Before issuing my all-important and fiendishly well-timed endorsement (on this, the day of the Iowa caucuses for the GOP presidential nomination) let me just review the record of my thinking a little bit. I’ve been following the Republican race attentively since early in 2011, and writing on it periodically during that time. As I believe I wrote somewhere along the line, my interest was in seeing a good contest among good candidates and seeing the best one win. I think that has been the attitude of many voters. No one can be without prejudice in these matters, but I attempted to stay as open-minded as reasonably possible for as long as reasonably possible. Certainly, I’ve been predisposed against Mitt Romney from the beginning, for a number of the same reasons that many others have been predisposed against him (there’s little reason to rehash those at this particular juncture). I thought it would be a good approach to hold off settling my decision for sure until actual voting began taking place, and that is today—although my own state doesn’t vote for months yet.

I did have one philosophical and/or strategic bias, I admit: I thought that a governor—current or former—with a sturdily conservative record of success would likely be the best candidate to look for. I agree with many political observers that senators and congressmen do not seem to make either great candidates or great presidents. Executive experience and a record of responsibility do matter. (Check current situation at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and associated nation for more info.) For a non-governor to rise to the level of very serious consideration would require more spectacularly superior characteristics of some kind. This is why, early in my op-eds on the campaign, I took a good look at former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. He’d been successful, and successfully re-elected, in a relatively liberal state while governing in a generally quite conservative way. He was mild-mannered, but that didn’t seem to be such a terrible thing, considering that the Obama 2012 campaign was bound to depend on demonization of the GOP candidate, and it’s difficult to demonize someone who comes across so mildly. However, I didn’t count on Pawlenty being demonized by Republicans (with a major assist from the media) for that very mildness itself, illustrated by his choice to eschew going after Romney hard on health care in one of the first debates. But Pawlenty also made the ill-fated tactical gamble of putting all of his eggs into the Iowa straw poll of August, 2011. (Who could care about that result now?) So in the final analysis his candidacy was a victim of his own political misjudgments. [Read more →]

Related Posts:

• Iowa has spoken (blandly but effectively)
• GOP presidential campaign notes (12/19/2011)

From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics by Sean Curnyn

In advance of the Iowa caucus—the first chance for votes to be cast in the GOP presidential nomination contest—Bill Kristol has an editorial in “The Weekly Standard,” titled “A Time for Choosing.”

Those who have stood aside—and who now may have concluded, as they may not have when they announced their original decision, that the current field is lacking—will surely hear the words of Thomas Paine echoing down the centuries: “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” Now is not a time for leaders to engage in clever calculations of the odds of success, or to succumb to concerns about how they will look if they enter the fray and fall short. Now is a time to come to the aid of our country.

Well, Bill Kristol and his inside-the-beltway ilk have been holding out for Sarah Palin to come rescue us for a long time. They are irresistibly charmed by her outside-the-beltway ways; they adore her bluntness, her ability to effortlessly connect with the values of everyday Americans in the heartland, her comfort in her own skin, her fearlessness in confronting the 24-hour liberal-media-attack-machine, her obvious and deep Christian faith, and her impatience with the oft-repeated lies and presumptions that rule a place like Washington D.C. [Read more →]

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• A good sense of irony …
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From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics by Sean Curnyn

I did not write, after last Wednesday night, what has otherwise become my habitual post-mortem of Republican debates. There could have been plenty to say, I suppose—and certainly others found plenty to say—but in my case it seemed like a place-holding debate. It didn’t change my own mind on anything, and I’m not sure it really made a significant difference to the horse race in and of itself, although the horse race has certainly been in flux overall.

I’m personally right where I was before that debate. There are two candidates I find worthy of support, on the substance: Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich. I am not yet ready to decide for which one I would cast my vote, given the necessity of choosing. I expect to make up my mind, for the sake of good form if nothing else, immediately before the Iowa caucuses begin.

