Marching To Pretoria

The country moved a little bit closer to apartheid-era South African-style fascism with Rick Santorum's twin primary victories in Alabama and Mississippi, forcing Mitt Romney - who still leads in the delegate count for the GOP presidential nomination - to become more reactionary in his sociopolitical views. The former supporter of Planned Parenthood now thinks we should stop supporting it. To respond to the inevitable insistence that a President Romney would moderate his views and go back to where he was as governor of Massachusetts once he's in the White House, it should be remembered that the senior George Bush held on to his adopted ultraconservative social views once he was elected President in 1988 . . . because he still had to please the right in 1992.

Liberals and moderate Democrats may be eagerly awaiting the prospect of President Obama facing either Romney or Santorum will full confidence in his ability to clean either of their clocks, but they should check Obama's own timepiece first. It turns out that Obama's approval rating is down to 41 percent in one poll taken this month, and he's only four points ahead of Santorum - yes, Santorum - in a hypothetical matchup, just outside the margin of error. Obama is getting blame for the high gas prices - which Republicans are helping to cause by talking about war with Iran, spooking commodity speculators - that even recent good news about the job market can't seem to neutralize. In an ideal world - France - people would be driving smaller cars and have plausible mass transit options, so maybe gasoline prices wouldn't be such a big deal. Or, at least people would be smart enough to understand that high gas prices are not Obama's fault.

Because of all that - and because of the fact that Republicans hold 29 state governorships, hold the most state legislature majorities since 1928, and are working to make sure fewer Democratic Party-friendly demographic groups vote in November - the sun may be setting on American progressivism (what there is of it) for years, maybe even decades. The GOP has the mechanism and the money to see to that.

And even though female voters in the Democratic party may be energized by the Republican war or women, the battle over contraception has energized Republican women like TV actress Patricia Heaton. By now you may know about her nasty, snide Twitter comments about Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke's testimony on birth control coverage. Referring to Fluke as "G-Town Gal" and addressing her in the second person, Heaton wrote comments on her Twitter page like: "Hey G-Town Gal: If your parents have to pay for your birth control, maybe they should get a say in who [sic] you sleep with! Instant birth control!"

How many of you who remember Heaton's performance as the caustic Debra on "Everybody Loves Raymond" got the feeling that she wasn't acting?

Though Heaton apologized for her tone, she's been known to offer nasty right-wing comments for years. She once declared Obama to be "completely wrong" for the Presidency and said she wanted a Republican presidential debate that would include Rush Limbaugh and Michael Medved asking "tough and intelligent" questions. The pro-life Heaton also insisted that women who may seek an abortion should give birth instead, regardless, commenting: "A woman experiencing an unplanned pregnancy also deserves to experience unplanned joy."

And yet, in spite of all this, no one has called for a boycott of her current ABC sitcom "The Middle." I myself watched it last week after having heard of Heaton's comments about Ms. Fluke, even though that particular episode was a rerun. But then everyone knows that there's a difference between Limbaugh and Patricia Heaton.

Heaton is just an entertainer.

Single Digits

So let me get this straight . . ..  Out of sixty thousand votes cast between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum at the Iowa caucuses yesterday, Romney won by eight.  I'm sure Romney would have preferred to win by more than eight thousand votes.  But when I say eight, I don't mean eight thousand.  I mean . . . eight.

One, two, three, four, five, six, seven . . . eight.

Romney won 30,015 votes in Iowa last night.  He would have had to win 36,000 votes to get at least 30 percent and pull out of the 25 percent bracket he'd been in through various opinion polls for months.  As it was, he couldn't win 36,000 votes.  In fact, compared to his 2008 total in Iowa, Romney was off by six.  

Not six thousand.  Six.  One, two, three, four, five . . . six.

That's right, Romney won six fewer votes in Iowa in 2012 than the 30,021 votes he won in 2008.

