Article VI Blog

There is no surer sign of the Democrats’ increasingly tenuous grip on power than the fact that they are trying to spin Scott Brown’s (R) incredible victory for the Senate seat vacated by Ted Kennedy’s death as problematic for Mitt Romney.  We first noted the spin on Politico early Monday morning.  In the wake of the election Investor’s Business Daily tried to point out how it was big for Romney, and yet the first comment on that post tried to show it as a downer for him.  Fortunately, other commenters quickly pointed out the error of that commenter’s ways.

Funny though . . . Romney was on the dais at Brown’s victory speech and Brown called him forward for thanks – the first call after his family.  Do you need other facts?  Calling this “spin” is actually being kind.  Romney played this just right – he was an enormous amount of help to the Brown campaign.  Cash from Free and Strong America was just the beginning – staff was loaned.  Let’s face it, there is no such thing as a Republican “machine” in a place like Massachusetts, but given that he came closer to beating Ted Kennedy than anybody and got elected governor there, Romney comes as close to having one as possible.  No Republican could have pulled this off without him.  But despite that, Romney stayed, as far as coverage was concerned “in the background.”  This was Scott Brown’s campaign, not Mitt Romney’s.

And that points out the huge difference between this administration and a possible Romney one.  This president enters the room and he insists that the spotlight shine on him.  When he went to Massachusetts to stump for Coakley, he sucked all the oxygen out of the room.   Romney did far more for Brown than Obama even thought of doing for Coakley, and yet he did it in a way that left the spotlight on Brown.  Service, not ego, was what mattered here.

And that seems to me the heart of where religion and politics intersect.  Good religion, regardless of theology, makes us better people – it makes us people of service and goodwill, not self-service and personal will.

Lowell adds . . .

Romney played this one very well.  Ed Carson at Investor’s Business Daily:

“Ex-Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney was . . . a key backer of the little-known state senator [Scott Brown] back when he was seen as a sacrificial lamb.

“While some are already touting Brown as a 2012 presidential contender, Romney could be the big beneficiary. He’s helped deliver the 41st GOP Senate vote, perhaps derailing Obamacare. Activists will remember that.”

I think so too.

John Updates The Next Morning…

Here from the local Massachusetts press is a recount of what went on in Brown’s suite as news of his victory spread.  Key ‘graphs for our thesis above:

He said he’s been “calling everybody I know, doing everything I can to make sure Scott Brown won. Finally we can tell Washington, ‘We want you to listen.”‘As 10 p.m. approached, and Brown prepared to go down to the crowded ballroom to give his victory speech, former presidential candidate and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney looked over his speech of introduction for Brown. “This is heroic,” he said of Brown’s win. “It wasn’t expected that he would have a victory this big.”

With everyone piling out of the room to head downstairs, Ayla smiled, sending an affectionate glance toward her dad as he consulted withRomney.

Romney did introduce Brown at the victory celebration.  A sure sign that he was key to the campaign.  And yet, no mention of that on TV coverage last night (Even Fox which is what I watched) and when Brown thanked Romney, he had to step from way back in the crowd to receive Brown’s handshake.  So far back I did not spot him until he came forward – unlike the unmistakable visage of Doug Flutie and other Massachusetts luminaries.

And it was former (perhaps to be again?) senior adviser to Romney’s presidential campaign, Kevin Madden that had an op-ed in the WSJ this AM:

Republicans could easily recline and leave Mr. Obama and the Democrats to self-destruct. Majority status and control of Congress is conceivably in reach just by reminding voters you can’t blame Republicans for Washington’s current appetite for excess, since Democrats are in control of this mess. It would be a safe maneuver because it’s true.

However, for Republicans the progression from malcontent to sustainable movement involves learning from President Obama’s mistakes. Unlike Mr. Obama, the party can go beyond ideals and process ideas that deliver an actual reformist agenda. The party can prove to a disaffected public that we stand for more than just winning elections but instead are dedicated to reforming a broken system and governing a nation with public support. A Republican Party that avoids the same shortsightedness and reflexive partisanship that has defined President Obama’s first year in office will be one truly deserving of majority status and deliver on the promise of a remade America currently eluding Mr. Obama.

That sounds like the map for 2010 and beyond to me!

And on a final sad note, this “tweet” passed through our little twitter monitor at right this morning:

OMG Romney is on stage with Brown lapping up the victory. This is a nightmare. The Mormon takeover.

We certainly hope you all are taking our advice and actively engaging in comment “policing.”  See “Online Activism” above.  You might want to set up a Twitter account.  After all tweets are just comments without context.

Sphere: Related Content

Posted in Candidate Qualifications, Electability, News Media Bias, Political Strategy | 3 Comments » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

Just this morning, an op-ed by Mitt Romney started making the rounds.  It’s about standing firm with our allies, especially Israel.  It is a marvelous piece and very much speaks for itself.  There is just one brief comment I want to make.  Consider these pull quotes:

Keeping our word to our allies is a matter of honor, but it is also a matter of self-interest. The United States needs allies for economic, political and national security reasons. Good allies and strong alliances allow us to share the burdens we carry, complement and supplement our efforts and present a united front against those who wish us harm.

