Older people get most of the benefits, primarily through Social Security and Medicare, but aid for the rest of the population has increased about as quickly through programs for the disabled, the unemployed, veterans and children.

The government safety net was created to keep Americans from abject poverty, but the poorest households no longer receive a majority of government benefits. A secondary mission has gradually become primary: maintaining the middle class from childhood through retirement. The share of benefits flowing to the least affluent households, the bottom fifth, has declined from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis published last year.

And as more middle-class families like the Gulbransons land in the safety net in Chisago and similar communities, anger at the government has increased alongside. Many people say they are angry because the government is wasting money and giving money to people who do not deserve it. But more than that, they say they want to reduce the role of government in their own lives. They are frustrated that they need help, feel guilty for taking it and resent the government for providing it. They say they want less help for themselves; less help in caring for relatives; less assistance when they reach old age.

The NYT never paints wealthy liberals who don’t volunteer extra money to the state as hypocritical and guilty, but that’s no surprise. Moreover, as Tom Maguire notes (and I’m sure he’s not alone), the NYT is continuing the progressive bait-and-switch here: Social Security and Medicare were sold to America as earned benefit programs, not welfare. It’s the “secondary mission” of middle-class vote-buying — and the Boomers heading into retirement — that accounts for most of this story.

The NYT overlooks that the US welfare state contributes to the supposed income inequality problem progressives have been decrying for the past few years. Moreover, compared to other developed countries, the US system is unique only in terms of low upward mobility from the bottom among men (although cross-country comparisons of mobility can be tricky). The left would no doubt argue this means we must have ever-higher taxes and more redistribution, while the right would argue we need lower taxes and less redistribution. However, what seems clear is that the Democrats’ version of the welfare state has been a political boon to Democrats and less beneficial to the poor they claim to champion. Moreover, if the NYT is at least correct that the increase in the safety net is fueling anger at the government, it may be that the political value of the welfare state to Democrats is diminishing as well.

P.S. – Mitt Romney needs to learn these concerns are why conservatives recoil when he says he does not care much about the very poor because they have a safety net.

Most would say that Santorum’s most surprising and impressive win to date was the Colorado caucus. Although weather and Romney’s overconfidence may have been factors in that win, there were likely deeper factors at work there. However, it is not clear those factors would benefit the GOP in a general election.

Seth Masket’s statistical breakdown of the Colorado win confirms a fair amount of the conventional wisdom about Santorum’s victory there, i.e., he won conservatives and his voters were more enthusiastic. But another graph shows another result that is perhaps not unexpected, but telling:

Romney’s caucus vote correlates highly with the 2010 primary vote for U.S. Senate candidate Jane Norton. Norton, you may recall, was the candidate with the solid resume, lots of insider support, and a huge monetary advantage whom the activist base nonetheless didn’t like, and she lost to a Tea Party-backed conservative. Sound familiar?

Indeed it does. Norton lost to Ken Buck, who lost in the general election. That loss is generally attributed to Buck’s comments on social issues like abortion and homosexuality, not to mention what was perceived as a gender-based attack on Norton herself.

Team Obama has pretty openly declared that one of its two playbooks would be to exploit social issues in hopes of winning Western swing states like Colorado and Nevada (where Sharron Angle similarly lost in 2010). Santorum has an expanding library of exploitable quotations on social issues and consistently criticizes the more libertarian factions of the party. In the remaining GOP field, there may be no candidate who more strongly plays into this Democrat strategy.

However, lest you think I am implicitly shilling for Romney by dumping on Santorum, note that Obama’s other playbook (2004 over 2010) is based on defining Romney as an inauthentic plutocrat, in hopes of holding the Rust Belt, including Ohio. The latest Rasmussen poll has Santorum as the better candidate against Obama. The latest Susquehanna poll has Romney and Santorum in a dead heat in Pennsylvania, but Romney as the marginally better candidate against Obama (which may change quickly if Santorum continues to surge). And PPP may well show the same surge in Michigan (although a GOP win there in November still strikes me as a long shot, regardless of candidate).

This is why a growing regional divide among the right — and having a candidate with broad appeal to more than one region, especially in a general election — matters.

After the returns came in, I asked Santorum spokesman Hogan Gidley what he thought about Rich Beeson’s message. Sure, Santorum did well on Tuesday, but doesn’t Romney have the money and infrastructure to outdistance Santorum, and everyone else, in the long run?

“What an inspiring message,” Gidley said sarcastically. “That is really inspiring. I can’t wait to put a bumper sticker on my truck that says MONEY-INFRASTRUCTURE 2012.”

“No one had more money and infrastructure than Hillary Clinton, and hope and change wiped her off the map,” Gidley continued. “We’ll have money, and we’ll have infrastructure, but our nominee has to have a message that people can get behind and inspires people.”

In fact, Obama raised more money than Clinton headed into the Iowa caucuses. Obama’s endorsements in early states were competitive with hers. And Obama out-organized Hillary. It’s too bad for Rick Santorum that his staff apparently does not know this, as there’s an important lesson for them in it.

Obama was able to wage a long campaign against Clinton in 2008 because he followed (and improved on) McGovern’s 1972 strategy of picking up cheap delegates in caucus states, particularly “red states,” which his rivals ignored. Santorum’s wins in bluish-purple caucuses — Iowa, Minnesota and Colorado — and his plans to target Washington state’s caucus in the upcoming rounds suggest a general awareness of Obama’s strategy. The RNC, having noticed that the Dems’ long 2008 campaign drove registration and organization in more states, helped open the door to an insurgent campaign by dictating proportional allocation of delegates for primaries and caucuses held before April, although some of these early non-binding contests awarding delegates later complicate these calculations. The RNC’s plan did not anticipate this cycle’s unexciting and inept field of candidates. In any event, it also ultimately works against a NotRomney like Santorum.

In March, with its treasure trove of delegates, there are plenty of places a NotRomney could do well, including caucuses. Many of these states lean conservative and evangelical. But proportional allocation of delegates insures Romney will get a share of delegates in most of these contests. Moreover, if Newt Gingrich remains in on Super Tuesday, he may do well in Georgia (one of the biggest delegate counts that day) and other southern states, splitting the NotRomney vote. Indeed, Newt has already headed to Ohio, another state where Romney would benefit from a split vote on Super Tuesday (Ohio moved the GOP primary from June back to March. Given the likely Santorumentum from last night’s sweep, I wonder whether the Mitt-backed superPAC will dial back its attacks on Newt in Ohio.) Moreover, Ron Paul is openly pursuing the McGovern/Obama cheap delegate strategy in caucus states, which complicates efforts by other NotRomneys hoping to do the same. Furthermore, the strategy has its limits: only 486 delegates will be awarded in caucus states.

Once winner-take-all contests become prevalent in April, the calendar becomes heavily weighted to northeastern states — Pennsylvania and Wisconsin being Santorum’s best opportunities. May would be a more Santorum-friendly month. June will be dominated by California, New Jersey and Utah, all presumably Romney-friendly states.

Contra Santorum’s flack, the fact that the eventual nominee will have money and organization does not help Santorum become the nominee today. Despite the big wallet of Foster Friess, Santorum needs money and organization now. And he needs Newt to be out of the race by Super Tuesday. At the moment, that scenario seems unlikely.

The conventional wisdom is that conservatives are dissatisfied with Romney, whose electoral coalition is comprised mostly of moderates and even liberal voters. That might be true of conservative media elites, but the broader electorate of conservatives have been much more amenable to Romney.

***

No doubt, Romney is dominating among moderates and liberals, but his haul is just as strong among “somewhat conservative” voters. It is only among the “very conservative” that Gingrich has a lead – although even this is much less than what one might have thought based on the way the media has been covering the story.

RTWT, as Jay has plenty of insights about how Romney’s voter base has changed from 2008 and the potential strength of his coalition. It’s also a detailed example of one of Jay’s enduring truths of elections: strong partisans do not dominate the political process. I would almost be tempted to end the summary here, as people who are sufficiently absorbed with politics to be reading (not to mention writing) are likely those most in need of a reminder that we are not all that representative a sample, even of Repbulicans or conservatives. That message might be even more important the day after Rick Santorum sweeps Romney in Missouri, Minnesota and Colorado (an impressive feat, but one involving low turnout caucuses where Romney did not camapign much).

However, as useful as Jay’s analysis is as a tonic, I doubt he would claim it tells the entire story of the GOP primary campaign. Notably, Jay wrote earlier this month about the growing regional divide among conservatives:

Those in the North and Midwest are more sympathetic to Romney, viewing him perhaps as one of their own. But when we turn Southward, the links between Romney and the right seems to be much more tenuous. What is so fascinating about this is that we’re talking about people in different states who answer the ideological question similarly. This is geography, not ideology.

I’m not sure that last bit (emphasis in original) is entirely true, depending on what Jay means by it. It seems entirely possible to me that Northerners who self-identify as conservative do not always mean the same thing as Southerners do when self-identifying as conservative. And the same is possibly true of other regions. Indeed, based on last night’s results in Minnesota and Missouri, it’s not clear that the Midwest is as sympathetic to Romney as Jay may think. Minnesota ends up looking more like Iowa than Iowa, let alone New Hampshire, Florida or Nevada (where, as Jay notes, Mitt won 57% of the somewhat conservative voters and 48% of the very conservative voters).

The easy explanation of some of these regional differences would be religion, but in examining that issue, Sean Trende adds the following caveat: “religion could be a stand-in for ideology, and that, regardless of self-identification, a self-described conservative evangelical Republican is significantly to the right of a self-described conservative who is non-evangelical.”

In sum, while I basically agree with Jay that political junkies tend to overstate the case that Romney does not appeal to conservatives, I also think we should be careful when we throw around the conservative label. To take a more obvious example, many look at polls showing twice as many identify as conservative than identify as liberal without considering that: (a) some still self-identify as conservative Democrats and are likely more liberal than moderate or liberal Republicans; and (b) many self-identifying moderates are functionally liberal, but have fled the label. Relying on self-identification may be a necessary evil in political polling. However, in a nation as diverse and sprawling as the US, we need to always keep in mind the limitations of self-identification and the necessity of any candidate appealing to more than one type of conservative.

On a conference call with members of President Obama’s 2012 reelection committee Monday evening, campaign manager Jim Messina announced that donors should start funding Priorities USA, the Democratic super PAC run by two former White House staffers, Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney.

The move was a remarkable shift in approach toward the independent political expenditure groups, whose role in the political process Obama has criticized and from which his campaign had sought to keep distance.

***

Just seven months earlier, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt assured, “Neither the President nor his campaign staff or aides will fundraise for super PACs,” according to the LA Times.

BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski collects video of Obama’s attacks on the Citizens United ruling that made this spending possible, while Ben Smith recalls Obama’s earlier campaign financing hypocrisy in rejecting public funding:

That 2008 decision wasn’t made entirely out of some reformist purity. Obama would go back on a pledge to take public financing, accepting the hit on his reform credentials (which was enacted solely on the Times editorial page) in exchange for a serious financial advantage over John McCain. And his team decided that outside allies — whether the 527s or the more traditional DNC independent expenditure, could only muddy up the purity of his very pure message.

So what has changed? One major shift is that Obama faces an opponent whose rich friends really will pour tens of millions into outside groups, unlike the underfunded and relatively isolated John McCain.

Josh Kraushaar laid this out in detail last week. Based on the 2011 numbers:

[T]he combined Obama and Democratic outside group totals to $98.3 million cash-on-hand, with the GOP groups tallying $94.1 million. Take out the Democratic groups strictly devoted to congressional activities, and it’s a virtual financial tie. With labor and environmental groups poised to help Obama’s re-election, Democrats still could hold a narrow edge. But it’s hardly the cash advantage that would allow Team Obama to run negative advertising uncontested against Romney, without an aggressive response.

It’s a far cry from the vision of a billion-dollar Obama re-election campaign bankroll that Democratic strategists are now downplaying. And it shows that the amount of time Democrats spent complaining and attacking the liberalized campaign finance laws before the 2010 midterms would have been better spent preparing for an infrastructure utilizing super PACs to their advantage. Priorities USA, headed by former White House spokesman Bill Burton, hasn’t yet shown it can compete with American Crossroads so far — and time is running short.

This was really a no-brainer for Obama. In my experience — and his — there is no political price to be paid for gaming the campaign finance system. Politico’s Jonathan Martin and others will sniff and move on, just to make sure it remains a Beltway story. Indeed, it’s barely a “Beltway story” — it made the front page of the NYT, but not the WaPo.

