Ron Paul Campaign Pushes Back Against Former Staffer's Report

I've commented pretty heavily on all of this already, but there's more news out today on the Ron Paul racism controversies.

National Journal reports that the Paul campaign is going ballistic over Eric Dondero's hit piece out today, "Ex-Aide: Ron Paul Foreign Policy is 'Sheer Lunacy': Eric Dondero says Paul is an anti-Israel 9/11 truther."

Dondero's report is at Right Wing News, "Statement from fmr. Ron Paul staffer on Newsletters, Anti-Semitism."

I saw it earlier at Althouse's, where she lasers in on the intensity of Dondero's descriptive language, "Ron Paul is not an anti-Semite, but he is 'most certainly Anti-Israel, and Anti-Israeli in general'." She also calls out Dondero for astonishingly bad writing, and commenter Deb provides this observation: "Dondero sounds a bit clueless too in his assessment of what is/is not anti-Semitic and homophobic." I agree. Because according to the report, Paul is vehemently, viciously anti-Israel --- and pro-Palestinian to boot. And combined with the statements Dondero says Paul made on Nazi Germany --- that the U.S. had no business fighting World War II --- there literally is no other conclusion to make. It's a devastating indictment. Pamela Geller picked up on that last bit big time, "RON PAUL: U.S. SHOULDN'T HAVE FOUGHT HITLER JUST TO SAVE JEWS FROM HOLOCAUST."

And in an epic example of trying to have your cake and eat it too, the New York Times has this, "Paul Disowns Extremists’ Views but Doesn’t Disavow the Support."

There's lots of links at Memeorandum as well.

I won't be surprised by a Herman Cain type meltdown for Ron Paul anytime now. And if it happens, credit bloggers for doing the heavy lifting.

Robert Stacy McCain Heads to Iowa

See: "Memo From the National Affairs Desk: How’s the Weather Today in Vanuatu?"

Robert's been providing some excellent campaign coverage. And I'm interested in reports on the lead-up to the January 3rd  caucuses. It's coming down to the wire.

Plus, more McCain family videos at the link: "MERRY CHRISTMAS!"

VIDEO: Ron Paul's Keynote Address to the John Birch Society 50th Anniversary Gala

Well, there you go.

Is that strange, or what?

When I was a kid growing up in Orange County, folks attacked my home turf as the stronghold of the "racist" John Birch Society. When it was announced that the Society was a sponsor of the 2010 meeting of CPAC, progressives had a field day bashing conservatives as unreconstructed white supremacists. There's a bad reputation there that's not going away, despite the organization's best efforts to come out from the cold. See the New York Times, "Holding Firm Against Plots by Evildoers."

That's why it's revealing that Congressman Ron Paul decided it was perfectly fine to speak at the organization's 50th anniversary celebration in September. That's not the first time Paul has spoken at the Society's events, and his questionable ties to the group, obviously, haven't had a noticeably negative impact on his political fortunes. Perhaps that will change with Paul still leading in the Iowa polls. Jamie Kirchick focused explicitly on Paul's ties to the Birchers the other day: "Why Don’t Libertarians Care About Ron Paul’s Bigoted Newsletters?" And just out is this devastating indictment of Ron Paul at Bleeding Heart Libertarians, "How Did We Get Here? Or, Why Do 20 Year Old Newsletters Matter So Damn Much?" (via Memeorandum and Reason). The author, Steve Horwitz, speaks of the "Rothbard-Rockwell strategy" of appealing to the "paleo-libertarian" base to build a movement fighting "the collapse of Western civilization at the hands of the blacks, gays, and multiculturalists." And to quote Horwitz at length:

The paleo strategy was a horrific mistake, both strategically and theoretically ... The explicit strategy was abandoned by around the turn of the century, but not after a lot of bad stuff had been written in all kinds of places. There was way more than the Ron Paul newsletters. There was the Rothbard-Rockwell Report, which was another major place publishing these sorts of views. They could also be found in a whole bunch of Mises Institute publications of that era. It was the latter that led me to ask to be taken off the Institute’s mailing list in the early 1990s, calling them “a fascist fist in a libertarian glove.” I have never regretted that decision or that language. What the media has in their hands is only the tip of the iceberg of the really unsavory garbage that the paleo turn produced back then.

