issues, I believe the marketplace espouses a view that is focused on the short term, not the long. It often makes perfect financial sense to operate at the narrow edge of irresponsibility, to stamp your feet about government ignoring property rights and bureaucracy passing ridiculous regulations, because it’s true that such things are often fundamentally unjust. Yet the actors in the market don’t usually evaluate land or sea in terms of stewardship – they evaluate it in terms of the immediate bottom line.

But that’s only half the story. The other half is the fact that overwhelmingly, the vast number of nations that can afford to make the decisions to protect and conserve land and sea, and be good stewards of the resources and creatures within them, are those that are thriving members of the global marketplace.

In an election cycle that saw the explosion of “Fact Check” articles written from thinly-disguised partisan bias, there is one fact that the overwhelming majority of voters going to the polls on Tuesday cannot deny: The 2008 election will finally end.

Regardless of the outcome, we all should be thankful for this fact, if only for the sake of the battered American psyche.

Some academics over the years have intoned that the voting process itself can be considered a legal act of peaceful revolution, in keeping with Thomas Jefferson’s oft-cited musing that “A little rebellion now and then…is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.” If this comparison is accurate, then the only logical conclusion in the aftermath of this contest is that, in the modern age, a little democracy now and then is bad medicine indeed for the mental health of America.

America is so very tired of it all – tired of the hacks, the flacks, and the attacks. Ah, for the older, simpler days of politics, when dirty-fingered men would hand out pamphlets on the street corner with more veracity than the accusations of the 24-hour networks.

Closing the book on the 2008 election would take the strength of a full grown elephant and donkey, yoked in tandem, if the volume held a full accounting of the twists and travails of this never-ending contest, with full appendices of fiends and follies.

What a range of surprises the bizarre tome would contain. How could even the wisest minds of Washington have predicted these two candidates, even a year ago, would emerge from the primary season as the party nominees? How could they have predicted that their stances on the war in Iraq, the largest contributing factor to each man’s victory, would barely be a topic of mention in the final weeks of the campaign, pushed aside by the controversy of an Alaska Governor’s fashion choices and the economic viewpoints of a Toledo plumber?

How could they have predicted that John McCain, for years the Republican most popular with the press, would become a jilted lover? How could they predict that Barack Obama, based on fewer than 200 days experience in the U.S. Senate, could predict with a messianic aplomb unseen since the days of William Jennings Bryan, that his election would be retold to children in decades hence as “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal” with a straight face?

Perhaps most shocking of all: who could have predicted that this cycle, featuring two men who repeatedly declared their ability to unite the country in bipartisan spirit in the wake of eight divisive years, would put the charge of “Socialism” back in common usage?

Speaking to one of his glorious rallies on Wednesday, Sen. Obama claimed that “By the end of the week, [Sen. McCain] will be accusing me of being a secret communist because I shared my toys in kindergarten. I shared my peanut butter and jelly sandwich.”

There’s only one problem with that line, of course: Sen. Obama isn’t talking about sharing his sandwich as President. He’s talking about sharing yours.

As the overwhelming favorite on Tuesday, Sen. Obama stands to emerge from this race with the most ethereal presidential mandate of the modern era. How can one give a mandate to a party headed by a politician who insists his election alone will accomplish his policy goals? As the old song goes, he doesn’t want to set the world on fire – he just wants to spark a flame in your heart. And spark it he has - but if the polls are to be believed, it’s very unlikely this spark will transfer to Senate Democrats, who may gain as few as 4 net seats in an election cycle where a 60-vote filibuster proof majority had once seemed a foregone conclusion.

Sen. Obama’s model for success, in other words, is a model dependent entirely on the person of Barack Obama. It is not exactly a model for a new Democratic majority.

Consider former Gov. Mark Warner, poised to win Virginia by a significant margin, as the contrast. In him, you see the model for a pro-capitalist Democratic majority that recognizes the center-right nature of the electorate. Where Warner once denounced social conservatives and gun rights voters as “threatening to what it means to be an American,” he went on to earn “A” ratings from the National Rifle Association, and proved to be a centrist on fiscal issues. Gov. Warner has no buoyant cult of personality around him – his keynote speech to the Democratic Convention earlier this year was widely viewed as a flop – but rather a practical resume of solid government work.