I agree with Ed that the recent tactic of not disclosing the party breakdown of the sample is simply absurd. In an era where trust in institutions — including journalism — is low and demands for increased transparency are on the rise everywhere, hiding this basic information from public view invites skepticism and ridicule. The WaPo, ABC News, and Gary Langer ought to be embarrassed.

However, Ed also complains that it’s “a poll of general population adults rather than registered or likely voters, so it’s not even a proper polling type for the predictive outcome they claim.” The poll does in fact provide head-to-head results for both adults and registered voters; the WaPo noted both results for each in its accompanying coverage:

In a general-election test, Obama leads Romney 52 to 43 percent among all Americans; more narrowly, 51 to 45 percent, among registered voters. Among all adults, it’s Obama’s first time topping 50 percent in a head-to-head matchup with Romney since July; it’s his first time ever above that point among registered voters.

(Ed has updated his post to reflect this, while noting that other hyped aspects of the story do not give the RV numbers, which is certainly a fair critique.)

The history of this poll, and comparison to other polls, can tell us a bit about what is going on in this particular poll, even without the party breakdown of the sample. Ed correctly notes that the sample in this poll tends to produce Dem-friendly results, which is probably why the recent decision to omit data about the sample really set him off. However, I would add that the dynamic producing those results has been that this poll historically tends to undersample both parties (and disproportionately undersample Republicans). The corollary, which (afaik) Ed has not stressed, is that the result inflates the sample of Independents.

Accordingly, this nugget from the WaPo coverage is doubly notable:

Obama’s momentum since mid-January has evened the score with Romney among political independents. Among independent voters in the last Post-ABC poll, Romney held a 12-point edge; now these voters split 48 percent for Obama, 47 percent for Romney.

First, this reportage tells you that the poll is still collecting the party data but not reporting it in the released results. Second, when you compare this poll’s results to other recent polls (1/12 – 2/5), the Obama +6 result is not particularly out of line. Indeed, the topline results here merely add 2 or 3 points to each side of the Rasmussen poll of likely voters conducted at roughly the same time, which is margin of error type stuff. And it’s not all that different from the mid-January PPP poll which showed a more pronounced Obama surge with independents. This poll’s similar gap with higher numbers suggests this poll’s sample probably includes more Republicans and possibly more Democrats (as the PPP poll did) at the expense of the now supposedly more Obama-friendly Indies.

What accounts for the supposed Obama surge with Indies? One possibility the WaPo coverage raises is the State of the Union speech, which fell within this poll’s window. However, that would not account for the surge in the PPP poll. A more plausible explanation is the modest uptick in the economy (and it’s overhype in the establishment media). This poll has Obama improving a few points not only in overall job approval, but approval on how he’s handling the economy. However, even this poll has his job approval with Indies underwater, so presumably his approval on the economy does not look great with Indies.

Accordingly, the underlying dynamic in this poll is probably similar to that seen in the PPP poll: it’s not about Obama as much as it is about Romney. Q25 in this poll shows 52% say that the more they hear about Romney, the less they like him, which is not as bad as Newt Gingrich’s 60%, but still bad. This is a function of the campaign and its media coverage. Technically, Romney gets marginally better coverage than Obama… but Romney is getting more coverage than Obama. Thus, people are hearing more negative coverage of Romney than Obama. Obviously, the balance will shift once the GOP nominee is effectively known. And this is one reason why head-to-head polling is basically meaningless at this point in the cycle. So it’s a bit ironic that the head-to-head is where the WaPo/ABC poll chose to report the results for registered voters.

—

Update: I wasn’t even going to mention this, but Dem pollster Margie Omero does at the HuffPo:

Today the Washington Post/ABC News released a survey showing Obama over majority support among registered voters (51% Obama, 45% Romney). But as Romney’s pollster Neil Newhouse (a partner in the firm Public Opinion Strategies) pointed out in a blast email, the poll asked about a few of Romney potential liabilities just prior to the vote question. This goes against polling best practices, and it’s possible the survey shows elevated Obama numbers as a result.

Omero also notes that Obama’s liabilities were not questioned before concluding that the underlying issue is Romney’s likability. Again, if Romney is the nominee, that is likely to shift. But Omero highlights that the problem with the poll mirrors the dynamic in the media coverage.

He said he expects to be at parity with Romney by the April 3 Texas primary and “we will go to Tampa,” site of the GOP convention this summer.

Nor is Gingrich going to fulfill what’s no doubt another Romney fantasy — going positive. There had been reports suggesting he would, until Gingrich cleared that up at the caucus night press conference he held in Las Vegas instead of a rally. “I stayed relentlessly positive in Iowa and I lost 22 points,” he said.

The dismissal of the good-cheer strategy came amid the customary Gingrich assault on Romney and President Obama. He labeled them “George Soros-approved candidates” and added for good measure that Romney was “pro-abortion, pro-gun control, pro-tax increase,” a lousy job creator, indifferent toward the poor, and a purveyor of falsehoods. As for Obama, his administration has declared war on religion, Gingrich said, and is pursuing a “radical secular ideology.”

Newt mapped out a detailed strategy that would keep him in the presidential race all the way to the Republican convention, based on how delegates will be awarded in each of the upcoming states. And it appears that Sheldon Adelson will keep funding a pro-Gingrich SuperPAC, even as he signals he will provide even more generous support to Romney if he becomes the Republican nominee.

Gingrich paints this as his refusal to fulfill Romney’s fantasies. But I wonder about that.

After all, if Newt dropped out, media coverage of the GOP nomination campaign would drop, probably precipitously. Mitt is not helped by Newt’s attacks from the left. But Newt’s attacks from the right provide Mitt with an opportunity to not only try harder to sell himself to the conservative base of the GOP, but also subtextually suggest to mushy, unafilliated voters that Romney is not the extremist Democrats will try to portray should Mitt win the nomination. (Yes, that attack makes no sesnse to conservatives, but which GOP nominee has not been attacked as an extremist by the Dems?)

Moreover, regardless of what Newt does, Ron Paul is not going away. Paul will continue to amass delegates in hopes of influencing the platform and getting the most high-profile speaking slot he can negotiate at the convention. If Newt dropped out, the media narrative would inevitably devolve into a Romney-Paul discussion, likely funneling more votes and delegates to Paul. Should Romney win the nomination, it might be further useful to him to be accomodating “demands” from a second-place Newt on issues like Obamacare than having a media narrative of the GOP convention about struggles over defense cuts, drug legalization and the gold standard.

In short, Newt continuing his campaign may not be a “You know who this benefits?” situation… but it’s not clear that a Newtless campaign benefits Romney, either.

Political hacktivist group Anonymous claims to have found emails linking Texas Rep. Ron Paul to an American white supremacist group, a claim the Paul campaign says is completely untrue.

Las Vegas-based group American Third Party Position (AP3) — whose stated goal is “to reach out to Americans of European ancestry and particularly to disenfranchised White workers, farmers and students who have become victims of the discriminatory affirmative action policies” — was allegedly hacked by Anonymous Tuesday, and emails purportedly reveal close ties between Paul and members who are admitted white supremacists.

Last week the story was that Paul was deeply involved in the company that produced racist, anti-gay, conspiracy-mongering newsletters, Ron Paul & Associates, and closely monitored its operations, signing off on articles and speaking to staff members virtually every day.

I am in no position to confirm or deny the Anonymous claims, but Paul is the guy who once bragged about how much money he raised from the mailing list for The Spotlight, the conspiracy-mongering, anti-Semitic tabloid run by the Holocaust denier Willis Carto. Paul’s columns appeared in in the American Free Press — another Carto publication. His 2008 campaign was, er, unconcerned about donations coming via the Stormfront website. And Paul’s association with Civil War revisionists and the John Birch Society are recent-to-ongoing. Accordingly, the campaign’s denials are going to be met with skepticism in many quarters.

But probably not from all quarters. My interest in the newsletter story has been Paul’s apologists and supporters in the media and libertarian circles. These folks are are spinning for Paul because they see his campaign as their best chance at gaining real-world political influence. That’s interesting insofar as these sorts of libertarians generally look down on supporters of the major parties as grubby and unprincipled. But for all their touting of Ron Paul as the principled candidate in the race, he’s a poseur on entitlements.

Beyond what these stories reveal about supposedly principled libertarians, there is a potential residual effect on the election. Although Paul is downplaying expectations for the Nevada caucus, it appears he plans to stay in the race and amass as many delegates as he can for leverage at the GOP convention. Giving Paul a prime speaking slot or influence over the platform will give the establishment media a chance to drape his dirty laundry all over the eventual nominee, much as they hung Pat Buchanan’s around the neck of George H. W. Bush in 1992.

Kessler somehow manages to get through the column without mentioning the Ford Motor Company, which afaik is part of the auto industry. Nor does he mention the other members of the auto industry aside from GM and Chrysler who manufacture and otherwise employ folks here in the US. Granted, we tend to think of a company like Toyota as “foreign,” but Chrysler was sold to Fiat, so the nationalism card should not be in play from a fact-checking standpoint.

Indeed, Kessler also writes “a credible case can be made that an auto industry bankruptcy likely would not have been possible in November or December of 2008 (when Romney and other Republicans pushed for it) because there was no bank financing available.” If we want to talk about “cases,” a case can be made that a regular bankruptcy would have yielded about the same number of continuing jobs at GM as the taxpayer-funded bankruptcy. And a case easily could be made that a GOP administration could have come up with a bankruptcy deal that would have looked a lot more like a normal proceeding than a politicially-motivated bailout of the United Auto Workers. But a “case” is not a fact.

In short, it’s another example of Kessler, like other establishment media operations, pretending political debates are much simpler questions of fact. And this is a particularly bad example of the genre:

Okay, out of 300 million Americans, maybe there were “some folks” who felt the auto industry should die. But Obama appeared to be suggesting that GOP lawmakers were willing to let the auto industry collapse. On that basis, the evidence is not very strong. The quotes we received — and others we researched — were mostly questions of tactics.

As the administration’s internal debate suggests, the answers were not clear. Certainly, some top administration officials thought at least one car company should die.

From the left, I can argue that Kessler concedes the vague “some” is almost undoubtedly true, meriting no Pinocchios. From the right, I can note that Kessler came up with zero examples of Obama’s GOP critics wanting the US auto industry to die, which is the politically salient claim. Indeed, Kessler notes the GOP’s real problem was with the UAW, while largely avoiding the fact that the Obama adminsitration’s maneuver here was mostly about bailing out the UAW’s unsustainable pension and healthcare benefits.

As Kessler seems bent on keeping this up, it is again time to note the WaPo fact-checker blog was on hiatus from the last day of the 2008 election campaign through January 9, 2011. When the federal government was run entirely by a supermajority of Democrats, there was no need for fact-checking. In an election year, there is a demand for media spin of Obama’s rhetoric.

Obsessive attention to detail suffuses Mitt Romney’s candidacy for president, from the number of times staff members check the microphones at his rallies to their relentless scouring of Twitter.

But Mr. Romney’s aides cannot always bring that well-known level of discipline to one crucial aspect of the campaign: their candidate’s seemingly endless ability to utter remarks that, to the delight of his critics, sail onto political blogs, YouTube and Twitter.

Romney’s comment that “I’m not concerned about the very poor,” caused Jonah Goldberg to ask “What is wrong with this guy?” and to later answer that “as even he will admit, he’s a late arrival. And, as you might expect, he speaks conservatism as a second language.”

It may be worse than that. As Goldberg also noted, “[t]he frustrating problem with Romney is that his flubs and gaffes either share liberal assumptions or are caricatures of conservative ones.” I would argue the problem is more specific. Romney’s gaffes are rooted in his wealth problem. He alternatively makes comments that feed the narrative of an out-of-touch fatcat or irritate the GOP base with faux populism designed to counter that narrative. Indeed, yesterday Romney said that he was not concerned about the very poor or the very rich, when his concern should be whatever benefits America without regard to class issues. Instead, his sensitivity to the wealth issue causes him to not only disregard the affluent and the poor rhetorically, but to produce a mediocre tax plan and to back indexing the minimum wage for inflation, which ironically hurts the poor.

In short, Romney recognizes his wealth is a political liability and his attempts to address that liability often become an additional liability. His discomfort also feeds the perception that he is inauthentic. Unless he finds a personal comfort level with his wealth and its political implications, all of these problems will linger into the general election, where Team Obama will exploit them ruthlessly.

Geraghty adds that this does not necessary translate to votes which is true, but probably not good for Obama. In 2004 — a polarized, close election — Bush lost states where he had net positive job approval, but did not win one state where he had a net negative job approval. As Jay Cost notes, the only two years where we see a substantial amount of support for the incumbent president among disapprovers — 1972 and 1980 – are also not good news for Obama.