Through it all though, Ron Paul was a constant. He kept plugging away, first at the center of the paleo strategy as evidenced by the newsletters. To be clear, I am quite certain he did not write them. There is little doubt that they were written by Rockwell and Rothbard. People I know who were on the inside at the time confirm it and the style matches pretty well to those two and does not match to Ron Paul. Paul knows who wrote them too, but he’s protecting his long-time friend and advisor, unfortunately. And even more sadly, Rockwell doesn’t have the guts to confess and end this whole megillah. So although I don’t think Ron Paul is a racist, like Archie Bunker, he was willing to, metaphorically, toast a marshmallow on the cross others were burning.

Even after the paleo strategy was abandoned, Ron was still there walking the line between “mainstream” libertarianism and the winking appeal to the hard right courted by the paleo strategy. Paul’s continued contact with the fringe groups of Truthers, racists, and the paranoid right are well documented. Even in 2008, he refused to return a campaign contribution of $500 from the white supremacist group Stormfront. You can still go to their site and see their love for Ron Paul in this campaign and you can find a picture of Ron with the owner of Stormfront’s website. Even if Ron had never intentionally courted them, isn’t it a huge problem that they think he is a good candidate? Doesn’t that say something really bad about the way Ron Paul is communicating his message? Doesn’t it suggest that years of the paleo strategy of courting folks like that actually resonated with the worst of the right? Paul also maintained his connection with the Mises Institute, which has itself had numerous connections with all kinds of unsavory folks: more racists, anti-Semites, Holocaust deniers, the whole nine yards. Much of this stuff was ably documented in 2007 and 2008 by the Right Watch blog. Hit that link for more.

Those of us who watched all of this happen over two decades knew it would come back to haunt us and so it has, unfortunately just as Ron Paul and libertarianism are on the cusp of something really amazing. And that only goes to show what a mistake the paleo strategy was: imagine if the newsletters were not an issue and Paul were to win Iowa. Yeah, he might get ignored, but he would not be the easy media target he is now, nor would all of libertarianism pay a potential price. The legions of young people supporting Paul did not come in via the paleo strategy; they came because libertarianism in general is on the rise in all kinds of venues (and yes, the Mises Institute’s post-paleo influence is important here, but it’s hardly the only institution that matters). These young people, for the most part, are surprised by all of this dirty laundry. That, in my view, is the real tragedy: I think libertarianism could have got to this point just as fast, maybe faster, without the toxic baggage of the paleo strategy.

So why deal with this now, when libertarianism is so hot? Because those newsletters are not what libertarianism is and the sooner and louder we make that clear, the better. There are too many young people who don’t understand all of this and who we need to help see the alternative liberal vision of libertarianism – and to understand that “liberal libertarianism” is radical, principled, and humane and not “beltway selling out.” To do that, we need to confront the past and explicitly reject it. That doesn’t necessarily mean rejecting Ron Paul in electoral politics, but it does mean that we cannot pretend the past doesn’t exist and it means that Paul and the others involved need to do the right thing and take explicit responsibility for what they said two decades ago. That has not happened yet. Then we need a complete and utter rejection of the paleo world-view and we need to create a movement that will simply not be attractive to racists, homophobes, anti-Semites etc., by emphasizing, as we have done at this blog, libertarianism’s liberal roots.

Read the whole thing at the link.

That's an admirable essay, and as an ideological initiative it's something that principled libertarians should be proud to embrace. The opposite is something like this, a particularly vile piece of paleo-bullshit propaganda: "Who Leads the Attack On Ron Paul?"

Mitt Romney Leads in New Survey From New Hampshire

At Los Angeles Times, "Poll: Mitt Romney in command in New Hampshire":

Christmas brought good news for GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney, who is holding on to his double digit lead in the critical early primary state of New Hampshire.

This morning’s Boston Globe poll shows the former Massachusetts governor leading the Republican field with 39% among voters likely to cast ballots in the Jan. 10 Republican primary. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who has led in some national polls, was tied with Texas Congressman Ron Paul in second place with 17%.