In Gov. Warner, we see the kind of pragmatic politician who represents the policy viewpoints of a permanent Democrat majority. But in Sen. Obama, we see the kind of hubristic politician who could very well squander an electoral victory – attained not so much thanks to his policies or celebrity charisma as fatigue over President George W. Bush – by overreaching.

A regrouped conservative movement, likely to have an even firmer hold on the GOP, will be ready if he does. The successful politicians on the right in 2008 almost all share one attribute: a populist streak that is very strong and vibrant. There’s no question that, as we saw in ‘92-93, the next 2-4 years will find this third of the GOP increase the strength of this variety of politics.

Today, the American people are sending a mandate for change. But getting them to agree on what the word “change” means, and what government results from it, is a very difficult thing. If Sen. Obama makes the mistake of believing that his election represents a mandate for redistribution of wealth, for socialized medicine, for a reintroduction of the welfare state through tax credits to those who pay nothing…he may soon find that his electoral coalition is more delicate than he imagined. Matt Yglesias is already urging him on toward this course, suggesting that this election will grant an unrestrained mandate to American progressives.

The right can only hope the new overlords believe the hype.

We shall see. For now, be thankful the election that would not die is finally, at long last, proving to be mortal. Come Tuesday, put the yard signs away for a bit, and say farewell to our most modern folly. Americans now should take their cue from T.S. Eliot, and saying “Well now that’s done, and I’m glad it’s over,” put a record on the gramophone.

Video by Mary Katherine Ham.

I n every Presidential election, it’s my experience that reports of fraud tend to be a bit exaggerated. Yes, there will always be a degree of problems - but most of those are of the human error variety, not purposeful lawbreaking. With so many millions voting, and so many election officials who are really just volunteer librarians, mistakes are bound to happen. The Electoral system helps guard against these things mattering, and I am fairly confident that outside some isolated incidents in big cities, voter fraud won’t change who wins the Presidency tomorrow. Corrupt as they are, I doubt very much that ACORN will provide the margin of victory.

Now, when it comes to local elections, I think the story is the reverse. Voter fraud can have a huge impact on a local level, and yet it’s almost always underreported. ACORN can’t make a difference in the presidential stakes, but they can make a difference in who becomes the next mayor, commissioner, or Congressman. And it’s surprisingly easy for that to happen in an environment where election laws and regulations are shockingly lax.

Consider where I live - Loudoun County, Virginia, arguably the swing county in a swing state, and one Obama is absolutely certain to win if you’re keeping score. Here in Virginia, you can go in and vote absentee early - a slightly different arrangement than other states, but quite straightforward in practice. An enormous number of people, more than 450,000, have taken advantage of this so far. All you have to do is go to your local office, stand in line for about 30-45 minutes, fill out a form, and vote.

At the Loudoun location on Saturday, they weren’t requiring picture ID - not even a Federal one, just any ID. Turns out you don’t need one. How convenient.

But if, in theory, Virginia decided to require that you present an ID as opposed to just sign a piece of paper (which will only matter if there’s a lawsuit, of course, which costs money and time and is politically dangerous), it’s awfully easy to get ahold of a Virginia voter card with someone else’s name on it (perhaps one of these fun creations). Especially if you rent rather than own.

You see, in a state with more than 400,000 newly registered voters since the last election, polling places have changed a lot. The Volunteer Firehouse location where I’ve voted all but once in the past 8 years can’t contain the polling place this year, so it’s moved. So have the polling places for much of Loudoun. The local Election Board was kind enough to send out a mass mailing informing every voter effected by this change a few months back.

And they were also kind enough to include a new voter card, with your name, address, and local polling place printed on it.

Personally, I received five voter cards in the mail. One was mine - four others were for people who have not lived in the house I rent for more than three years. Five different names. Same address. They sure do make it easy.

Useful, that. If you were interested in helping your guy, whoever it is, win.

It’s really quite easy to do a bit of DIY Election Fraud in an age where they send the Voter Card, info and all, direct to you. But hell, you won’t even need it in the Old Dominion - there’s no ID required. Just sign the paper promising you’re cool, and your vote matters just as much as everyone’s.

It’s like leaving the front door wide open for days, and being surprised that the TV is gone when you come back.

Democracy: you’re doing it wrong.

Update: More here and here.

>> Now this is just brilliant stuff here: In 1921, Agnes Macphail became the first woman elected to the Canadian House of Commons. Not all of her colleagues welcomed her. One tried to embarrass her by asking, “Don’t you wish you were a man?” “No,” Macphail replied. “Don’t you?”