National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar correctly reminds us the Gallup data is from “throughout 2011, reflecting as much the past year as the present,” while noting Obama’s national job approval hasn’t moved much this year. Where recent polls are available, they generally confirm Kraushaar’s hypothesis. I covered IA and NH earlier this month; those states are marginally better than Gallup, but they’re also less economically distressed than most (and Obama is still underwater in NH). In PA, recent polls have Obama at 45/50 and 40/49. In VA, it 48/47 and 42/51. In NC, it’s 47/49 or 50. In FL, it’s 44/49. In OH, it’s 44/51. In NV and NM, GS Strategies has Obama at 41/57.3 and 43.3/56.8 (the firm did not provide a complete breakdown of the sample, but the firm’s polls for FL, OH and VA are close to other public polls). In CO, Ciruli Associates (a local firm) had Obama at 39/53 in December 2011.

The news is marginally better for Obama in January’s Purple Poll (.pdf), even though it spotlights FL (40/56). Obama is underwater in the Southern Swing states (FL, NC & VA) at 42/53 and the Rust Belt (NH, OH & PA) at 41/51. However, he’s above water in the Heartland (WI, MN & IA) at 48/47, and only marginally underwater in the Wild West (CO, NV & NM) at 47/49. That showing in the West is improved from the September poll; his numbers have not moved significantly in any of the other regions. I might trust that uptick, as I doubt it’s coincidence that Obama spent last week in Iowa, Colorado and Nevada. Time is the candidate’s most valuable resource. Obama needs to spend his in states where he has the best odds of goosing his job approval rating to a net positive.

Yesterday, I referred to the GOP apparat — and some of the response was to have a little fun with the idea, or to express weariness with debates about the “GOP establishment.” Such responses are understandable. After all, the Republican Party is not a conspiracy. Moreover, post-1968 reforms took presidential nominations out of the hands of party bosses and into the hands of caucus and primary voters, right? At the very least, it placed the process more in the hands of candidates and their campaigns, yes?

Some political scientists think it is more complex than that. For example, in The Party Decides, Marty Cohen, David Karol, Hans Noel, and John Zaller argue the rise of the invisible primary still gives the party control of presidential nominations:

The invisible primary is essentially a long-running national conversation among members of each party coalition about who can best unite the party and win the next presidential election. The conversation occurs in newspapers, on Sunday morning television talk shows, among activist friends over beer, in chatter at party events, and, most recently, in the blogosphere. ***

***

Some voices obviously count for more than others in the invisible primary, but anyone can join in simply by paying attention, attending party gatherings, and chiming in. The weighting of voices is determined by the resources (money, labor, expertise, prestige) the speaker can bring to party business and by the cogency of the remarks offered. Politics enters as well: pressure to go along with one’s group, to get on the bandwagon of the likely winner, or to repay old obligations. But the main business of the invisible primary is figuring out who can best unify the party and win the fall election.

Note the authors’ definition of the party extends beyond its elected officials and party functionaries, but extends to activists, fundraisers, interest groups, campaign technicians and others.

As Jay Cost noted last summer, the invisible primary has become extremely important because the cost of campaigning has increased exponentially and frontloading has altered the nature of the nomination battle. Since the institution of the caucus/primary reforms, Jimmy Carter remains the only candidate to win his party’s nomination without winning the invisible primary, as typically measured by fundraising and endorsements — and that was largely because the parties had not recognized that someone could beat the system before 1976 and the system was not as frontloaded. Howard Dean attempted a similar feat in 2004 via the Internet, but failed. Barack Obama may have beaten the seemingly establishment Hillary Clinton in 2008, but he raised more money than her heading into the Iowa caucuses and his endorsements in early states were competitive with hers. The closest example in the GOP, John McCain, stumbled in the summer of 2007, but started and finished as the winner of the invisible primary (especially after accounting for Romney’s significantly self-funded 2008 campaign).

This cycle, anyone following politics could see the efforts mounted to pull Haley Barbour, Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan and Chris Christie into the race. The names of those behind such efforts were not always public, but it was hardly a shadowy cabal, either. Tim Pawlenty’s early withdrawal from the race was a product of the invisible primary (donors lost confidence in him after the Iowa straw poll). Most commentary and coverage of Ron Paul, Herman Cain and Michelle Bachmann reflected the judgment of the invisible primary that these were not serious candidates. The invisible primary has never been more visible.

Of course, opinion is far from unanimous on the theory that party elites play a decisive role in determining presidential nominations. Nate Silver is among the skeptics, helpfully noting that Romney may be preferred by GOP elites, that preference is rather tepid. Silver focuses primarily on the relative scarcity of endorsements overall, but that data is corroborated by reports that many big-name GOP donors did not commit to Mitt until Chris Christie was officially out.

However, even if you are more partial to the view that the current rules emphasize candidates, their consultants and voters over the party per se, Jay Cost correctly notes the early caucus and primary states often favor moderates and attract large numbers of the poorly informed. Even if you do not think the party decides, the party does more or less set the calendar. You know who that benefits?

This split echoes the 2008 primary in which McCain tied Romney among non-Hispanics, but won approximately 54% of the Hispanic vote. Indeed, Rudy Giuliani was the second-place candidate for Hispanics; Romney was a distinct third.

Thus, it appears that for a second cycle, Florida Republicans will likely back the nominally establishment candidate over the nominally non-establishment candidate, due in large part to the Hispanic vote. “Nominally” is the key term here, as the former Governor can argue he is less of the Beltway than the former Speaker of the House. Nevertheless, perception often passes for reality in politics . Moreover, the degree to which the GOP elders have sided with Romney over Gingrich is a reality, and Newt (for all his heresies) arguably has more conservative policy achievements to claim than Romney.

Yet the similar dynamic does not produce an identical result. For all of the grief Romney gets — much of it justified, imho — the right should take stock of where Florida and the GOP stand now when compared to 2008. In the last cycle, East Coast moderate neocons like Jennifer Rubin was flacking for John McCain over Mitt Romney, but now flacks for Romney. Conversely, grassroots talkers like Rush Limbaugh were backing Romney as the conservative alternative to McCain in 2008, but now back Gingrich over Romney.

If Romney wins the Florida primary as expected, some on the right will surely grumble about the party apparat having its way again. But the apparat is arguably having to accept more conservative candidates as time goes on.

By a 37 to 17 percent margin, respondents said they expect the economy to improve in the next year; back in October, they thought it would get worse by a 32-21 margin. And the number of Americans who believe the country is heading in the right direction now stands at 30 percent – hardly a huge number, but a clear jump from the 17 percent who said so in the fall. Overall, Obama’s approval rating is at 48 percent, the highest it’s been in an NBC/WSJ poll since June, when he was still basking in the afterglow of Osama bin Laden’s demise.

Gallup also finds more optimism about the economy, but 49% say they are worse off financially today than a year ago, a near-record high. Gallup’s version of the right track/wrong track question is at 18% — again up from Autumn 2011, but the lowest recorded for January of a presidential election year. Americans’ worries about maintaining their standard of living, being able to pay medical bills or losing their job in the next tear are among the highest Gallup has measured in the past 20 years, rivaling the levels seen in 1991 and 1992. Americans are broadly dissatisfied with the state of the nation’s economy, the size and power of the federal government, and the moral and ethical climate in the country. Kornacki gets this next bit right, but there’s a kicker:

The numbers are a reminder that a president’s reelection fate is ultimately more dependent on the state of the economy than on what strategy the opposition party employs and which candidate it nominates. If economic anxiety and pessimism are rampant, then winning a second term is a profoundly uphill slog, even if the opposition fields a supposedly weak nominee. But if the public widely believes that conditions are healthy or at least improving, then credit – deserved or undeserved – invariably goes to the White House occupant.

Kornacki must be hoping his readers do not click on his link. He’s citing Douglas Hibbs, whose “Bread and Peace” model analyzes just how much of post-WWII election outcomes may be explained by peace and prosperity (I have cited Hibbs myself a number of times). His formula uses only two variables — real disposable personal income per capita and military fatalities in unprovoked wars. Here are the results through 2008:

Kornacki links to the Q3 2011 update, in which Hibbs calculated that per capita real income growth must average out at 4% or more per year over the last four quarters of the term for Obama to have a strong chance of re-election:

If the US economy gets into robust recovery mode, real income growth could be high enough to secure the President Obama’s re-election. However, the pace of recovery from the 2008 Great Recession remains sluggish, and the famous 2009 book This Time Is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly by Reinhart and Rogoff documents that recoveries from contractions originating with the bursting of speculative financial bubbles are not V-shaped as in garden-variety recessions, but instead are typically prolonged U-shaped affairs lasting 5 to 6 years. The statistical properties of the time path of US per capita real disposable personal income indicate that the chances of year-long quarterly growth rates on the order of 4% or higher are no better than 1/7.

Henry J. Enten gave his own update using the Hibbs model earlier this month:

Wells Fargo experts predict increasing growth of RDPI over the next year.

The problem for Obama is that he already is in such a deep hole that the expected growth (when population growth is taken into affect) is only predicted to be about about 1%, for an overall weighted growth of +0.3% over the presidential term. And this +0.3% growth would forecast Obama garnering 46.8%, which is obviously not enough to win re-election.

Indeed, even after Enten boosts Obama’s number by adjusting for incumbency and divided government, he cannot get Obama to 49%, although that would at least get Obama within the standard error for a modified Hibbs model. In the real world, the newest figures for Q4 2011 are not much better: real disposable personal income increased at only a 0.8% annual rate, after declining the prior two quarters. On a year-ago basis real disposable personal income declined 0.1%, the only decline ever recorded in a non-recession environment. That 0.8% rate is the Obama average.

Of course, campaigns matter: Political scientist Lynn Vavreck argues that if the out-party successfully capitalizes on a weak economy or, in times of economic growth, successfully locates another issue to campaign on, then they are expected to win an additional six points — even controlling for the actual state of the economy and casualties in war. But this underscores the drag the weak economy is on Obama’s odds for re-election.

On the surface, this is a silly issue. Last week, Mitt Romney was painting Gingrich as a minor figure of the Reagan revolution. This week ended with the following exchange during the CNN debate:

Wolf Blitzer: Governor Romney, you criticized Speaker Gingrich for not being as close to Ronald Reagan as he says he was. When you ran for the Senate, you said you were, quote, “You weren’t trying to return to Reagan-Bush.”

So the question is, do you think you can claim the Reagan mantle more than Speaker Gingrich?

Romney: Oh, of course not. ***

Romney then recited his biography, selectively omitting the 1994 Senate race which occasioned Mitt’s remark distancing himself from Reagan-Bush (a ticket which won Massachusetts twice). It’s an answer which tells the observant that Team Romney figured out this was a dumb line of attack (Newt can be unconservative, but Romney is not going to win an argument about Reagan). It also tells the observant that even after fumbling Mitt’s money issues, Team Romney was still capable of not recognizing that their attack would backfire in the first instance (Newt also launches attacks that boomerang, but Mitt is the one with the supposedly superior staff and organization).

While Team Romney was figuring this out, a scrum of conservative punditry ensued. Notably, Elliott Abrams (an assistant secretary of state under Reagan) attacked Gingrich for not having been sufficiently supportive of Reagan’s foreign policy. Jeffrey Lord (a former Reagan White House political director) defended Gingrich as one of Reagan’s best lieutenants, including the story of how Newt helped keep a firm line against tax increases in the 1984 platform against the likes of Bob Dole and Lowell Weicker. Lord later claimed that Abrams had never complained about Gingrich at the time and distorted Gingrich’s comments on Reagan’s foreign policy. Rich Lowry then went after Lord for smearing Abrams as jockeying for a job in a Romney administration and for providing only partial context of Gingrich’s foreign policy remarks.

So far, it appears that Lowry is correct that Lord has no evidence that Abrams was sucking up to Team Romney for a job. Moreover, the Abrams piece could easily have been a simple act of score-settling. I would not be surprised if Abrams and others in the Reagan administration were less than thrilled at Gingrich’s criticism at the time and feel vindicated by history (although history is not a controlled experiment, thus precluding a definitive judgment on the matter). However, Lord correctly notes (as does Reagan biographer Steven Hayward) that Gingrich was hardly a lone critic of Reagan’s foreign policy at the time in question. Newt cited George Will, Charles Krauthammer, Irving Kristol, and Jeane Kirkpatrick in his speech, while Hayward lists others, including Howard Phillips, Jack Kemp, George Will and William Safire.