I have settled on Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich because they seem to me to be the candidates with the best records of actually getting good things done in office. I believe that both would shake up Washington, in a generally conservative direction, if elected president. Both have quite detailed and dramatic plans on the economy, regarding taxes and energy and entitlements and other matters. Both, of-course, are opposed and despised by the current Republican establishment in Washington. (Clearly, Romney is the favored “business-as-usual” candidate.) [Read more →]

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• More on the Republican “Thanksgiving Family Forum” in Iowa
• Mark Steyn advises Mitt Romney to shape up

From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics by Sean Curnyn

When the payroll tax cut (from 6.2% down to 4.2%) was first proposed by President Obama around this time last year, as part of a deal to extend the Bush tax cuts, I don’t recall hearing a lot of objections being raised, or anyone being particularly perturbed. One exception, however (that I would be extremely remiss in not mentioning) was that of myself, writing in another space.

I pointed out then that this particular kind of tax cut was “fundamentally dishonest” and indeed “the most craven kind of gimmick that could be conceived,” coming as it did from the Democratic side, which generally opposes tax cuts on principle. (That principle being that everybody’s money really belongs to the government.) To propose a cut in the very tax that is supposed to fund Social Security, when everyone is aware that that program is well on its way to insolvency, and in the absence of any larger plan to fix the program, simply made no sense. And this was from the party that is always accusing Republicans of wanting to dismantle Social Security! The fact that allowing Americans to keep this much more money in their pockets would be stimulative to some extent seemed beyond argument, but the form which this cut took seemed exactly the wrong one. As I said then, it would be better “to just send everyone a once-off check: ‘HERE’S YOUR FREE MONEY’ – signed, your friend, Barack H. Obama.” Even that would be better, in other words, then sending the message that it was OK to slash Social Security taxes without doing one single thing to fix what is otherwise a doomed Ponzi scheme. [Read more →]

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• GOP presidential campaign notes (10/27/2011)
• Instant Karma’s gonna get you

From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics by Sean Curnyn

Just a few quick observations on this: The debate was clearly choreographed by Stephanopoulos and Diane Sawyer to turn Newt Gingrich into the latest Republican piñata. It’s difficult to look good when you’re being attacked from all sides, and in particular it threw Newt off of his game of being positive and focusing his criticism on the Obama administration. The prearranged set-piece where they questioned each candidate on the importance of “marital fidelity” and then deliberately ended with Gingrich was especially nauseating—perhaps the most nauseating interlude in any political debate I’ve ever seen, and that would truly be saying something. [Read more →]

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• More on the Republican “Thanksgiving Family Forum” in Iowa
• GOP presidential campaign notes (12/19/2011)

From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics by Sean Curnyn

So, Newt Gingrich, in an interview with ABC News, asserted that he is “going to be the nominee.” It was probably true until he said it. This is “bad Newt:” way too much in love with his own cleverness for his own good. Sure: an outside observer could well look at the current match-up and say that it’s Newt’s race to lose, if everyone continues on form. But by flashing his cockiness, Newt is not continuing on form. He hasn’t come across cocky in the debates, but instead earnest and positive. His claim that he will be the nominee came by way of explaining why he isn’t going to switch to negative attacks on his fellow Republicans: their style of doing so has failed for them, while his style of being positive and substantive, and focusing on Obama, has worked. He didn’t need to explain it in these “inside baseball” terms. He ought just to have asserted that he was going to stick to his approach, without including the arrogant assertion that he was going to win. It is also, by the way, a foolish confidence to have. The momentum of a nomination race can change with the results of one primary. No one is in a position on December 1st of 2011 to assert that they will have the delegates come summer of 2012. Again, bad Newt. [Read more →]

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• Mark Steyn advises Mitt Romney to shape up
• GOP presidential campaign notes (12/19/2011)

From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics by Sean Curnyn

It’s an interesting juncture in the contest for the Republican nomination for president. With a pause in the quite rigorous schedule of debates we’ve seen thus far (the next one isn’t until December 10th) and with the spirit of Thanksgiving and Christmas taking the focus off of profane political doings, there’s a sense out there that things won’t change much until the turn of the New Year. So, the supposition is that we have on the whole a contest between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, where Newt Gingrich is the latest anti-Mitt incarnation, but the one blessed most when it comes to timing.