[...]

Whenever or wherever America steps away from one of its friends and allies, or shrinks in the face of belligerent tyrants, those who are allied with us may understandably or inevitably step closer to our foes. The advance of human rights and the defense of liberty demand that America stands firm with its allies — all of them.

Note that Romney stands in defense of the promise of our nation as matter of honor.

I am currently hip deep in writing the next installment of our Telling the Story series on the narrative of religion and Romney in Campaign ‘08.  In that forthcoming piece we will be looking at the “Mormons lie” meme, and how it transmogrified into the whole flip-flop thing, which one study showed was simply code for religious bias.  When a man stands behind the word of our nation in this fashion, how can we accuse him of being disingenuous?

Unlike the current administration for which there is no intellectual/philosophical bedrock, and therefore no meter by which to measure such honor – Romney clearly understands the importance of one’s “yes” being “yes” and “no” meaning “no.”

So much for “Mormons lie,” “flip-flop,” or any other formulation of that apparent mistrust.  If you have a problem with Romney’s faith, face and deal with it – but do not hide it behind things that are simply untrue.

BTW, be sure and read the whole thing.  It is vitally important for reasons far beyond the point I have made here.

Sphere: Related Content

Posted in Candidate Qualifications, Religious Freedom, Understanding Religion | 1 Comment » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

What an interesting few weeks it has been.  My recently concluded vacation in the British Isles included a day in Belfast, Northern Ireland with the family of some very close friends.  We had lunch with those good friends yesterday to thank them for making all the arrangements and the conversation was wide ranging indeed.  At one point when I complained about the awful use to which the primary church structure in Dublin had been put, I was reminded by my good Christian friends that Europe was, indeed, a “post-Christian” society.

At another point I expressed astonishment at the extraordinary tax rates we encountered.  In the Republic of Ireland the VAT was 21% and the personal income tax was the same 21%.  In the United Kingdom the VAT was 15% (recently lowered from 17% to “help” with the recession) and personal income taxes can run higher than 50%, depending on the bracket.)  Our friends were quick to defend the taxation on the basis of universal health care and education.   When I pointed out that the quality of both was superior in the United States, they responded only that not everyone in the US gets those things.  At that point, for the sake of pleasantness, I let the conversation die.

Then it dawned on me, what could be a better expression of a post-Christian society than the desire for government to supply those things so universally.  Old notion, I know, but it came in light of some recent encounters so I thought I would build the case, once again.

This week featured, on BBC America, a mini-series from a science fiction program called Torchwood.   The show, through its two seasons and now this mini-series which seems to conclude it, has been very politically correct.  Its lead character was described as “Omni-sexual, and it prominently featured homosexual public displays of affection.  But nothing has ever reflected its modernity, or even post-modernity, more than this final mini-series.  The plot involved characters having to make extraordinarily difficult decisions between two evils.  It was all about decisions to purposefully kill a few to save the many.  It was depressing, not heroic, just depressing.

I could not help but reflect on it in comparison to last May’s quintessentially American Star Trek- a movie which revolves around the phrase “I don’t believe in the no-win scenario.”  It is a movie full of hope.

Back to taxation, education, and health care for a moment.  There was a decided hopelessness in my Irish friends cry for extraordinary taxation and socialization of health care.  Had I pursued the conversation, I would have pointed out that excellence in both health care and education are available to anyone in this nation that chooses to pursue it hard enough.  Yes, the pursuit of same can be extraordinarily difficult, but it is achievable.   Compare that to their their nation where universal availability also limits quality as evidenced by statistics in cure rates and mortality.  While I readily admit there are problems in American health care and education – I have hope – while those willing to sacrifice the availability of excellence, clearly have little or none.

From whence such hope?  I would answer that it comes from my faith.  Religion plays an extraordinary role in our society in the creation and sustenance of the hope that drives us.  Conversely, when we make policy decisions that limit freedom, based on hopelessness, we drive religion down.  Hence we must fight for religion in the public square – hope is an enormous part of what defines us as Americans.  If we discharge religion from the pubic square, we give up that hope – we stop being Americans.  And some people seem dead set to do just that.

But this also points out why it was so extraordinarily silly to oppose Mitt Romney based on his faith last cycle.  Last Friday was Pioneer Day in Utah – a day that celebrates the Mormon exodus to that state.   What an extraordinarily American and hopeful religious event that exodus was.  People endured tremendous hardship based on a hope for a better life.  That is what has made America great.

Moreover, that hope is not built just in the religion itself, and this is where we differ from Europe so much, but in the freedom that America promises to have and practice that religion.  The impulse that drove the Mormons to Utah is the same impulse that drove the Protestants to America – the desire for a place to worship and achieve – a place free from the constraints of “established” religion whether by the state as is the case in Europe or by social convention as was the case facing the Mormons.

If Mormonism can generate that kind of hope then it most definitely deserves a place at the table in the American political structure.  They’ve earned it.  And in giving them that place, we preserve and uphold the freedom that has made my non-Mormon faith thrive, and the hope that has made this nation the greatest in history.