Former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, who has spent virtually all of his time campaigning in New Hampshire, won the support of 11% of likely GOP voters. All of the other candidates ranked in the low single digits. (The University of New Hampshire Survey Center conducted the poll of 543 likely 2012 Republican primary voters. The margin of error within that group was plus or minus 4.2%).

Romney’s potential path to the Republican nomination relies on a sizable win in New Hampshire, where he owns a summer home and has been laying the ground work for his run since he withdrew from the 2008 presidential race. Though Iowans will be the first to cast ballots on Jan. 3, Romney spent three days touring New Hampshire last week in his campaign bus – hitting as many as six stops in one day.

We'll see how it goes. Romney should be okay with a New Hampshire win, and if Ron Paul takes Iowa we all can prepare for an epic attack campaign launched by the GOP political establishment. After that we could see Newt Gingrich raise a challenge in some key states. But the former House Speaker failed to qualify for the Virginia ballot, where the election is scheduled for March 6, which could cause problems for Gingrich if the campaign drags out to the later months of the season.

More a the Boston Globe (via Memeorandum).

Merry Christmas From Newt and Callista Gingrich

Well, here's a little equal time:

And at Los Angeles Times, "Gingrich may be too arrogant for Iowa."

If You Have Time, Read This Review of Corey Robin's Book, The Reactionary Mind, at the New York Review

It's a great piece, from Mark Lilla, "Republicans for Revolution."

I'd never heard of Corey Robin until last week, when progressives online were touting his piece on the death of Hitchens, "Christopher Hitchens: The Most Provincial Spirit of All."

Lilla's review of Robin's book will make you chuckle. He writes, for example:

Robin, who teaches political science at Brooklyn College, has been writing thoughtful essays on the American right for The Nation and other publications over the past decade. The Reactionary Mind collects profiles of well-known right-wing thinkers like Ayn Rand, Barry Goldwater, and Justice Antonin Scalia, and some deserters who turned left, like John Gray and Edward Luttwak. There are also a few that look beyond our borders, including an excellent piece on Hobbes as a counterrevolutionary thinker. But the book aims to be more than a collection. It is conceived as a major statement on conservatism and reaction, from the eighteenth century to the present. And this is where it disappoints.The problems begin in the opening paragraphs, where Robin lays out his general picture of political history. It is not overly complex:

Since the modern era began, men and women in subordinate positions have marched against their superiors in the state, church, workplace, and other hierarchical institutions. They have gathered under different banners—the labor movement, feminism, abolition, socialism—and shouted different slogans: freedom, equality, rights, democracy, revolution. In virtually every instance, their superiors have resisted them, violently and nonviolently, legally and illegally, overtly and covertly…. Despite the very real differences between them, workers in a factory are like secretaries in an office, peasants on a manor, slaves on a plantation—even wives in a marriage—in that they live and labor in conditions of unequal power.

This is history as WPA mural, and will be familiar to anyone who lived through the Thirties, remembers the Sixties, or was made to read historians like Howard Zinn, Arno Mayer, E.P. Thompson, Eric Hobsbawm, and Christopher Hill at school. In their tableau, history’s damnés de la terre are brought together into a single heroic image of suffering and resistance. Their hats are white, immaculately so. Off in the distance are what appear to be black-hatted villains, though their features are difficult to make out. Sometimes they have little identification tags like those the personified vices wear in medieval frescoes—”capital,” “men,” “whites,” “the state,” “the old regime”—but we get no idea what they are after or what their stories are. Not that it matters. To understand the oppressed and side with them all you need to know is that there are oppressors.

Exactly.

And this is no doubt why Robin is gaining traction with the idiots of the progressive fever swamps.

But Lilla has some props for Robin as one who takes conservatives seriously. I'm more interested in what Lilla has to say than what Robin does, actually, especially since I think "reactionary" is a utterly misused term in political discourse.

But continue reading the review. There's some excellent clarification of what conservatives are and what they stand for. And Lilla is another author who cites the isolationist trend among the GOP base that could well emerge as a more welcomed position for the party in the months ahead, especially depending on how things turn out in the primaries coming up in a few weeks.