The scrum demonstrates why Team Romney is running from the subject. The record tends to show that Gingrich backed Reagan on key issues and when he did critique the administration, he did so from the right. “More right-wing than Reagan in the ’80s” is not the frame Romney wants for Gingrich.

What can we learn from this episode (beyond the fact that Team Romney still has some bugs to work out)?

The reason that the right would spend a week discussing Gingrich’s connection to Reagan legacy is a testament to how much Reagan shaped the conservative movement and today’s GOP. By holding Reagan up as the ideal, he and his administration have become idealized — and it would serve us all well to be more clear-eyed about history here.

This episode is a timely reminder that the Reagan GOP was an occasionally fractious coalition. To moderates, Reaganomics was voodoo, while Reagan’s confrontational foreign policy seemed unconservative. Reagan was a politician who pushed the envelope… but his coalition also contained those who wanted to push it further.

It should be remembered that Reagan got to elected president as the result of many factors. He had experience running for president. He was an able and charismatic performer as a candidate, capable of disarming his critics with a down-to-earth chuckle as easily as a pointed barb. Stagflation had exposed the flaws of Keynesian economics. Iran and the Soviet Union exposed the impotence of Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy. Reagan’s election was as close to a perfect storm as one is likely to find in politics.

This year, the GOP remains a fractious coalition, but its candidate will be no Ronald Reagan. (Occasionally, Ronald Reagan was no Ronald Reagan.) Moreover, if America is lucky, the economy and state of the world will not make Barack Obama look as bad as Jimmy Carter. It is by those parameters that GOP primary voters should be making their choice, rather than hoping a perfect storm rolls in.

In the current wave of generally conservative punditry on Newt Gingrich’s candidacy, a common subtext (and occasional text) is criticism not of Newt, but of his supporters:

[C]onservatives are simply out for a good time. They want to be entertained by a Gingrich-Obama slugfest in the general election debates, and they are willing to sacrifice everything — their credibility, their values and the White House — to sit in the Coliseum and watch a Christian get devoured by lions.

Blaming the electorate is rarely effective and this line of attack is no exception. In the first instance, to the extent Gingrich’s campaign is feeding on populist discontent, his supporters are unlikely to be swayed by a parade of pundits perched at big media outlets telling them they are shallow rubes. To the contrary, the implicit condescension probably fuels the underlying populist discontent. If these pundits are hoping to persuade, they are likely failing. If they are writing simply to vent their own frustration, how different are they from their stereotype of Newt’s supporters?

Moreover, on the campaign trail, Gingrich apparently comes off as far more substantive than Mitt Romney. That would not surprise me. Gingrich is nothing if not an an uncontrolled, gushing firehose of policy. Some of his ideas may not be conservative. Some of his conservative ideas may be irrelevant to the major issues facing the next president. But the notion that support for Gingrich is simply the desire to be entertained ignores the facts on the ground, which again makes for bad punditry.

The problem for these pundits is not that Gingrich is Maximus, manipulating the mob to get ahead. Their problem is that Romney is Commodus, the political heir of dubious legitimacy who tries but fails to co-opt the mob. Ironically, their Circus Maximus of criticism is being staged at the very moment when Gingrich looks to be losing momentum. It would be even more ironic if Gingrich could again turn the criticism of his supporters to his advantage.

—

Update: Via Twitter, I have learned that S.E. Cupp thinks it’s bad journalism on my part to not identify her as the author of the blockquote, although I did link to her article immediately beforehand. I generally like her work, and thus was loath to single her out as having written something so condescending and counter-productive. I forgot there’s no such thing as bad publicity. My apologies.

This now is the party of Palin and Gingrich, animated primarily by hatred of elites, angry at the new shape and color of America, befuddled by a suddenly more complicated world, and dedicated primarily to emotion rather than reason. That party is simply not one that can rally behind a Mitt Romney.

Then Joyner:

If Newt Gingrich wins the Republican nomination–a notion that seemed absurd to anyone not named Newt Gingrich two weeks ago–the trend will have reached its logical conclusion. And the GOP will be where the Democratic Party was during the period from 1968 to 1988, a niche party out of touch with America and unable to win the presidency in anything but the most exceptional circumstances. Obama-Gingrich would likely be a landslide akin to 1984 and 1988.

Jazz does a nice job of explaining why the fight over the direction of a political party never really ends. However, what struck me was how superficial the complaints are in the first instance.

Granted, Sullivan’s intellect has been decaying for a long time. Even so, one would think it might have occurred to him that his basic indictment of the GOP sounds pretty much like every Democratic hack’s indictment of the GOP in every election cycle since the Sixties. Perhaps Sullivan would argue that every Democratic hack has been correct about the GOP since the Sixties, but even that lazy assumption would be problematic. In the immediate term, it destroys his argument that the prominence of figures like Palin or Gingrich represent something new for the GOP. More broadly, the notion that the right has some monopoly on populist anger is absurd, given the portion of the newshole given over to the Occupy movement over the past several months. Similarly, the notion that liberals are immune from magical thinking is more magical thinking from Sullivan. Indeed, the notion that Andrew Sullivan, one of the most high-profile and hysterical conspiracy cranks on the Internet, has the gall to throw stones in this context is a laugher.

Joyner, generally a more sane voice than Sullivan, unfortunately lapses into some flawed history. The Democrats were far from a niche party from 1968-88, having controlled the House of Representatives for that entire period, and the Senate for most of the period. Granted, the presidency is the big national office. However, even accepting that premise, I would again note that the GOP during this period was the subject of the same types of critiques being leveled today. The GOP’s populist streak arguably started with Nixon’s campaign against judicial activism and his reliance on the “silent majority,” which was historically much less silent than the typical academic would have us believe. And for all of that, the American people — as opposed to political activists — are not as polarized as Joyner fears.

Moreover, it is quite unlikely that nominating Gingrich would result in a loss anywhere near the Dukakis loss in 1988, let alone the Mondale loss in 1984. Although campaigns and candidate certainly matter, post-WWII elections suggest that the incumbent party will generally lose when the economy is bad and win when it is good. The performances of the Dems in ’84 and ’88 are easily explained by economic factors. Currently, the economic climate does not favor Obama’s reelection. Accordingly, even if you think Gingrich would be a losing candidate, the odds of a blowout seem rather low.

Of course, this could be the year in which the typical post-WWII model breaks. Given that the 2008 meltdown was in some ways the worst since the Great Depression, perhaps voters will be more forgiving of Obama’s failed economic policies. But once we start “This Time Is Different” arguments, they can be invoked on Newt’s behalf as well.

The point here is not to praise Newt or bury him. Rather, it is to note that if he should somehow become the GOP nominee it would not signal certain disaster in the general election or mark a fundamental shift in the nature of the party. Indeed, it might say nothing more than Republican voters looking at the political environment of 2012 and deciding — rightly or wrongly — that “abrasive loose cannon” is a marginally better brand than “animatronic plutocrat.”

Building off of the themes of the Kansas speech, the State of the Union will lay out a “Blueprint for an America built to last.” The Blueprint will be supported by four pillars: 1) American Manufacturing; 2) American Energy; 3) Skills for American Workers and 4) American Values.

As you may recall, the Kansas speech was about the joys of crony capitalism and regulatory capture.

So what about American Manufacturing?

It is certainly true that employment in manufacturing has fallen in recent decades. The council’s report observes that in 1980, manufacturing accounted for about 20 percent of American jobs, whereas the comparable figure today is about 9 percent. At the same time, manufacturing’s share of total production has remained roughly stable and, in fact, the United States and China are the only countries to have gained significant world share in manufacturing in recent years. The line that connects and explains these two dots of strong manufacturing and manufacturing job loss is the rapid increase in labor productivity, the result of innovation, and global competitive pressures.

Heritage’s J.D. Foster seemed to be at a loss to explain the administration’s emphasis here, but this will be Obama’s pander to Big Labor and swing states in the Rust Belt.

As for American Energy, Obama will (again) propose “an economy fueled by homegrown and alternative energy sources that will be designed and produced by American workers.” Of course, it must be “homegrown” and “alternative” lest someone point out the jobs Obama is killing in the energy sector. Instead, we should continue to pour tax money down the rathole of renewable energy in an orgy of crony capitalism, to prevent people from noticing the Luddites backing the Democrats. If the American Manufacturing plank is meant to placate Big Labor and the Rust Belt, the American Energy plank is intended to placate Greens, upper tier New Class crony capitalists and mushy upscale voters in the Mountain West. Give Obama this much: It takes cojones to pull this after praising scandal-ridden Solydra during the 2010 SOTU.

When it comes to Skills for American Workers, the White House promises “new ideas for how we’ll make sure our students and workers get the education and training they need so that we have a workforce ready to take on the jobs of today and tomorrow.” Anyone believe that? The Occupy movement is largely a function of the fact that jobs are drying up for the social workers, virtuecrats, and the regulatory class. The higher education bubble is the product of decades of progressive education policy. If anyone out there thinks a president beholden to teachers’ unions and tenured leftists is going to propose a radical overhaul of our dysfunctional education system, Obama may have some infrastructure to sell you. Among the president’s living props tonight will be Sara Ferguson, who teaches in the Chester Upland School District — which stands accused by the Pennsylvania Department of Education of financial mismanagement.

If you had any doubt that Obama’s rhetoric on American Values will be a heaping helping of class warfare, fear not: the First Lady has invited Warren Buffett’s secretary to serve as another human prop. BTW, I see Twitter chatter asking why it’s okay to call her a “secretary,” when the obvious answer is bacause it’s a liberal doing it. Expect a lot of gab about “shared responsibility,” when Obama is not blaming others for the failures of Big Government.

Also among the presidential guests tonight: Steve Jobs’ widow, Laurene Powell Jobs. Maybe Obama will recall the time that the Apple co-founder complained to him about over-regulation driving factories overseas and teachers’ unions crippling our schools. The story would tie in to at least two of Obama’s themes tonight.

If I understood Ace’s argument, part of it is that conservatives looking for a viable NotRomney are saying Gingrich is (more) electable now simply because he must be if Romney is to be defeated. The Gallup tracking poll arguably contains some support for that theory. From Jan 15-22, Romney lost 12% among conservatives, while Gingrich gained the same amount to tie at 28%. Among liberal and moderate GOPers/leaners, Romney held steady at 33%, while Gingrich gained 6% to 15%. From that angle, one can argue that Newt’s conservative surge does look like the Not Romney vote trying to gather, although his gains among moderates and liberals suggests a slightly broader shift is also at play. Moreover, this is only one angle from which to view the poll, e.g., Newt’s surge is heavily explained by a shift in older voters from Romney to Gingrich (although this is likely correlated to the conservative shift, as the campaign was not focused on entitlements last week).

Of course, the Gallup tracker is limited to GOPers and leaners. Broader polling may tell us a bit more about the current state of electability. Although trial heats are not predictive this far from November, it’s notable that the RCP averages for Obama/Romney and Obama/Gingrich still show Romney as the more competitive candidate, even as his standing falls within the GOP race. Indeed, Romney was also the more competitive candidate during Newt’s previous surge. Does this tell us Mitt is the more electable candidate… or only that people know less about him? We really cannot be sure.

During yesterday’s discussion, others raised Newt’s currently high unfavorable ratings as an indicator of unelectability. Newt’s average from those recent polls is 55% unfavorable, which is certainly higher than Romney’s average of 42%. Then again, Obama’s average unfavorable rating is 47% — and he’s not in the middle of a nasty primary scrum. Thus, it’s at least possible that Newt’s unfavorables are high now because some on the Right (e.g., Mitt’s fans, or those who found Newt’s attacks on Mitt unfair) are unhappy, while Obama’s unfavorables have yet to be driven up by unified opposition. As with the trial heats, it is also possible that Romney’s lower unfavorables are partially the product of people knowing less about him than they know about Gingrich. Again, there is not solid data on this. It would not be uncommon to have both party nominees carrying high unfavorables, but having one with unfavorables over 50% would be uncommon and possibly fatal.

The latest PPP poll from Florida — showing Newt up by 5% — has some interesting data bearing on these points. On one hand, Newt’s favorability increased while Romney’s declined, suggesting that favorability can be a fluid thing (although likely less so in the general election pool). On the other hand, 15% of primary voters say they would not vote for Gingrich in the general election, while only 9% say that about Romney, suggesting Mitt would be the stronger candidate against Obama (although we should be careful about assuming such attitudes hold after a nominee is selected; there were polls in 2008 suggesting Hillary Clinton supporters would not vote for Obama, but the level of defections was ultimately no different from any other election).

