I expect to have more to say about Rick Santorum’s withdrawal next week, particularly as it impacts the role of gay Republicans in the GOP — and the party’s emerging attitude toward gays.  I had begun that discussion this post.  As part of that conversation, I highly recommend Alana Goodman’s Commentary post about the GOP Shift on Gay Marriage Opposition.  Goodman considers an issue I’d been meaning to address about the National Organization for Marriage (yes, rusty, that’s the post I indicated here that intended to write) which helps show one trend I’d been meaning to consider.

Alas, that by the time I (expect to) get to this post, the (Santorum) story may no longer be fresh, but other obligations take precedence.  The day Santorum dropped out, I was flying to New York (moving a planned trip up a day early for family reasons) and will be “back east” (as we in California call this part of the country) until early next week, with meetings in western Massachusetts (the reason for the trip) in the coming days.

That said, I do want to share with you something blogger Ed Morrissey, who had back Santorum “with some heavy qualifications” said about Romney wrapping up the nomination:

Mitt Romney is the nominee.  He won the nomination through hard work and good organization, but his competition forced him to improve his performance along the way.  The sooner we put fantasies of brokered conventions and one-on-one debates between Republicans — which will only serve as media fodder to attack the GOP — the better we will begin to prepare for the real goal of this process, which is to make Barack Obama a one-term President.  With that goal in mind, I plan to caucus for Romney in the upcoming CD and state Republican conventions in Minnesota and work to unite the party behind its nominee.  However, I also plan to support candidates in the House and Senate that will ensure that a President Romney governs as a conservative, as Donald Devine advises post-Santorum.

I share this because Morrissey, as usual, offers a good summary of the situation and often seems to have his finger on the pulse of conservative sentiment.
(more…)

There are a great variety of issues I’d like to blog about today, from the George Zimmerman indictment to Hilary Rosen’s apparent, to borrow language used by the administration and their allies in the legacy media, War on Stay-at-Home Moms (perhaps of particular interest to our readers given that she’s a lesbian, attached to to the former head of HRC), but, am quite busy right now (to be explained in my next post).

I’m actually writing this post from the Sharing Shelf in Port Chester, New York, a charity my sister founded.  For our conservative readers, you should donate because she’s my sister and they do good work.  And for our liberal readers, you should donate because my sister doesn’t share my politics and they do good work.  Click here to support a group which recycles “gently used children’s clothing” and distributes them “directly to those in need”.  (When you donate, please specify that it’s for the Sharing Shelf.)

Now, to the subject of this post.  As I reported earlier today, the president is bound and determined to run against Mitt Romney as if he were the “reincarnation of Barry Goldwater, an extremist extraordinaire both on the economy and foreign policy.”

There are three major problems with this approach, each of which merits a more in-depth exploration–and perhaps that will come out in the comments:

1. the public mood has changed in the past fifty years, with the American public more skeptical of the power of the government to do good.
2. government has grown by leaps and bounds since 1964, particularly as a result of that election and Americans don’t want it to grow any bigger; if anything they want to see it scaled back.
3. Barry Goldwater did a better job of criticizing why government was too big than in offering a positive vision of a world with smaller government.  This time around, it’s the incumbent Democrat, not the out-of-power Republican, who is waging the more negative campaign. (more…)

On Monday, when doing cardio at the gym, I looked up to catch President Obama’s speech at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton.  In the eighteen minutes that I watched the speech (until CNN cut away), I heard little but attacks on Republican policies, with frequent references to the middle class.

In a report on the speech (via Instapundit), The Washington Times‘s Dave Boyer reported that

Pausing between $10,000-a-plate fundraisers for his re-election campaign, President Obama called on Congress in a highly partisan speech Tuesday to approve a tax increase on the wealthy to pay for programs for the middle class.

This “highly partisan speech” was an official speech, allowing the president to bill taxpayers for the fundraising trip to the Sunshine State, packing the 30-minute address, as he did, “in the midst of three fundraisers in the battleground state, prompting complaints by Republicans that Mr. Obama was fleecing taxpayers for campaign travel.”

In the speech, billed by the White House, as remarks on the economy, the president offered no new policies to strengthen the anemic recovery, choosing instead to fault Republicans for gutting what he calls “investments” (his terms for government grants):

They proposed a budget that showers the wealthiest Americans with even more tax cuts, and then pays for these tax cuts by gutting investments in education and medical research and clean energy, in health care.

. . . .

Now, thousands of medical research grants for things like Alzheimer’s and cancer and AIDS would be eliminated.  Tens of thousands of researchers and students and teachers could lose their jobs.  Our investments in clean energy that are making us less dependent on imported oil would be cut by nearly a fifth.

Note the conditional of the president’s attacks.  People could lose their jobs.  Investments in “clean” energy?  Has he been paying attention to the number of such companies which have gone belly up (despite receiving federal grants and loan guarantees)? (more…)