I'll try to come back to this topic. It's Christmas though, and it's going to be a busy morning, with perhaps a little more sleep fitted in here somewhere among other things.

Newt Gingrich Goes After Ron Paul on Newsletters

At New York Times, "With Paul on the Rise in Iowa, Gingrich Takes Aim":

COLUMBIA, S.C. — Newt Gingrich turned his fire on Representative Ron Paul of Texas on Friday, saying that his Republican opponent had to answer for political and investment newsletters that included racist, anti-gay and anti-Israel passages that Mr. Paul has disavowed.

Mr. Gingrich also sharply criticized Mr. Paul for what he said were his isolationist views on foreign policy. The pointed comments suggested a new dynamic in the presidential primary race, with Mr. Paul as a new and enticing target. His fortunes have risen in Iowa, scrambling the field as some polls suggest that Mr. Paul could pull off a victory in the caucuses on Jan. 3. But in recent days, he has come under increasing scrutiny for offensive passages in newsletters that bore his name, although he has denied writing or approving them. 

“These things are really nasty, and he didn’t know about it?” Mr. Gingrich said to reporters after a town-hall-style meeting here.

At the same time, Mr. Gingrich refrained from criticizing Mitt Romney, with whom he has frequently sparred, calling him, at worst, “a Massachusetts moderate.”

Speaking to a large and enthusiastic crowd outside the Blue Marlin restaurant here on a warm and sunny day, Mr. Gingrich mainly framed his candidacy in opposition to President Obama. But he strongly criticized Mr. Paul’s foreign policy positions. Mr. Paul’s criticism of American military involvement overseas is at odds with the views of many Republican voters who may otherwise be attracted to his strong antigovernment message.

“The only person I know who is for a weaker military than Barack Obama is Ron Paul,” Mr. Gingrich said.

“His positions are fundamentally wrong on national security,” he added. “I do not agree with him that America is at fault for 9/11, I do not agree with him that we can ignore an Iranian nuclear weapon, and I do not agree with him that it’s O.K. if Israel disappears.”

A top official with the Paul campaign, Jesse Benton, suggested that Mr. Gingrich’s comments were slanderous and an overreaction to the possibility that Mr. Gingrich might not have collected enough signatures to get on the nominating ballot in Virginia — a matter not yet resolved.

“Today was a bad day for Newt Gingrich,” Mr. Benton said in an e-mail, adding that the former House speaker had “jumped the shark trying to slander Dr. Paul.”

Continue reading.

And notice at the video how Rachel Maddow and Melissa Harris-Perry are using Paul's racist newsletters to smear not only the American right, but American society all together!

Ron Paul won't be the nominee --- indeed, he's probably in a situation akin to Herman Cain's: caught in the headlights upon emerging as the frontrunner, and even if he wins Iowa it's going to be a long primary process and Paul's scrutiny will only intensify. He'll have to answer and answer decisively at some point. But as noted, there's something of a nativist and isolationist trend that animating the primary process. That's something quite different from the small-government conservatism that drove the tea parties in 2009. All this together is extremely fascinating. And how some of these tensions are resolved over the next few months will go a long way towards determining the GOP's chances in defeating the Democrats next November.

Ron Paul Has a Lot of Disqualifiers That Make It Impossible for Him to Be the Next President of the United States

From John Hawkins, at Right Wing News, "Liberalism In 120 Seconds: Ron Paul’s Fans Can’t Have It Both Ways":

Also, from Jamie Kirchik, at The New Republic, "Why Don’t Libertarians Care About Ron Paul’s Bigoted Newsletters?" (via Eric Dondero).

Ron Paul is Frontrunner in ISU/Gazette/KCRG Poll

At Iowa Caucus 2012, "ISU/Gazette/KCRG Poll: Ron Paul new frontrunner." (Via Memeorandum.)

Ron Paul takes a whopping 27.5 percent at the poll, a ten point lead over the putative GOP frontrunner Mitt Romney.

Today is a great day for the Democrats. The GOP is really succeeding in the perfect meltdown. Amazing, really. Also, at CSM, "What if Ron Paul wins Iowa – and New Hampshire, too? "

Gingrich Berated as a 'F-king A-hole' in Iowa

It's hard out there.