My conclusion from the data is that Romney currently remains the more competitive candidate. His fumbling and stumbling over money issues — his tax returns, Bain Capital, gaffes real or imagined — has wounded him within the GOP electorate, but not outside it…yet. If Romney does not get his act together quickly, he risks losing the mantle of electability among the broader electorate.

Conversely, Gingrich’s exposure of Romney’s weakness has not made Newt a stronger candidate outside the GOP electorate… yet. Conservatives may like Gingrich’s fighting spirit, but Newt will need more support and an improved image outside that group to become the more competitive candidate. Moreover, it is not clear he can achieve that simply by a Romney collapse. In South Carolina, Gingrich appealed more to those in the GOP pool hurt most by our economic malaise; he needs to show he has the same appeal outside the base.

In South Carolina exit polls, Romney wins only the “moderate or liberal”, those with incomes in excess of $200,000.00, those with postgraduate education, those who oppose the tea party movement, and those who think religion does not matter at all.

A number of those have been consistent through Iowa and New Hampshire too.

Fairly or not, Romney seems to have have a wealth problem, exploitable by his rivals now and Team Obama if Mitt gets the nomination. Oddly, I find myself in agreement with both Erickson and John Heilemann that Romney needs to: (a) “refine his message, not sharpen his knives”; and (b) get comfortable, and quick, in talking about his money issues. In particular, I would advise Romney to go beyond defending the free market in response to the Bain Capital issue. That approach appeals to the right, but the abstract principle may not move the casual voter, particularly the blue-collar casual voter. Romney’s plan to compare Bain’s work to the GM bailout if he becomes the nominee still puts him in the role of “bailout guy,” which is probably not the best frame this year.

Perhaps Romney should compare his role at Bain to being a doctor. Sometimes, doctors get to deliver babies or cure sick children who go on to live full and productive lives. In those cases, the doctor gets to feel great. So it is with some companies, like Staples or Domino’s Pizza. In other cases, the patient is so injured or so sick that they have to lose or limb, or even die. The doctors try as hard as they can, but sometimes all the lifesaving measures known to mankind are not enough and the doctors feel terrible about it. So it is when companies get rightsized or go bankrupt.

Some may think doctors are overpaid, but no one would want to live in a society without them. Mitt Romney is never going to seem like Mitt Sixpack, but he may be able to come across as caring more about more blue-collar families.

Dear Govs. Haley Barbour, Mitch Daniels, John Kasich, Bobby Jindal; Sens. Jon Kyl, Marco Rubio and Jim DeMint; and Reps. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), and Mike Pence (R-Ind.):

***

*** The voters in their infinite wisdom have just given a huge boost to perhaps the only GOP candidate who could shift the spotlight from President Obama to himself, alienate virtually all independent voters, lose more than 40 states and put the House majority in jeopardy.

***

So how about it? One of you can run yourself. Or you can instead collectively get behind a not-Gingrich candidate. But really, if you are to have a Republican Party to lead one day in the future, you can’t very well do nothing.

My own view is that any one of you would be preferable as a candidate to Newt Gingrich, as would either Rick Santorum or Mitt Romney…

Rubin’s agenda here is typically transparent. Although styled as a “Anyone but Newt” plea, Ron Paul is implictly eliminated and NJ Gov. Chris Christie gets a pass because he has endorsed Mitt Romney. Indeed, she’s not stupid enough to believe any of her targets could plausibly enter the race at this point; her piece is merely a plea for Romney endorsements.

Although generally critical of Rubin’s modus operandi (note she was equally critical of Romney to boost McCain in 2008), I previously kinda-sorta defended her, arguing conservatives disporortionately attacked her work because her prominent position at the WaPo presents a skewed view of the Right to a mass audience. However, the problems with Rubin run deeper and beyond the merits of her argument.

The fact that Rubin’s diagnosis of the Romney campaign is that it lacks enough establishment endorsement says much about Rubin as a thinker, not much of it good. Those who do not read my work regularly should know upfront that I find the amount of venom spewed by some in the ongoing RINO/TruCon argument on the Right to be tedious. It’s an argument that leads both sides to make arguments that simply have no empirical support. Rubin is pretty clearly on the RINO side of that dispute and for the purposes of this post, I do not hold it against her.

However, Rubin’s analysis of the campaign — i.e., Romney needs more endorsements, Romney needs to attack Newt (as though he hasn’t), Newt’s populism can be easily dismissed — is dull-witted, even when she has a point. The TruCon perspective is so (to use the Newtian term) fundamentally illegitimate to Rubin that it must be denied or crushed — as though there are not political consequences which would follow. The populism surging on both the Right and Left in the wake of the Wall Street meltdown and subsequent Obama malaise may not be an unalloyed good, but the lesson of South Carolina is it is one of the biggest obstacles to a Romney nomination and his supporters ignore or mock it at their peril.

Romney’s skid — both in SC and national polls — coincided with renewed attacks on Romney’s image as a fatcat financier. However much Rubin — or I — may find those attacks wrong or unfair in many cases, it was obvious to everyone that such attacks would come. Well, obvious to everyone except Camp Romney (including Rubin, apparently). Rubin’s blog over the past few days has been an echo of the the flailing Romney campaign, stuck in denial that Romney should have been better prepared and running a more competent campaign (especially as competence is what Romney is selling).

As someone who has catalogued Newt’s flaws as a candidate , noted that he is an idiosyncratic revolutionary in ways which may be unconservative and found his attacks on the courts to be over-the-top, I should be the sort of person to whom Rubin’s views might appeal. But if her dismissal of large factions of the movement were not offensive enough, Rubin seems unable to express that dismissal in any manner other than disingenuous condescension. Her agenda is transparent, but she seems to think she’s cleverly cloaking it in pieces like today’s “open letter.” I think even those who disagree with Rubin more than I do would at least respect her more if she honestly wrote that she thinks Mitt is the only electable candidate in the race and that the entire weight of the establishment needs to publicly destroy Newt Gingrich this very minute. Her disingenous attempts at subtlety make her sound like The Girl Who Cried Newt — even if she’s right, she’s bound to be ignored.

“Those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake,” Dodd said on Fox News on Thursday.

Hollywood moguls are also pulling out of Obama fundraisers over the issue.

In general (unlike many), I do not have a big issue with lobbyists; I have a problem with a government large enough to make them a virtual necessity. However, after Dodd announced his retirement from the US Senate (rather than face a campaign centered on his involvement in the subprime mortgage crisis), he promised, “No lobbying, no lobbying,” as if there was something wrong with it. He became head of the MPAA — the Hollywood lobby — weeks after retiring. But openly issuing veiled threats on national television probably doesn’t count as “lobbying,” so this is really more about Dodd’s general sliminess and hypocrisy than a legal problem.

Now that widespread opposition from the tech sector and the public has forced Congress to table SOPA and PIPA, Dodd has regrets. He regrets they didn’t ram these bills into law before the opposition grew, that the debate was focused on Hollywood and… that his own lobbying efforts were hampered by the law he backed. Dodd previously voted for the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007, which among other things increased the “cooling off” period for Senators lobbying their former colleagues from one to two years.

Mr. Gingrich delighted much of the audience at the debate with his attack on the moderator, John King, of CNN, who began the proceeding by asking the former House speaker about his ex-wife’s allegations that Mr. Gingrich asked “to enter into an open marriage.”

Mr. Gingrich met the question with cold anger, winning roars of approval from the debate audience as he said through nearly clenched teeth, “I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that.” But he ultimately said of his ex-wife Marianne’s allegations, reported first on Thursday by ABC News, “The story is false.”

Given the conventional reaction, GOP fundraiser/consultant (and Newt fan) Nathan Wurtzel nailed it: “Clearly, most of the political press I follow never heard the line ‘Never get mad except on purpose.’ ” Or as Jonah Goldberg noted:

Newt’s opening answer was very strong and will be replayed a lot. But I thought it was overstated and, as he kept going, it became clear he was trying to squelch the issue rather than express his true rage. When he was all lovey-dovey with John King after the debate, it underscored that it was as much performance as anything else.

Completing the trifecta is John Podhoretz (a Mitt Romney fan, afaik): “I find it astonishing that people are falling for his being outraged at being asked about his character.”

Newt’s ample personal baggage is one of the generally-known things about him — probably as much as they know about his Speakership. Like the issues raised about Mitt Romney — Bain, the tax returns, etc. — the marriage issue is not going away, so Republicans (and ultimately all of us) are better served discussing it sooner rather than having regrets later. So thank John King; it’s a pretty good bet Newt did.

PPP’s first national poll of 2012 finds Barack Obama with his best standing against Mitt Romney since last May, right after the killing of Osama bin Laden. Obama leads Romney 49-44.

It’s not as if Obama’s suddenly become popular. He remains under water with 47% of voters approving of him to 50% who disapprove. But Romney’s even less popular, with only 35% rating him favorably while 53% have a negative opinion of him. Over the last month Romney’s seen his negatives with independents rise from 46% to 54%, suggesting that the things he has to say and do to win the Republican nomination aren’t necessarily helping him for the general. Obama’s turned what was a 45-36 deficit with independents a month ago into a 51-41 advantage.

I would not be overly concerned about this, not least because head-to-head polling is basically meaningless at this point in the cycle. Obama does not break 50%, despite PPP’s sample containing 41% Democrats — a couple of points higher than Dem turnout in 2008, let alone 2004 or 2000. Republicans are 35% of the sample, which would be about average. And the poll wants us to believe that Obama is not popular, but surged 15% with Indies in a single month. I would want to see that replicated in other polls before I buy it, particualrly since the only other poll this year to date with a Obama +5 result is the traditionally Obama-friendly reuters/Ispos poll. Tom Jensen is focused on Mitt’s unfavorables, which could be the Bain issue, but may also represent a lot of conservative disgust with Romney’s increasingly-likely nomination. It would also be interesting to know who the 7% undecided are, because Jensen previously told us it was disproportionately Republican in 2011 polls of swing states.

Jobs. Sullivan begins — as Team Obama almost certainly will — with Obama inheriting a terrible economy, writing that “[n]o fair person can blame Obama for the wreckage of the [first] 12 months, as the financial crisis cut a swath through employment.” Yet shortly thereafter, he writes:

Since [the beginning of 2010], the U.S. has added 2.4 million jobs. That’s not enough, but it’s far better than what Romney would have you believe, and more than the net jobs created under the entire Bush administration.

Sullivan is comparing Obama’s gross job creation to Bush’s net job creation, ignoring that Bush also inherited a recession resulting from the collapse of the tech bubble. By Sullivan’s own standard, this is unfair.

By the standard of net jobs created, Obama remains underwater and will be lucky to get to zero net jobs created by the end of his term. Conversely, if we simply judge Obama by the recovery, the results are terrible when compared to past recoveries. Nearly a million people have dropped out of the labor force, dropping the participation rate to an historic low, implying an unemployment rate close to 11%, instead of the official 8.5%.

Stimulus. Sullivan’s faulty frame on jobs is necessary to his defense of Obama’s economic stimulus law:

The job collapse bottomed out at the beginning of 2010, as the stimulus took effect. ***

The right claims the stimulus failed because it didn’t bring unemployment down to 8 percent in its first year, as predicted by Obama’s transition economic team. Instead, it peaked at 10.2 percent. But the 8 percent prediction was made before Obama took office and was wrong solely because it relied on statistics that guessed the economy was only shrinking by around 4 percent, not 9. Remove that statistical miscalculation (made by government and private-sector economists alike) and the stimulus did exactly what it was supposed to do. It put a bottom under the free fall. It is not an exaggeration to say it prevented a spiral downward that could have led to the Second Great Depression.

The argument here is that the people who completely misjudged the state of the economy in late 2008 nevertheless got the right solution, which worked in the predicted magnitude. Peter Suderman has schooled Sullivan on the “garbage-in, garbage out” quality of his argument — and Sullivan has recognized it as a valid point, but apparently it’s invalid in an election year.

For the more visually oriented, take a look the now-familiar graph comparing the Romer-Bernstein prediction of unemployment with and without passing the stimulus, and the actual unemployment figures. Sullivan concedes the Obama team’s error of magnitude, so notice two other features of the graph. First, note that Team Obama predicted that passing the stimulus would start bringing down unemployment almost immediately. Second, compare the curves of the various lines. The actual results look much more like the curve of the line traced by the “without stimulus” prediction than the “with stimulus” prediction line. The sloping decline starting in late 2009 predicted by Romer and Bernstein simply isn’t to be seen in the actual results.

Finally, as Megan McArdle — a stimulus backer — has noted, the stimulus law did not stave off another Great Depression. If you want to credit a government program for that, TARP would be the candidate. If you want to credit quasi-governmental action, try the Fed’s quantitative easing.