>> My own endorsement of John McCain aside, I do hope that his legal staff has worked up a solid response on the question of his status as a natural born citizen. Read the comments from Florida Law Prof Steven Willis in the thread for more.

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

For some people, especially those who live and work in the District of Columbia, there is no aspect of life untouched by politics. It surrounds them like a cloud. This leads some of them to constant overanalysis of life, pop culture, and even shopping trends through the harsh lens of partisan politics. They tend to be the same people attracted to the constant unrelenting snark that the internet thrives on, and — if you said it to the subject’s face — is the sort of thing that in the old days would end with pistols and paces (as it should be, Thomas yells somewhere).

I have no idea if Dana Goldstein of The American Prospect is one of these people. But her latest written work of political analysis over at TNR just goes so far over the edge of any guidelines of respect or decorum, it exemplifies what happens when partisan political views warp the prism through which one views the world.

Namely, “Baby on Board” accuses the McCain campaign of “using [his adopted daughter] Bridget as a political football” thanks to a mailer depicting Cindy McCain with baby Bridget in her arms, standing beside a beaming Bangladeshi nun.

The text of the mailer reads in part:

“Cindy cradles little Bridget, a baby she and John adopted in 1993 from Mother Teresa’s orphanage in Bangladesh. Bridget has been a great blessing to the McCain family. Today, Cindy and John work together to promote adoption and to help women facing crisis pregnancies.”

In these three small sentences, Goldstein finds “code words” and “symbols” of the “religious right” and “anti-choice activism.” She goes on to take several shots at Mother Theresa, and to actually suggest that the Catholic Church and pro-lifers as a whole are blissfully unaware of all of the difficulties associated with adoption. She suggests this is all an effort at playing race-based guilt politics (I’d suggest she take a look at what happened in New Hampshire on the other side of the aisle if she wants to see racial politics at its worst). And she finishes up with the idea that promoting adoption of children born in the Third World, in worlds of terrible poverty, and (in Bridget’s case) with physical disfigurement that makes one an outcast, as “the ugliest rhetorical practices of the pro-life movement.”

McCain has seven children in all, including an older daughter, Meghan, who is rather prominent. But Bridget’s interactions with the press have been careful and limited, sensitive to her. In this campaign as in others, she hasn’t been paraded about or held up as a totem. And if talking to the kids at such a prominent place as Scholastic makes one a political football, well…but let’s leave that accusation to the dustbin it deserves.

In truth, it’s not worth raising a response to the political hackery of Dana Goldstein, whose pro-abortion views clearly tint her view of the world. The response is Bridget McCain herself, who today is safe, and healthy, and loved by a family, because a woman was brave enough not to merely react with hands-off sympathy, but to gather this frail infant up in her arms and never let her go. I can venture this much: Politics was the farthest thing from her mind at the moment she held this ten week old child in her arms.

Cindy took one look in Bridget’s beautiful eyes and said, “That’s my baby, if I leave her here she’ll die.” I don’t think Cindy ever put her down.

My little sister Florence is a few years younger than Bridget. She is thirteen, and she is adopted from DC social services—not exactly as daunting a task as the McCain’s faced in their long struggle with the Bangladeshi adoption services, but still, it took long days of expense and effort.

A few months ago, she got into a conversation about abortion, of all things, with her friends at ballet practice. It’s the sort of thing 12 and 13 year old girls talk about all the time these days.

Florence, without any prompting whatsoever - and never having had a conversation about the issue with my parents, siblings, or me - listened to her friends for a while. And then she interrupted:

“So let me get this straight: you all think someone should be able to make someone like me not exist?”

I love my little sister. I love her not as a “political football,” as a “code word,” as a “rhetorical practice.” I love her because of the girl she is, and the woman she will be. And every day, Florence reminds me that we are loved not because of where we were born, because of who raised us, or because of how we grew up—and that there exists within each of us a spark of the divine, worthy of dignity and meant to be cherished as a gift.

In the real world, not everything in life is political. Dana Goldstein should try visiting it sometime.

crossposted at redstate

>> When it comes to the latest goings on in the South Carolina Republican Primary, it seems clear that this was a last hurrah for the Fred Thompson campaign. The suggested farewell marks for FDT are here. As for where conservatives go now, I think this little poll may be a better indication than I’d like. Sounds like the discussions about the life or death of the Reagan Coalition are going to be needed, after all.

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