At Talking Points Memo, "Newt’s Campaign Comes Down To Earth As Iowan Calls Him ‘F—king A—hole’ To His Face."

RELATED: At New York Times, "Conservatives Remain Suspicious of Gingrich."

Ann Counter Interview with Brian Lilley of Sun TV

At BCF, "Brian Lilley Interviews Ann Coulter":

Mitt Romney on 'The O'Reilly Factor'

It's a good interview, overall. But Romney won't call Obama a socialist, or even consider that the administration's policies are socialistic. He calls the president a "big government liberal," which means he's willing to let the progressive left set the terms of acceptable debate. If Romney's going to win in the general election, however, he's going to need to be firing with both barrels. He'll be eviscerated by the radical left's institutional character assassination machine. I've said it previously and more and more folks are stressing the point, particularly William Jacobson.

Claire Potter, Radical Lesbian History Professor at Wesleyan, Can't Comprehend Shot of 'Veritas' Between the Eyes

This lady broadcasts her proud lesbianism, which is used to explain how she failed to "comprehend" this epic one-liner from Althouse's comments:

The commenter who wins the prize (trigger warning for real this time!!!) also lets you know — in case the others on Althouse allow you to forget — why we still need feminism. Here goes: “There is the question of whether one would want someone like Claire Potter for a friend, unless of course there’s a prospect of sex as a reward for mutely enduring the unendurable. The solution is to wait for the full and complete BJ then give her the unvarnished veritas right between the eyes.” It took me a minute to comprehend this, me being a gold star lesbian and all, but this commenter is fantasizing out loud about taking a money shot in my face. Nice, Althouse. Nice. Love your friends.

Now, what's interesting is the post is published at the "Tenured Radical" blog at the Chronicle of Higher Education. I didn't know they had a "Tenured Radical" blog! And boy, they don't kid around with their radicalism! Here's the biographical info for Professor Potter:

I am Claire B. Potter, Professor of History and American Studies at Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT. My specialties are feminism, political history and cultural criticism.

Translation: "My specialties are racism, sexism, post-colonial gender studies, Marxism, and cultural relativism." It's a wonder if any Wesleyan students actually learn American history. (And a quick Google search confirms it.)

Althouse has the response, and she's not pleased with this "sister": "'But why would anyone — much less a law professor — leave a comment like that up on her blog...'"

And here's Althouse's original post with the offending comment, which she has now removed: "'Feminist blogging is definitely not for wimps, which is why the vast majority of us do it pseudonymously'."

And note something: Althouse hadn't read the ostensibly offending comment, but she removed it when she found that Professor Potter thought it offensively sexist. And that's because Althouse is a good and decent woman. Progressives, on the other hand, are not decent. These sick f-king racists routinely attack conservatives with the most vile bigotry, and they twist contortions to deny the patently obvious racism spouted in their own comments. They sponsor racism, hatred, workplace harassment and intimidation, and make personal threats against those whom they despise. Yeah, progressives suck like that, and the news is spreading.

Tyranny and Indifference

A great piece, as usual, from Bret Stephens, at Wall Street Journal (and Google):

The power of indifference is something I first understood from Havel himself after interviewing him, over a beer, in the gardens of Prague's Czernin Palace. The occasion was a June 2007 conference of international dissidents that he co-chaired with Israel's Natan Sharansky. I asked him about his views on the war in Iraq. He had once supported it, but now he was more tentative. The rationale, he said, had not been "well-articulated." The timing of the invasion was "questionable." As in the 1960s, the U.S. risked becoming an emblem of William Fulbright's "arrogance of power."

Then Havel stopped himself and, as he seemed wont to do, put the train of his thought in reverse. "The world," he concluded, "could not be indifferent forever to a murderer like Saddam Hussein."

Here was the nub of the matter when it came to the invasion of Iraq. Never mind the faulty human or technical intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction: The real WMD, better known as Saddam Hussein, was always hiding in plain sight. Over the course of 25 years he and his henchmen gassed, assassinated, machine-gunned and otherwise murdered somewhere between one million and two million people. That's a big number, the equivalent of a dozen or so Hiroshimas.