Taxes. Sullivan writes:

You’d think, listening to the Republican debates, that Obama has raised taxes. Again, this is not true. Not only did he agree not to sunset the Bush tax cuts for his entire first term, he has aggressively lowered taxes on most Americans. A third of the stimulus was tax cuts, affecting 95 percent of taxpayers; he has cut the payroll tax, and recently had to fight to keep it cut against Republican opposition.

Obama’s signature healthcare law raises $813 billion from 2012 to 2021. Almost half of the “stimulus tax cuts” were actually spending. The House GOP voted for a year-long extension of the payroll tax cut, while Obama demanded an unworkable short-term cut to be offset by… a tax increase.

And it’s not like Obama is averse to raising taxes. He scotched a debt ceiling deal because the GOP offer of $800 billion more in revenue was just not enough for him. Obama also pushed a cap-and-tax system for carbon emissions that would have cost the average household in the bottom-income quintile about 3.3% of its after-tax income every year. So when Sullivan talks about Obama not raising taxes, that is in large part because his plans were too extreme for Congress, even when both houses were controlled by Democrats.

Spending. Sullivan argues “[y]ou could easily make the case that Obama has been far more fiscally conservative than his predecessor,” claiming:

Under Bush, new policies on taxes and spending cost the taxpayer a total of $5.07 trillion. Under Obama’s budgets both past and projected, he will have added $1.4 trillion in two terms.

These numbers are taken from a tendentious graphic published by the New York Times, based in part on data from the lefty Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. There are other ways to look at the data, but in Sullivan’s accounting, Bush gets charged with his tax cuts, but Obama does not, even though — as Sullivan notes — Obama supported renewing them. Obama does not get charged with the Afghan war, although he backed it and even launched a “surge” there. Obama does not get charged with TARP, although he voted for it as a Senator and expanded it as president. He does not get charged with the Medicare drug benefit, although he has not proposed its repeal and is in fact increasing its cost under Obamacare. And while we’re on the subject…

Obamacare. Sullivan writes:

The great conservative bugaboo, Obamacare, is also far more moderate than its critics have claimed. The Congressional Budget Office has projected it will reduce the deficit, not increase it dramatically, as Bush’s unfunded Medicare Prescription Drug benefit did. ***

Yes, it crosses the Rubicon of universal access to private health care. But since federal law mandates that hospitals accept all emergency-room cases requiring treatment anyway, we already obey that socialist principle—but in the most inefficient way possible. Making 44 million current free-riders pay into the system is not fiscally reckless; it is fiscally prudent. It is, dare I say it, conservative.

Obamacare is “moderate” in the sense that it is one percent from a complete government takeover of the health insurance system. Democrats gamed the CBO to get a deficit-reducing score. The CBO’s alternative baseline — the one most consider the more realistic baseline — does not think the savings will materialize. And it’s funny Sullivan should mention the federal mandate on emergency-room care, as it is a driver of the so-called free rider problem, which is largely mythical.

Foreign policy. Sullivan focuses on the least controversial aspect of Obama’s record, claiming “Obama reversed Bush’s policy of ignoring Osama bin Laden, immediately setting a course that eventually led to his capture and death.” In reality, the key info to finding bin Laden was gathered from Operation Cannonball, launched during the Bush administration. Sullivan also claims:

[W]here Bush talked tough and acted counterproductively, Obama has simply, quietly, relentlessly decimated our real enemies, while winning the broader propaganda war. Since he took office, al Qaeda’s popularity in the Muslim world has plummeted.

Confidence in al Qaeda was declining for years in the Muslim world before Obama took office. Then again, confidence in Obama has declined in the Muslim world from 2009-11 (the most recent Pew Global attitudes poll). The latter was one of Sullivan’s arguments for electing Obama in the first place. Sullivan also argued that Obama could reduce the polarization in Washington. Obama started poisoning that well three days into his presidency, becoming one of the most polarizing presidents in modern history.

In short, Obama’s critics on the right are not “dumb” as Newsweek would have it. Nor are they “empirically wrong” as Sullivan would have it. Sullivan tips over into the increasingly familiar tactic of pretending political debates are simply resolved questions of fact. Given Obama’s lousy numbers on most issues entering this election year, he will need better arguments and a better economy to play the “long game” Sullivan thinks is being played.

The numbers are better for Republicans and their leaners: 75% knew the Gingrich question; 59% knew the Romney question; and 51% knew the Paul question. Even so, these are numbers that suggest that the October KFF tracking poll — showing nearly three quarters of the public, including seven in ten likely Republican presidential primary voters, say they don’t know enough about Romneycare to have either a favorable or an unfavorable opinion of it — might still be fairly accurate. More significantly, the Pew poll expressly gives the R/D/I breakdown for these questions, but only gave answers including leaners for GOPers and Dems. A little back-of-the-envelope math confirms the stereotype of truly unaligned voters as the least informed. The youth vote is also among the least informed, which may not be surprising, but notable given that Ron Paul’s campaign touts its support among the young and inependent.

It is also worth noting that Pew did this quiz poll during a period where over half the news was about the presidential election.

These results are not particularly depressing; the politically engaged need to remember that to everyone else, we are at the beginning of the process and that many voters will not engage themselves until their primary or the general election. These factors, and uncertainty about the eventual nominee(s) are why head-to-head polling is basically meaningless at this point in the cycle.

However, the politically engaged should keep the early level of ignorance in mind more than we probably do on a day-to-day basis. Given polls like those from Pew and KFF, how much importance should we put in last month’s ABC/WaPo poll question asking whether Romneycare, Gingrich’s experience and Paul’s non-interventionist foreign policy are major reasons to support or oppose them? How much weight should we put on arguments that candidates like Romney and Paul are electable based on early head-to-head polling? How much weight should we put on the claim that Romney’s and Paul’s negatives are priced into their stock because they ran in 2008? Or that Gingrich’s negatives are well-known because of his relatively high name ID? How much weight should we put on concern (or enthusiasm) that the increase in support for Paul since 2008 signals a fracturing of GOP foreign policy consensus?

The answer to all of these questions would appear to be: “Not very much.” At least, people should not place undue weight on such arguments. Yet the establishment media and even political junkies often talk and behave otherwise.

Accordingly, political junkies might do well to look at what the casual voter knows or wants to know about the candidates. One easy way of looking at this is as close as your nearest auto-completing search engine. Here is what happens if you search for current GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney:

Those results may not surprise you, but note that Bain Capital is not among them, suggesting it is not yet part of the zeitgeist. However, the fact that Mitt Romney’s net worth is already a common topic suggests the Bain issue could enter these charts with a bullet.

Searches for Newt Gingrich, Romney’s nearest rival nationally and in the South Carolina primary, suggest that what people know or want to know about him beyond his positions is his personal baggage. If Newt were to beat the current odds and secure the GOP nomination, the casual voter may well conclude, for better or worse, that the Democrats are running the “family values” candidate for 2012. Also note that all of the chatter in political fora about the attacks from Gingrich and the Super PAC supporting him against Romney over the Bain issue are not common knowledge yet.

Next up is Rick Santorum, paired with Rick Perry for Rick Symmetry:

The results for this pair are not particularly surprising, although the gay factor is different for each when you call up the search results. Rick Santorum’s gay search results concern the socially conservative positions which are his trademark. Rick Perry’s gay search results reflect not only the socially conservative ads he ran in Iowa, but also the baseless rumors pursued by the left at the outset of his campaign. First impressions matter, though Perry’s inarticulate image is also a big factor here. On Santorum’s side of the ledger, it’s also notable how far down the list “fetus” ranks, given the politically-engaged’s chatter about liberal mockery of the way the Santorum family dealt with their deceased child. These charts also suggest that these candidate’ comments on gay and racial issues are currently more significant among casual voters (to the extent they are significant) than abortion, which features in the charts for Romney (a likely product of his frontrunner status).

Rounding out the top challengers is Ron Paul, paired with Herman Cain:

As with Romney, the interesting thing about Paul’s chart is what is not on it. The blogosphere may have discussed Ron Paul’s bigoted newsletters and conspiracy crankery, but the only coverage of them in the establishment media occurred near Christmas, when the casual voter is not paying attention. Paulians may want to theorize that the absence of these issues from the chart means people have do not care about Paul’s baggage, which is why his chart is paired with Herman Cain’s search results. If Paul’s baggage was part of the zeitgeist, it would still appear in his search results, the way Cain’s scandal still appears in his. The results reflect that many voters do not know basic facts about the Republican candidates running for president or the early primary calendar.

Finally, we come to the incumbent. The pundit class talks a lot about Barack Obama’s efforts to make 2012 a choice between him and someone to be demonized later. At this juncture, his chart suggests a referendum on how he is doing his job, particularly on the jobs issue. The chart also suggests Obamacare is still a big part of the conversation about the president, although the GOP will likely throw this away if Mitt Romney is the nominee.

So how could Romney lose the nomination at this point? At a minimum, he would have to lose (or eke out a squeaky Iowa-esque win) in South Carolina. Could that happen? The latest poll from Insider Advantage has Romney ahead of Newt Gingrich by only two points. That’s just one poll, but PPP has its Palmetto state poll due later today that may well show a competitive Mitt vs Newt race.

If Romney stumbled in South Carolina, the questions about his candidacy would linger and perhaps grow, depending on the degree of the stumble. People would revisit his IA and NH wins and perhaps conclude they are more the product of divided opposition than any improvement in Mitt as a candidate. They might worry about how much worse the Bain issue might play in a general election in the hands of the left. They might think hard about whether 2012 is the year to nominate a high financier.

Romney is well ahead of Gingrich in Florida at the moment. But a win (or very-near-win) in South Carolina might change those numbers. Indeed, those numbers include Rick Santorum; if he dropped out, Romney would likely find himself in a tight race with Gingrich, whose favorables even now are second only to Romney’s in the Sunshine State. If Gingrich beat Romney in Florida, Mitt would have a severe case of The Emepror’s New Electability.

I doubt all these dominoes would fall Newt’s way. Romney is well-organized, well-funded, and has the establishment lining up for him. Gingrich even now is a loose cannon capable of doing himself in, with loads of his own baggage. Romney is a better fit for South Carolina than he was four years ago. Other NotRomneys, including Santorum will likely stay in the race through Florida, allowing Romney a win in the fashion McCain won four years ago.

The conventional wisdom is that Mitt Romney, the first GOP non-incumbent to win the Iowa caucuses and New Hamsphire primary, is thisclose to being the party’s de facto presidential nominee. The conventional wisdom is almost certainly right. But if Romney was going to lose, this is probably how it would happen.

It was a distracting shake-up in a White House that has prided itself on a lack of internal drama, with a tightly knit circle of loyal senior advisers playing a steadying role.

In the real world, no president has gone through as many chiefs of staff in their first term as Obama has to date. And that’s just for starters, well beyond the shuffling of people like David Axelrod to Obama’s reelect campaign.

Consider Obama’s original economic team. Peter Orszag, Christina Romer, Larry Summers and Jared Bernstein are all gone, as is Austan Goolsbee, leaving tax-cheating Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner as the anchor of Obamanomics.

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs is gone, as is Deputy Press Secretary Bill Burton and White House communications director Anita Dunn.

Melody Barnes was the White House’s chief domestic policy adviser. Not anymore.

Gen. Jim Jones is no longer Obama’s National Security adviser, after a tenure marked by sniping that sent Deputy National Security Adviser and Chief of Staff to the NSC Mark Lippert back to military service. That happened before Obama’s major Pentagon shakeup last April in which the vacancy caused by the departure of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was filled by Leon Panetta, whose seat at the CIA was filled in turn by Gen. David Petraeus.

Moreover, two books suggest there were plenty of factions and infighting during the president’s term. One of them was written by Jodi Kantor — a reporter for the New York Times.

The NYT’s propaganda here is risible, but interesting nonetheless. Reporting on a White House in disarray would underscore what happens when we elect someone with no executive experience. It would also raise the issue of whether any of these people were simply scapegoats for the failures of progressive policy.

Although the advisers had always expected that Democrats would malign Mr. Romney’s work of buying and selling companies, they were largely unprepared for an assault that came so early in the campaign and from within the ranks of their own party, those involved in the campaign discussions said.

Even as Mr. Romney coasted to victory in New Hampshire, they worry that the critique could prove more potent as the race shifts to South Carolina, where shuttered mills dot the landscape, unemployment is higher and suspicion of financial elites is not limited to left-leaning voters.

