Mitt Romney won a big victory in Florida yesterday, although in such a crucial and competitive contest it’s noteworthy that turnout was down 12% from four years ago. It’s evidence (if needed, I guess) that voters are being turned off by the fractiousness and pettiness of the campaign, and are uninspired by the candidates from which they have to choose.

Rick Santorum says, hey, Newt Gingrich “had his opportunity.” Newt hasn’t proved he has what it takes to beat Romney, so “let’s give someone else a shot.” He hopes that someone else is him, and by a process of elimination, indeed it would have to be. He may well get another look, but will have to really distinguish himself in the upcoming contests in Nevada, Colorado and Minnesota. [Read more →]

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From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics

Good for the people of St. Louis, Missouri, for throwing the first major parade welcoming home veterans of the war in Iraq. I sincerely hope we see this being repeated around the country. (Including and especially in New York City, by the way. I really don’t understand why Mayor Bloomberg claims he needs permission from the Pentagon to have a parade on Broadway. This is something that the people want to do. It is inappropriate—at the very least—to allow generals in Washington to overrule it.) [Read more →]

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From section: Commentary, News

A psychologist named L. Alan Sroufe who was there in the beginning when conditions like “A.D.D.” were first characterized as problems, and who believed treatment with drugs like Ritalin was correct and helpful, pens an interesting column in the NY Times: Ritalin Gone Wrong: Children’s A.D.D. Drugs Don’t Work Long Term. Read it and weep. [Read more →]

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From section: Commentary, Health and Living

Elliott Abrams should be deeply ashamed of himself, and ought to apologize, for his distorted slur against Newt Gingrich which was published by NRO the other day. The editors of NRO should also be ashamed. Jeffrey Lord at the The American Spectator exposes just how distorted were Abrams’ allegations that Newt Gingrich slammed Reagan and opposed his policy towards the Soviet Union during a 1986 speech on the floor of the House. The import of Gingrich’s remarks was almost exactly to the contrary; he was pointing out—as were such other supporters of Reagan’s policy as Jeanne Kirkpatrick and George Will—that Reagan’s vision was not being implemented strongly enough by elements in the administration. Whether Elliott Abrams was aware of this when he wrote the piece or was being treated as somebody’s stooge, the fact remains that it amounts to a despicable hit, breathtaking in its audacity and dishonesty. [Read more →]

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From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics

Not going to belabor the blow-by-blow of last night’s Republican debate on CNN. Neither Romney nor Gingrich scored knockouts, which on balance is bad for Gingrich as the negative onslaught against him from Republican establishment figures has been taking its toll on his poll numbers. Rick Santorum had one or two very good moments, but he’s effectively conceded Florida anyway and clearly his only strategy for getting anywhere in this race is hanging on until Gingrich potentially implodes and drops out. Ron Paul was, from where I was sitting, the most likeable he’s been in any debate, with marvelous one-liners. I’ll reiterate what I’ve said before: Should both Gingrich and Santorum both throw in the towel, Ron Paul will continue making the race interesting for Mitt Romney well down the road. Paul’s strategy is obviously to just suck up as many delegates as he can so that he can wield some influence and grab a platform at the convention, so there is no reason for him to ever give up (unless he decides to go third party/independent after all). [Read more →]

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From section: Shorts

I find this heartening, I must admit: a survey in Israel by the Guttman-Avi Chai foundation says that a record number of Israeli Jews currently believe in God. That number is 80%, and by “record number,” reference is made to other surveys dating back to 1991. [Read more →]

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From section: Commentary, Faith

It can really take one’s breath away to see the explosion of hits and hit pieces on Newt Gingrich—from Republicans and/or conservatives—in the past 48 hours. (The Drudge Report has played a big role in marshaling and promoting the links and stories.) It’s not news that Newt Gingrich is less than perfect, and although I continue to support him against Romney, I’m certainly not going to try to maintain he is a saint or a conservative of unimpeachable purity. Yet, the criticisms of Gingrich, while overwhelming in their sheer number and passion, do not convince me that Newt is less of a conservative than Mitt Romney. Some of them are quite strange.

R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. (the founder of The American Spectator) has written one of the most widely read slams of Newt, published yesterday: William Jefferson Gingrich. I’m quite willing listen to criticisms of Gingrich from people who might know something that I don’t, but this column weirded me out so much in its opening paragraphs that I completely lost sympathy with where the writer is coming from. In those first two paragraphs, R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. tells his readers (in a tone that suggests that it is not even up for debate) that former president Bill Clinton is both charming and “drop-dead beautiful.” [Read more →]

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From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics

Last night’s GOP debate in Tampa probably did not shift things dramatically. Neither “frontrunner” had a particularly great night, so I guess NBC and Brian Williams were the winners, for their assist in having the candidates make each other look bad. Rick Santorum had a reasonably strong night, but I don’t know that it’s going to fundamentally alter his candidacy’s increasing sense of irrelevance.

Mitt Romney obviously took some of Mark Steyn’s advice and displayed more “fire in the belly;” at least when it came to forcefully attacking Newt Gingrich on multiple fronts. However, attacking other candidates in these debates has never really rebounded well for the attacker, and I don’t sense that it will help Romney all that much in this case. Gingrich was obviously a little thrown by the intensity of Mitt’s punches, and had to visibly think about how to respond. He seemed to prefer responding to a policy issue like the Medicaid prescription drug benefit rather than the more personal accusations. Whatever chits Mitt Romney may have been collecting in his effort to get to the right of Gingrich, I think he probably cancelled them out with his line about how illegal immigrants would “self-deport” under his immigration plan. Even NBC couldn’t prevent the audience from cackling at that. [Read more →]

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From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics

I love Mark Steyn. Of-course. But his response over at NRO‘s The Corner to Newt Gingrich’s victory in the South Carolina primary mystifies me. Like a lot of what I’m reading and hearing from people I normally respect in conservative pundit circles, it comes across as a pained exercise in peddling total illogic.

He does, very effectively, lay out a litany of incompetence on the part of Mitt Romney and his campaign for the presidential nomination of Republican party (a campaign, it should be noted, that he’s been waging for something close to six years). He notes that during this campaign Mitt Romney has clearly been wasting the enormous sums of money he’s spent on it “in big ways and small.” Despite his highly paid advisors, Romney’s stump speech is “awful” and “insipid pap,” and he spews “generalities” which are “condescending.” He notes the apparent lack of an effective rapid-response team, and Romney’s failure to be prepared for obvious and predictable challenges—most recently on the subject of his tax returns. He observes, quite devastatingly I think, that Mitt Romney’s campaign currently resembles “an unreformable government bureaucracy: big, bloated, overstaffed, burning money, slow to react, and all but impossible to change.” He points out that Mitt Romney for 2012 has followed the same overarching strategy that failed for him in 2008: to “sit on his lead and run out the clock.” [Read more →]

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From section: 2012 CAMPAIGN, Commentary, Politics

The momentous monotony of Mitt is stalled, finally. Hats off to the people of South Carolina for asserting themselves in this way. But expect the establishment counterattack to ramp up substantially in the coming days. Mitt Romney can call Newt an insider all he wants. The fact is, Gingrich scares the heck out of Washington insiders, and they will not be sitting back passively with his monstrous visage rising once more.

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From section: Shorts