Yet because most of the victims were Kurds, Shiites, marsh Arabs, Iranians and Kuwaitis, the question was why it should matter to the West—anymore than, say, the butcheries in the Congo matter. Opponents of the war argued that it should not: that there was no emergency; that no supreme national interest was at stake; that humanitarian interventions needed to be carried out consistently or not at all. Failing those tests, they concluded, guaranteed that the war was folly from the start.

If Havel's now-celebrated career means anything, however, it is to beware that facile conclusion. In his great 1978 essay, "The Power of the Powerless," written just as his career as a dissident had begun in earnest with his signing of the Charter 77 manifesto, he warned against "the attractions of mass indifference" and the "general unwillingness of consumption-oriented people to sacrifice some material certainties for the sake of their own spiritual and moral integrity." Havel feared that one's indifference to the question of the freedom of others would ultimately result in a well-fed indifference to the question of one's own freedom.

"A big danger of our world today is obsession," he told the conference the day of our interview. "An even bigger danger is indifference."

All this was Havel's way of saying that political extremism—whether of the Leonid Brezhnev, Kim Jong Il, Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden variety—would flourish if free people did not actively resist the temptation to acquiesce to it in the name of "peace," or some other go-along-to-get-along slogan.

And remember, while progressives praise folks like Havel, he's right up there with Christopher Hitchens when it comes to standing down progressive terror enablers.

Republicans Will Destroy Ron Paul If He Wins Iowa

From Timothy Carney, at Washington Examiner, "GOP will take off the gloves if Ron Paul wins Iowa":

The Republican presidential primary has become a bit feisty, but it will get downright ugly if Ron Paul wins the Iowa caucuses.

The principled, antiwar, Constitution-obeying, Fed-hating, libertarian Republican congressman from Texas stands firmly outside the bounds of permissible dissent as drawn by either the Republican establishment or the mainstream media. (Disclosure: Paul wrote the foreword to my 2009 book.)

But in a crowded GOP field currently led by a collapsing Newt Gingrich and an uninspiring Mitt Romney, Paul could carry the Iowa caucuses, where supporter enthusiasm has so much value.

If Paul wins, how will the media and the GOP react? Much of the media will ignore him (expect headlines like "Romney Beats out Gingrich for Second Place in Iowa"). Some in the Republican establishment and the conservative media will panic. Others will calmly move to crush him, with the full cooperation of the liberal mainstream media.

Well, it's certainly going to be interesting.

Continue reading at the link.

IMAGE CREDIT: Conservative Network, "Who Wrote The Ron Paul Newsletters? Ron Paul Wrote Them – Clear Proof." Also, "Ron Paul Is A Lying Scumbag Politician With Borderline Sociopath Tendencies."

Ron Paul's Ground Game in Iowa Could Be Decisive

I mentioned this possibility at my essay this week at PJ Media.

See New York Times, "Paul’s ‘Ground Game,’ in Place Since ’08, Gives Him an Edge":

ANKENY, Iowa — It was four years ago that Ross Witt, a soft-spoken electrical engineer at John Deere, overcame his natural discomfort with knocking on hundreds of his neighbors’ doors during dinnertime as a precinct coordinator for Ron Paul’s campaign.

But when Mr. Paul dropped out of the national race in June 2008, Mr. Witt did not stop, because, in a sense, neither did Mr. Paul: Mr. Witt and many other supporters here joined the Iowa branch of an independent political group Mr. Paul established after the race. They carried on his libertarian message, and picked local organizers. And when Mr. Paul announced that he was running for president this year, Mr. Witt and others jumped back onto his campaign, a force more motivated and efficient than before.

Alone among the Republican field, Mr. Paul, a Texas congressman, has a built-in network from 2008 that gives him a decisive organizational edge. Iowa Republicans say that advantage is an important reason some polls show him within striking distance of a victory in the Jan. 3 caucuses, with a battle-tested ground game poised to take advantage of a lack of passion for the rest of the candidates, a stark contrast to 2008, when evangelicals rallied around Mike Huckabee.