They should be concerned, given that New Hampshire and Iowa have among the lowest unemployment rates in the country. But many more people should be concerned that behind a facade of denial of the Bain issue, Team Romney was surprised it already came up. During the last presidential nomnination campaign, John McCain raised the Bain issue. Duncan Hunter raised a Bain issue. And Mike Huckabee raised the Bain issue, recycling a lefty conspiracy theory, but most famously in his pre-Iowa quip on the Tonight Show: “People are looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them more of the guy they work with rather than the guy that laid them off.” There is no way these attacks (regardless of their ultimate merit) should have surprised Mitt Romney or his campaign.

Back to the NYT:

The attacks on Mr. Romney are especially unsettling to his campaign manager, Matt Rhoades, who worries that a narrative depicting Romney as a heartless corporate raider will drag down his favorability rating and be sustained by the Obama campaign, said two people told of the internal discussions. (Eric Fehrnstrom, a senior strategist for Mr. Romney, played down such concerns. “I wouldn’t read too much into the rumors,” he said.)

While his campaign advisers generally agree that Mr. Romney must explain his work at Bain, they are wary of engaging in an exhaustive public examination of the nearly 100 deals he was involved in, anxious that it could bog him down in the inevitably messy details of fixing troubled companies, whether they are job cuts or big financial payouts.

Does Team Romney not realize that the candidate’s image is not fully within their control? Do they not know that the left — from Team Obama to the establishment media — will have some (perhaps more than some) say in the matter? People who have $19 million in the bank might have spent a few thousand assigning someone to work on the Bain issue, both in terms of general message and having rapid responses to specific cases ready to email to the media, instead of leaving it to Rich Lowry to explain them after taking the hit.

Mitt Romney is the odds-on favorite for the GOP nomination primarily because he is the one with experience running for president. He is the one who has worn a suit to the job interview, while his rivals, to put it mildly, have not. If GOP voters begin to think Romney is not running a campaign that competently responds to attacks, he will have a bigger problem than Bain.

Moreover, Romney has drawn Ron Paul as his biggest rival. (You know who that benefits?) The exit polling suggests that while Ron Paul won among those looking for a “true conservative,” the Paul 2012 demographic looks much like the Barack Obama 2008 demographic. For example, Paul won the 18-29 demo, the unmarried demo, the under $30,000 income demo, and the liberal demo. Although John Huntsman won among the 4% of the pool who were Democrats (Paul came in second with them), Paul won the Independent demo.

The immediate good news for Romney on that score is that Indies played a bigger role in NH than they did in 2008 (although the reportedly record overall turnout should be viewed in this context and be mildly worrying). That may be because the Democrat primary was a draw in ’08, more Paulians turned out or — given the demographic similarities — both. This will be less of a factor in closed primaries and in states generally more conservative than New Hampshire.

The longer-term good news on that front is that while Paul won 32% of the Indies, Romney won 29%. That’s important for someone whose main selling point is electability. On that score, 61% of GOP primary voters said they would be satisfied with Romney as the nominee, while none of his closest rivals musters a majority. 55% would not be satisfied if Ron Paul won, which is marginally better than Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum, most likely due to the overall tilt of New Hampshire and the relative lack of national scrutiny given to Paul.

Some television pundits pointed to exit polling showing that Romney won among late deciders as a sign the attacks by his rivals against his tenure at Bain Capital did not work. However, the 32% of the truly late deciders he won represents a drop from the 39% he won among those who decided earlier in January and a huge drop from the early deciders. The next ten days before the South Carolina primary will give a better indication whether the attacks on Bain are eating into Romney’s support.

I am already on record that most (although not all) of the attacks on Bain are misguided and diminish the Republicans making them. However, the left was going to launch these attacks early and often if Romney wins the nomination. The marginal loss is that Team Obama (media included) will package the more egregious comments from Gingrich and Perry into attack ads to legitimize the attacks with the casual voter. The marginal gain is that we will get to see Romney respond and at least some idea of how damaging such attacks are with Indies inclined to vote GOP.

Nevertheless, a win is a win. Gallup suggests that since 1976, the leader in their national polling after New Hampshire has ultimately won the nomination. The data almost equally suggests that the national frontrunner before Iowa is a good bet to win the nomination, with the exception of 2008. The unusual fluidity of 2008 is about the best hope for those in the NotRomney camp, in the sense that we could be in a period where grassroots satisfaction with the “next-in-line” nature of the GOP nomination is making it more difficult for an early frontrunner to win. But that’s a relatively slender reed: the current Gallup national trends look roughly similar to those of 2008, with Romney taking the McCain spot.

Indeed, the current poll average in South Carolina also looks roughly similar, although the surging Rick Santorum and falling New Gingrich both look as strong as Huckabee looked against McCain. Romney will try to essentially sew up the nomination there, which underscores the importance of for Romney of not underperforming in New Hampshire. Right now, 60% of registered Republicans and leaners think Romney will be the nominee. But if Romney looks weak on Wednesday, Santorum may continue to rise at Newt’s expense in the 10 days to South Carolina. If Santorum were to win the Palmetto State — or even manage the sort of photo finish we saw in Iowa — we might be in for an unpleasant discussion of whether Romney’s Mormonism is dragging him down against the more openly religious Santorum in more conservative states. At least, you can bet that would be the establishment angle on it.

According to the NBC/Marist poll, “[v]oters divide about President Obama’s job approval rating. 45% of registered voters in Iowa approve of the job the president is doing in office while 43% disapprove, and 12% are unsure.” Oh, sure they’re unsure. His approval rating is only 39% among Iowa independents, who are the largest bloc in the state.

NBC/Marist finds worse results for Obama in New Hampshire. Only 40% of registered voters in the Granite State approve of the job Obama is doing, while 49% disapprove (10% are “unsure”). Only 41% of New Hampshire independents approve. Again, that’s the largest bloc in the state.

For all of the criticism Iowa and New Hampshire get, it seems like some forget they are swing states. PPP’s Tom Jensen, looking at a potential Obama vs Romney contest in swing states including IA and NH, tried to be optimistic, but added an important caveat:

[O]ur polls and probably everyone’s polls are actually worse for Obama than they look right now. That’s because a disproportionate number of the undecideds in Obama/Romney polling are Republicans. Romney’s not their first choice for the nomination so they’re being stubborn and saying they’re undecided for the general, even though it’s pretty much a certainty that they’ll end up voting for the GOP nominee in the end.

We saw this situation in reverse in 2008, where strong partisans of Obama and Clinton refused to say in early polls that they’d vote for the party nominee if their favored candidate didn’t get it. Of course pretty much all of those folks ended up voting for Obama in the end.

Right now when you look at the undecideds in Obama/Romney nationally only 18% of them approve of Obama while 63% disapprove…

I also suspect Jensen’s analysis — that Obama will only need just one out of Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania or North Carolina to win — is overly optimistic for Obama. He used PPP’s numbers from all of 2011, while the most recent USA Today/Gallup Swing States poll had Obama losing to Romney (and Gingrich), even before adjusting for the “undecided” factor.

Some pundits have cutely quipped during and after various GOP debates that the winner was Obama. The polls in Iowa and New Hampshire suggest otherwise.

If there’s any doubt that insurgent GOP presidential candidate Rick Santorum is gunning for the mantle of blue-collar conservative, just take a gander at his tax plan: Families with children would receive triple the current tax exemption, and companies that manufacture goods in America would not be taxed at all.

The populist proposals, which set him apart from his rivals, are key components of Santorum’s “faith, family and freedom” agenda that resonated in Iowa and which he now hopes will draw blue-collar voter support in New Hampshire.

“I believe in cutting taxes. I believe in balancing budgets. … But I also believe we as Republicans have to look at those who are not doing well in our society by just cutting taxes and balancing budgets,” Santorum said Tuesday after coming within eight votes of front-runner Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucus.

As we will see, there’s far less difference between Santorunomics and Romneynomics than the former Pennsylvania Senator has tried to create with rhetorical jabs at supply-siders. The differences fall mostly into the two categories identified above.

First, he wants a pro-natalist tax policy in the mold of economist Jacob Stein. That’s unsurprising, given Santorum’s generally Catholic approach to public policy. It appeals directly to middle-class families, which is good campaign politics — on the surface, anyway. On closer examination, there would be budgetary and political obstacles to passing this type of proposal. Moreover, it is far from clear that this tax policy would actually do anything about falling fertility rates, which are part of human development in the modern age. That development, spurred in no small part by respecting innovation and entrepreneurial drive, may decrease fertility rates, but it also yields enormous benefits for families.

Second, Santorum supports a hugely differential corporate tax rate of 17.5 percent for all but manufacturers, who would pay zero. Again, this is unsurprising from someone campaigning as the grandson of a coal miner. Again, the surface politics are good, given the importance of working-class voters, particularly white working-class voters, to the electoral calculations of both major parties this year. However, the Tax Foundation calls it possibly the worst idea of any of the Republican candidates, for several reasons.

Indeed, the Tax Foundation gives Santorunomics a grade of “D+”. Unfortunately, Romneynomics does not grade out much better, earning a “C-” from the group. The, er, bright spot here is that either would be better than Obamanomics, which by their criteria should flunk.

[I]f I had my druthers I would prefer someone like Rick Perry who has been more or less consistently conservative for a relatively long time (an easier feat in Texas than Massachusetts, no doubt, but that is beside the point).

It is not entirely beside the point, as Romney supporters will defend his record as the product of trying to govern a Blue state like Massachusetts. That’s one reason why it’s worth reading the response from the American Spectator’s Jim Antle — a Bay State native who voted for Romney thrice:

So I know something about settling and political reality. I also know that over that period Romney went from being someone who emphasized he was an independent during the Reagan years to trying to be a full-spectrum Reagan conservative, someone who described himself as a “progressive” in this decade to a “four-legged stool” movement guy, someone who with equal conviction defended both sides of the abortion debate, did not just flip-flop on abortion once but zig-zagged for over nearly two decades, and has generally acted as if none of this ever happened.

That pretty much tracks the standard oppo research on Romney. Antle is not alone, either. Michael Widmer, president of the nonpartisan Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation, says Romney did little to make state government small or simpler during his tenure as governor. Romney raised revenues with a host of fee hikes and tax levies. The state payroll increased by 3,000 workers, or 2.6 percent, under Romney. Mitt also floated the unprecedented notion of empowering the state revenue commissioner to adjust the tax filings of certain corporations who used complicated transactions and out-of-state shelters to avoid paying their “fair share” of state taxes. And there was Romneycare, which Mitt still defends.

Maybe all the critics from Massachusetts are simply being unrealistic. After all, Jake — it’s Massachusetts. But people who live there have some frame of reference, don’t they? Moreover, Romney does not fare well in comparison to other Republican governors in Mass. The CATO Institute’s Fiscal Policy Report Card for governors — which looks at proposals as well as results — shows that in the 1990s, William Weld got a high “B” and third-best score overall. In 2000, Paul Cellucci got an “A” and the highest score overall. In 2002, Jane Swift managed a low “B,” even in tough economic times. Yet in 2006, Mitt Romney could only manage a “C.” That’s an unimpressive grade, even on the Massachusetts curve.

The reason this Republican primary season is so chaotic is because George W. Bush failed to have a successor. Had President Bush had a Vice President to run for President, Bush would have undoubtedly made different policy decisions, but even aside from that there would have been an ascertainable front runner coming from the Bush administration to win or lose.

Because there was not such a thing and because the GOP likes orderly processes, we had to go back to 2000 and dredge up John McCain.

The Republican field was unable to reboot because we had no logical successor coming out of the White House to either win or lose. We went back to McCain and have had to work our way back through unresolved issues from 2000. And now, when the field should be rebooted, we’re having to deal with Mitt Romney who should have been displaced by an heir in 2008 and instead, because the 2008 season did not reboot the crop of candidates, is now the guy three quarters of the GOP does not want who is about to be the nominee.

Our process is chaotic because Bush left us no heir to win or to be rejected through a cathartic process of locking in gains or moving on from Bush. Yes, this one is Bush’s fault.

Erickson identifies with the tea party, but is he or the tea party really upset that big-spending, “compassionate” King George II did not provide a the line of sucession? Of course not, which is why Erickson ends up complaining “Bush left us no heir to win or to be rejected.” However, had Bush offered up a RINO Veep as common foe to true conservatives, wouldn’t that Veep have had even greater institutional advantages and been even more difficult to defeat than John McCain or Mitt Romney?

Blaming Bush ends up being part of a larger pattern as he bemoans Rick Perry’s loss in Iowa:

Had Santorum run a successful retail campaign and caught fire on his own accord, he’d have been vetted by now and probably also succumbed to the Romney machine. His campaign was not successful, it’s just all the others sucked so bad.