Sphere: Related Content

Posted in Candidate Qualifications, Understanding Religion | 3 Comments » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

Romney Speaks.  Read it – sigh heavily – move on.

Posted in Candidate Qualifications, Miscellany | 3 Comments » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

Things are looking good at CPAC.

Romney – who has himself re-emerged as a key national leader for his party — denied he has anyone in particular in mind to be that spokesman.

“I’m happy to have a role, [and will] aggressively seek the opportunity to have my viewpoint known,” he said.

But the former one-term governor and presidential candidate, a man of independent means and boundless energy, has undeniably thrown himself into the vacuum atop the Republican Party. One of a handful of Republicans who – people close to him say — can be expected to consider a bid for president, he has the particular advantage of focus.

Other possible presidential candidates are wrestling with home state budget deficits, President Barack Obama’s popularity, and their own local political options. Romney is, he says, on the national stage full time, writing a book of policy and ideas, and spending the balance of his days campaigning and fundraising for congressional Republicans.

The Republican Party has a tradition of returning to defeated primary candidates, from Ronald Reagan to John McCain, and Romney is putting himself in a strong position to continue it.

The best thing about this piece and the numerous others that have appeared in the wake of Romney’s speech yesterday is they lack any mention of the “M” word.  The press seems to have played its game with that particular toy and has moved on – at least for now.

Should Romney elect to run again, will it be back?  Only time will tell, but some prognostigation could be worthwhile.  The left leaning press will, of course, bring it up.  They will use any arrow in the quiver, effective or ineffective.  Even if the economy has improved by then (and I believe it will at least to some extent) the memory will still be strong.  This will place fiscal conservatism foremost in the minds of Republicans.  Look for rightward leaning pundits to keep their mouths shut – until…

…Mike Huckabee tries to slyly, and deniably, force the issue.  He will fail.  And when he does, he will no longer matter in the contest.  Romney’s economic credentials are so unassailable that anyone that attempts to throw a monkey wrench in the works, and particularly this one, will be rightly pilloried into insignificance.

Evangelicals are not falling for this stuff twice.  Did you see the really big news yesterday?  Dobson is on the way out.   Dr. Dobson is a good man, and he is not an evil Mormon hater in the fashion of a Keller, but he grossly misplayed this last election, and his comments on Romney’s faith were front and center in that misplay.

Conditions that play to Romney’s strengths (That is ia bit of an undertatement) – Evangelicals rethinking and reorganizing, losing the ineffective – the religion card has been played, and the results have been disastorous.   Suddenly, a light at the end of the tunnel appeared!

Sphere: Related Content

Posted in Candidate Qualifications | Comment on this post » |  Print this post |  Email This Post

. . . and they seem to like issuing news releases.  The last time we looked at a press release it was chastising Dobson organization for carrying a Glenn Beck interview because Beck is a Mormon.  That lead to days of controversy.  (See here,  here, here, and here.)  Well, here we go again.  This time “conservative leaders” are calling for Jed Babbin’s job (does anybody besides me see echoes of the GBLT activists’ strategy in the wake of Prop 8 in this move?) because:

The editor of what was Ronald Reagan’s favorite conservative weekly, Human Events, Babbin only recently admitted in an explosive radio interview that Mitt Romney illegally instituted same-sex “marriage” and $50 government-funded abortions.

Now, the first thing to remember is that the press release was made by Gregg Jackson, the radio talk show host who conducted this “explosive interview,” and its sole purpose was  get people to his web site and listening to clips of his show.  The release also bashes Fred Thompson and John McCain on their record on abortion, but it contains special vitriol for Romney:

On numerous occasions, Jackson and others had gone to great lengths to share Romney’s far left wing record with Babbin and other writers at Human Events such as Ann Coulter, David Limbaugh and John Gizzi, but they all chose to suppress Romney’s radical record in Massachusetts and in doing so deceived countless conservative readers.

If you go to this guy’s web site, (and I don’t recommend it – I hate to supply the link, but providing documentation of my claims demands it) he bashes even George W. Bush.

Unless this release gains more momentum I am going to leave an actual refutation of it lie – there is no sense arguing with an absolutist who is clearly beyond reason.  I will, however, ask a simple question:  If indeed virtually the entire Republican, and hence broadly conservative, leadership is so terribly inadequate, why is such special and thorough bile reserved for Romney?

I think we know the answer.

Lowell adds:  Well, I visited Mr. Jackson’s site and really invite any clear-thinking person to do so.  You’ll quickly see his colors.  For example, in this article, from February 4, 2008, he explains why he is supporting . . . you guessed it, Mike Huckabee for president.   It is actually kind of a fun rant to read, until one sees the special anti-Romney vitriol that Jackson uses on Romney, as John notes.  Remember that the kinds of falsehoods and distortions Jackson uses were apparently believed by many people. People like him are a disgrace to American politics, and I think he’s just as harmful as the crowd at the Daily Kos and MoveOn.org.

Sphere: Related Content

Posted in Candidate Qualifications, Electability | Comment on this post » |  Print this post |  Email This Post