“This isn’t a year-and-a-half campaign,” Craig Robinson, a former Iowa Republican Party political director during the caucuses four years ago, said of Mr. Paul’s organization. “This is a five-year campaign.”

More at the link.

RELATED: At ABC News, "Ron Paul Takes Swipes at GOP Rivals, Says Michele Bachmann ‘Hates Muslims’." (Via Memeorandum.)

Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers on 'The Kudlow Report'

Congresswoman McMorris Rodgers discusses the U.S. role in the European debt crisis:

And see John Gizzi, at Human Events, ""Exclusive: IMF Chief Lagarde, Rep. McMorris Rodgers in Sitdown," and at Telegraph UK, "Christine Lagarde: European financial crisis is too serious for eurozone countries to solve alone."

National Review Writers Dissent on Editors' Stealth Mitt Romney Endorsement

William Jacobson has this, "One brave soul at National Review stands up for Newt." And from Pundette, "Andy McCarthy dissents." Linked at the latter's is Jonah Goldberg The Editorial — My Take, " and Mark Steyn, "Include Me Out."

 Here's Steyn on Bachmann:

Congresswoman Bachmann has fought a principled, conservative campaign with only one significant misstep — her overreach on the Gardasil business. Again, that shouldn’t be a disqualification. Nor should having more chiefs of staff than she has foster children (I speak as a guy who believes citizen-legislators shouldn’t have chiefs of staff, anyway). To be sexist about it, President Bachmann at her best would be another Thatcher and at her worst another Merkel — and Chancellor Merkel currently presides over the least worst Western economy. What’s not to like? Go, Michele!

I like it!

BONUS: Linkmaster Smith links to my essay from yesterday the state of the race: "Sean Hannity Flummoxed By Michelle Malkin."

The Generic Republican Will Beat Obama

Reliapundit and I are having a friendly exchange on our favorite GOP candidates. He's fully on board for Romney. I like Romney too, especially for the electability argument. I don't care for Newt but I'd obviously vote for him enthusiastically over the Usurper. I think around the time of the Horowitz West Coast Retreat I mentioned that Michele Bachmann was my favorite candidate and I was going to support her so long as Sarah Palin stayed out of the race. And I haven't changed my positions. I'm just not making that big of a deal out of it. I think the generic Republican will beat Obama, with the exception of Ron Paul. And apparently, Rush Limbaugh thinks so too. And Michelle Malkin responds:

Haley Taking Flak for Romney Endorsement

At Politico, "Nikki Haley's Mitt Romney endorsement catches flak":

GREENVILLE, S.C. – Nikki Haley’s attempt to boost Mitt Romney is threatening her own support here at home.

Romney’s campaign is using the South Carolina governor’s endorsement to build his acceptance among the tea party base that’s never been comfortable with his candidacy, especially in a state where Newt Gingrich has been running even stronger than elsewhere.

But the people in that base who propelled Haley to the governor’s mansion last year see the endorsement of the more moderate Romney as abandoning them — and giving them another reason to turn away from a governor whose approval rating has dropped to 34.6 percent.

Immediately after Haley announced her support Friday morning on “Fox and Friends,” her Facebook page lit up with accusations that the first-term governor was selling out her principles. Rush Limbaugh followed with a blistering broadside against her on his radio show Friday, leading a charge of conservatives nationally, in addition to locally, who accused her of selling out.

Tea party leaders in the state suggested that Haley will pay for Friday’s move with a primary in 2014 – provided she doesn’t win herself a spot on the ticket or another post in a Romney administration, as tea partiers and Republican operatives say must be the explanation for the decision.

“The overwhelming sense that I get from talking to people is deep betrayal,” said Karen Martin, the founder and organizer of the Spartanburg tea party, who has not endorsed a candidate. “She’s not going to be able to come back from this with the tea party. If there’s anybody credible who will run against her, I believe the tea party will support them whole-heartedly.”

I'll have more on this later. I'm kinda surprised by the endorsement as well, except as one of Romney's perceived electability. Via Memeorandum.

And here's Rush Limbaugh, "Nikki Haley Endorsement: Tea Party Attempts to Replace GOP Establishment."