***

If Rick Perry drops out of the race it will be the ultimate failure of the tea party movement to see the race come down to two or three big government conservatives. Romney and Santorum both hide behind compassionate conservatism to expand the state to suit their purposes. Only Rick Perry has run a campaign to make Washington “as inconsequential to our lives as possible.”

If I were Perry, I’d wake up tomorrow, say I refuse to surrender the Republican Party into the hands of big government conservatives after all the gains the tea party has made, and then announce I’m firing all my political staffers and communications staffers and ask South Carolina to help me reboot to victory. Make it an Alamo stand and, if like at the Alamo Perry goes down, perhaps there’ll at least be a rallying cry for small government conservatism left over.

That’s just me.

Well, it’s likely not just Erickson; it looks like Perry is staying in. But anger and denial are not a substitute for judgment. Erickson paints Santorum as lucky, but luck is often the residue of hard work. Erickson writes about campaigns that “sucked,” but avoids discussing the central role of the candidate in his or her campaign. In general, I would prefer not to dump on Perry or Erickson for supporting him. My bias toward a NotRomney and my appreciation of how well Perry’s record of success contrasts with Obama’s failures is documented. But Perry in fact rebooted his staff once already, so maybe the problem is elesewhere.

If Erickson knows which Perry staffer told Perry to insult conservatives who disagreed with him on Gardasil vaccinations and the Texas Dream Act, he ought to provide a name. (Indeed, Erickson recently tweeted about all the email he gets from people whose big objection to Huntsman is his insulting the base, so he ought to get this.) Also, the names of the staffers who told Perry to botch questions from the media and voters — as large as which Departments he’d eliminate to as small as his favorite books — those names would be good to have also. The names of those who forced Perry to get in late and the names of those who stopped him from demanding to be better prepared? Yeah, I want those also. Pretty much anyone responsible for Perry looking like a caricature of George W. Bush when Obama is going to campaign on blaming Bush should be on the list.

I think everyone, with the possible exception of Erickson, knows whose name should be at the top of that list. If Rick Perry is the executive and man I have been led to believe he is, he would be the first to take personal responsibility for his failings as a candidate. Then again, Perry’s decision to soldier on to South Carolina, further dividing the NotRomney vote, may suggest I am again overestimating Perry. Or it could be Perry was persuaded that Romney really should be the nominee, on the theory that it’s better to win or lose with a known moderate like Romney than for conservatives to get sucked into another W-esque experience with big-government conservatives like Gingrich or Santorum. However, if that’s the case, the true conservatives may need to turn down the rancor toward Romney.

However, it is probably fair to say that much of the frustration about Iowa on the right is exacerbated by an underlying frustration with the projected outcome. The underlying complaint is: How could these dopey corn and pig farmers be responsible for winnowing the GOP field to the likely troika of flip-flopping RINO Mitt Romney, unorganized compassionate religious conservative Rick Santorum, and conspiracy crank Ron Paul (the unacceptable to most Republicans libertarian who is unserious about the public debt)? Surely, there must be more than three tickets out of Iowa this year (unless Rick Perry or Newt Gingrich makes an unlikely strong showing, in which case, awesome)!

But is Iowa really to blame for the late-starting, stumbling campaign of the seemingly inarticulate (and occasionally insulting) Rick Perry? Is Iowa really to blame for the idiosyncratic, frequently unconservative, fundamentally pompous Newt Gingrich? Or for the quality of any of tonight’s also-rans? When compared to the national poll averages, only Newt is doing much better than he likely will tonight in Iowa — and the national trend is not his friend, either. Is Iowa to blame for the never-rans? As Allahpundit tweeted last night, “There’s no reason to take Daniels, Ryan, Christie or any of them seriously anymore when they talk about America’s ‘grave challenges.’ ” It is hard to imagine the Hamlets who could not be motivated to run in the current climate would have been any better than the candidates we have.

These problems are not the fault of Iowans or their caucuses. These problems are the fault of the Republican establishment. These problems are the fault of any Republican who is not actively involved in trying to reform the party. These problems are the fault of libertarians who do not demand a better standard-bearer inside or outside the GOP.

Mitt Romney, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum all have a chance to win, particularly where 41 percent could still be persuaded to support another candidate. Who in Iowa could possibly be undecided after all this? Sasha Issenberg explains.

Under the topline, the stories are Santorum’s momentum and the undercard — stories that are interrelated, as Santorum’s surge likely affects candidates like Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry. The traditional wisdom is that there are three tickets out of Iowa, but Santorum’s weaknesses outside Iowa and Paul’s reliance on Democrat and Independent support will likely keep Gingrich and Perry running for a while.

As with the other NotRomneys, Santorum’s current rise will bring more scrutiny to his campaign. Philip Klein has a quick and critical primer on Santorum’s record. Klein also argues that merely being to the right of Romney isn’t good enough, because Romney has the advantages of money, organization, establishment support and the perception of being the most electable. Klein probabaly overstates his case.

Although I am skeptical of new types of campaigning, one thing the Internet has changed is fundraising, so a lot of money can flow to Santorum quickly if he becomes the conservative alternative to Romney.

Electablity is part ideology, but also a circular function of polling; if Santorum wins Iowa, he could win elsewhere and suddenly look more electable to people. Santorum’s own electoral record is spotty, but winning and losing in a Bluish swing state like Pennsylvania may not look worse than winning and losing in Blue Massachusetts like Romney.

As for establishment support, Santorum was a part of GOP leadership in the Senate (for better or worse, depending on point-of-view). Romney was unable to attract a lot of the establishment until other alternatives were exhausted — they even hesitated to open their fat wallets when Gingrich was on the rise. Thus, it’s not clear to me that the establishment would bend over backwards to fight Santorum in a protracted campaign.

Klein’s strongest point is Santorum’s general lack of organization. In the medium term, the new money coming in and candidates dropping out would largely solve that problem. After all, as the campaign spreads wider, it becomes more media than retail. But Gingrich and Perry likely won’t drop out right away. Indeed, if Perry managed to pass Gingrich in Iowa, he would likely be better equipped to fight on than Santorum (although Perry-affiliated Liz Mair notes that Newt increasingly seems like he could stay in just to attack Romney out of personal pique; see also Nate Silver). Moreover, Santorum’s short-term mismatch of money to infrastructure could hurt him in key early states like South Carolina and Florida.

The Iowa horserace may be a photo finish, but whatever the order in Iowa — barring a surprise third-place finish by Perry or Gingrich — you know who this benefits.

This was the year politics changed forever, we thought. The old habits of handshakes and diners had been replaced by new ones: virtual candidates who entered voters’ living rooms through their paid gigs on Fox News. Celebrities, freaks, and inspirational speakers — like Donald Trump and Herman Cain — who dominated opinion polls through the sheer volume of their media presences.

***

The candidates themselves, most of all, believed and fed our hype, and without the thoughtful hedges toward the end of those articles. People like Newt Gingrich and Cain ran what would more traditionally be thought of as godawful, miserable, terrible campaigns. We wrote that they were trying a new method. They were encouraged to keep trying.

But we misunderstood what was really happening. The candidates weren’t inventing a new paradigm. They were just doing it wrong.

And in last night’s Des Moines Register poll — a crucial final measure that typically accelerates whatever trend it finds — the three men in the lead were the three [who] have spent the most time in Iowa over the last six years: Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Rick Santorum.

Although I made my share of errors in 2011, this wasn’t one of them. The track record of these new types of candidacies or phantom candidacies has not been good. Indeed, in the case of Rick Perry, we didn’t yet know how much his campaign was ignoring the basics, to his detriment. While Santorum’s campaign was largely ignored by the establishment media, it turns out he’s been doing traditional retail:

Poll numbers capture the attention of the public. But among political staff members here a single metric is prized above all else: the number of people recruited to deliver the candidate’s impassioned final arguments to voters on caucus night.

The wide gap between the figures for Mr. Gingrich and Mr. Santorum say much about their organizations in Iowa, which has more than 1,700 precincts.

As of midweek, Mr. Santorum, who traipsed to even the most rural of Iowa’s 99 counties over many months, had secured speakers in 1,000 of the precincts. Mr. Gingrich, who opened an office here only a few weeks ago, had nailed down about only 200.

Though that number had doubled by the end of the next day, Mr. Gingrich’s own aides acknowledged that the shortage of speakers could be a problem. “Iowans have a deep belief in organization,” said April Linder, a staff member, “and when you don’t have a speaker, it shows a lack of organization.”

Perry reportedly has 1,500 precinct leaders now; although he’s stuck in the second tier, he’s currently the second choice of many voters (although I wonder whether Santorum’s momentum will affect that in the final two days). If Perry exceeds expectations, organization will be a big part of it. The value of traditional campaigning turns out to be less mythical than some thought.

Update: Cindy Cooper informs me via Twitter of this Jennifer Rubin report from Dec. 22, quoting an Iowa state official to the effect that Newt had only a few hundred precinct captains. Although Rubin’s agenda is transparent, the official’s count suggests the more recent NYT story did not show much progress on Newt’s part.

One of the main themes of my posts on Ron Paul’s long history of publishing racist, anti-gay, conspiracy-mongering newsletters has been to focus on his apologists and supporters in the media. Since I last wrote on the subject, we can now add to that list Reason’s Matt Welch (who ignores the newsletters) and the Cato Institute’s Ed Crane (who glosses over the subject, although he’s the guy who revealed that Paul once claimed his best source of congressional campaign donations was the mailing list for The Spotlight, the conspiracy-mongering, anti-Semitic tabloid run by the Holocaust denier Willis Carto).

What makes professional libertarians apologize and spin for the longtime publisher of a racist, anti-gay, anti-Israel, conspiracy-mongering newsletter, one who still associates with the John Birch Society and neo-Confederates, and panders to 9/11 Truthers and other conspiracy mongers? Jamie Kirchick, who did yeoman’s work researching and bringing the newsletters into public view, suggests the fault lies in libertarianism itself:

Paul’s following is closely linked with the peculiar attractions of the libertarian creed that he promotes. Libertarianism is an ideology rather than a philosophy of government—its main selling point is not its pragmatic usefulness, but its inviolable consistency. In that way, Paul’s indulgence of bigotry—he says he did not write the newsletters but rather allowed others to do so in his name—isn’t an incidental departure from his libertarianism, but a tidy expression of its priorities: First principles of market economics gain credence over all considerations of social empathy and historical acuity. His fans are guilty of donning the same ideological blinders, giving their support to a political candidate on account of the theories he declaims, rather than the judgment he shows in applying those theories, or the character he has evinced in living them. Voters for Ron Paul are privileging logical consistency at the expense of moral fitness.

But it’s not simply that Paul’s supporters are ignoring the manifest evidence of his moral failings. More fundamentally, their very awareness of such failings is crowded out by the atmosphere of outright fervor that pervades Paul’s candidacy. This is not the fervor of a healthy body politic—this is a less savory type of political devotion, one that escapes the bounds of sober reasoning. Indeed, Paul’s absolutist notion of libertarian rigor has always been coupled with an attraction to fantasies of political apocalypse.

Kirchick likely goes too far, even in that excerpt; earlier, he notes that Paul’s media apologists generally don’t support the newsletters, but avoid them entirely. Even unhinged conspiracy theorist Andrew Sullivan tiptoed back from his defense of Paul in the face of a reader backlash.

Rather, we should take the professional libertarians at face value. Welch, Crane and their ilk are spinning for Paul because they see his campaign as their best chance at gaining real-world political influence. They are deluding themselves about this; a protracted Paul campaign would set the image of libertarianism back to what it was in the mid-Sixties, because Paul’s campaign is ultimately funded by and founded on an express political strategy of appealing to the worst aspects of human nature. But they truly seem to believe otherwise.

This is a wonderful discovery. For a very long time, a broad slice of libertarians, including many professional libertarians, have cultivated a particular political image. They looked down on those who engaged in grubby, traditional, two-party American politics. They snarked at people for selling out their principles in the service of clinging to political power. Indeed, they tended to focus on Republicans as hypocritical, fair-weather friends of small government and free markets.

Those days are over. At least, the days of professional libertarians walking around with upturned noses without everyone pointing and laughing is over. Any notion that professional libertarianism is solely interested in its principles instead of the grubby business of winning elections is done. The high-minded professional libertarian class has jumped off their pedestals and now wallow in the muck with everyone else, demonstrating they will overlook the hideous flaws of their standard-bearer in return for even the mere hope of more national political influence. And for that gift, if for nothing else, we can thank Ron Paul.