If things actually don’t change until the New Year that leaves us with the Iowa caucuses occurring on January 3rd. The New Hampshire primary is January 10th, followed by South Carolina on the 21st and Florida on the 31st. That might just do it, if one candidate is clearly ascendant.

However, I dispute the idea that we’re really down immutably to Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich. I think it’s far too early to conclude that. In particular, I think that if Newt stumbles badly, Rick Perry may well rise again as the anti-Romney. He has superior finances and organization as compared to Gingrich, and he is not accustomed to losing elections. While I believe it would be a big mistake for him to go after Newt with any negative advertising, I think he is well-positioned to give Romney a very difficult time, and all of that may rebound to his favor if Newt weakens for his own reasons.

Ron Paul is also likely, I think, to do well in Iowa. While I don’t think he has a chance of winning the nomination (in part because no one thinks he could win the general election) his success could affect the dynamics of the race in ways that are difficult to predict (although the most obvious guess is that it would help Romney). [Read more →]

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• Mark Steyn advises Mitt Romney to shape up
• A few more notes on some Newt Gingrich critics (Abrams, Tyrrell, Coulter)

From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics by Sean Curnyn

No sense beating around the bush: The focus for most was on Newt Gingrich last night, since his emergence as the current most-credible-anti-Mitt-Romney, or even, in some polls, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. My view is that he did very well, and was especially wise to stick to his style of not taking shots at the other GOP candidates.

The controversy coming out of this debate appears to center around Gingrich’s comments on immigration. Like everyone else, he’s in favor of controlling the border. After that, he favors a calibrated way of dealing with illegal immigrants who are already here, based on their length of time here and depth of ties. From the transcript:

If you’re here — if you’ve come here recently, you have no ties to this country, you ought to go home, period. If you’ve been here 25 years and you got three kids and two grandkids, you’ve been paying taxes and obeying the law, you belong to a local church, I don’t think we’re going to separate you from your family, uproot you forcefully and kick you out.

The [Krieble] Foundation has a very good red card program that says you get to be legal, but you don’t get a pass to citizenship. And so there’s a way to ultimately end up with a country where there’s no more illegality, but you haven’t automatically given amnesty to anyone.

Later, as part of his response to Michele Bachmann’s fairly predictable attack insinuating that Gingrich wanted to give amnesty to all 11 million illegals, he also said this: [Read more →]

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• The South Carolina Republican debate on CNN last night (and the “grandeur” of Gingrich)
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From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics by Sean Curnyn

Yesterday, after watching it myself, I said that the GOP “Thanksgiving Family Forum” from Iowa had been by far the most adult debate of this election season, and strongly recommended watching it.

I continue to recommend that (and the video is embedded at right, with the actual discussion beginning about the 37 minute mark). It is a highly admirable, intelligent and mature conversation about the nexus of faith, politics, morality and the U.S. Constitution, and stands as a superb tribute to the organizers, to the moderator Frank Luntz and to the candidates who participated. It is revelatory on a far deeper level than any other debate you are likely to see in this (or possibly any other) election cycle.

But since we are in the middle of a horse race, and an important one, I will offer a couple of comments on who I think benefited most from the event. [Read more →]

Related Posts:

• GOP presidential campaign notes (12/19/2011)
• Iowa / ABC / Yahoo GOP debate

From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics by Sean Curnyn

Having watched it as it aired today online beginning at 5 p.m. Eastern Time, it is not difficult to make the following call: The GOP “Thanksgiving Family Forum” from Iowa, moderated by Frank Luntz, was far and away the most adult, civilized and intelligent debate of this election season so far. And, indeed, it was the most mature discussion of its kind of any election season that yours truly has had either the good or bad luck to live through. [Read more →]

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• More on the Republican “Thanksgiving Family Forum” in Iowa
• Iowa / ABC / Yahoo GOP debate

From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics by Sean Curnyn