So, not only did 75 percent of all Iowa Republicans vote against Romney, those that did vote for him gave him a Pyrrhic victory with a margin in single digits over Santorum.  And after all the time and money he spent in Iowa, his vote total was smaller than when he lost the Iowa contest to Mike Huckabee in 2008 - by single digits.  

Meanwhile, Michele Bachmann - a woman whose intelligence quotient is likely measured in single digits - dropped out of the race.  The number of people who will miss her can be counted with a single digit - 0. 

Who Really Won In Connecticut?

Chris Matthews has often pointed out that Republicans run for office repeatedly before finally getting elected or giving up on their own, while Democrats see to it that those in their party who lose one chance of getting elected to office are not allowed a second.  Matthews was referring to presidential elections, but, as I've often pointed out, these standards apply to other offices as well, particularly with regards to U.S. Senate seats.  Republican Senate candidates who lose a bid for one Senate seat in any given state eventually make a bid for the other, and they mostly win that second bid.  Losing Democratic Senate candidates simply disappear into some party-sponsored witness protection program.  Anyway, you can read my earlier, more detailed post on the subject here.

I bring this up because noted violence peddler Linda McMahon, having failed to win the Senate seat vacated by Chris Dodd in Connecticut, has announced her bid for Connecticut's other Senate seat, which is being vacated by Joseph Lieberman in 2012.  McMahon, who made name for herself - her husband's - running World Wrestling Entertainment, had a realistic shot of winning Dodd's seat last year when her Democratic opponent, state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, was plagued by inconsistencies over his military service record, but even though she lost, she was widely expected to run again if Lieberman retired.  She has since lived down to expectations, making her the latest Republican to run again for a Senate seat after she was denied one in a previous attempt.  Hey, not taking no for answer is a Grand Old Party tradition.  (Giving no for an answer also is.)  Had Blumenthal lost in Connecticut last year, he would have been rendered politically dead. 

Or is he?  Once Blumenthal was sworn in as a senator, he was pretty much forgotten by the mainstream media.  Although Blumenthal was the only freshman Senate Democrat elected to a full six-year term last year, I kept seeing Delaware's Chris Coons and West Virginia's Joe Manchin - both elected in 2010 to complete unexpired Senate terms - on MSNBC instead.  When Chris Matthews led a discussion on his show about Senate Democrats in early 2011, stock footage of sitting Democratic senators - Charles Schumer, Harry Reid, Richard Durbin, Chris Dodd - was shown.  Wait - Chris Dodd? Wasn't he already gone from the Senate?  Didn't Blumenthal take his place? What was up with that?  It was as if MSNBC didn't want to acknowledge Blumenthal's existence, especially after the uncharitable things Matthews said about how the Connecticut Democrat handled his military record in the 2010 campaign.

Then this past May, Chris Jansing reported a news story about a bill pending in the Senate and had Blumenthal on for an interview.  MSNBC had finally realized that he was Connecticut's new senator.

Perhaps I'm being unfair.  Unlike a right-wing Republican senator like South Carolina's Jim DeMint, who attempted to leave his mark on the Senate from the day he set foot in the chamber, Senator Blumenthal has likely been easing himself into the job, as freshman senators are supposed to.  Or maybe his pet cause - fighting for consumer rights and protections - gives him few opportunities for visibility in a Congress where Republicans have successfully kept the issue from coming up, much less coming to a vote.  But even though she lost last year, Linda McMahon created a lot of buzz and got a lot of media publicity for the WWE - and, coincidentally, herself - and has thus won the promise of more interest and coverage when she launches her candidacy for Lieberman's seat in 2012.

And God help Connecticut and the Senate if she wins this time.

Mitt Is It?

As Sarah Palin, a plain rash if there ever was one, irritates people along the East Coast with her non-campaign tour, titillating her rabid fans as if she were Lady Gaga, Mitt Romney has officially entered the race for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

The differences between the two politicians could not be any clearer. Palin seeks to appeal to the basest instincts of the American voter, plastering excerpts from the Pledge of Allegiance on her tour bus to, as author James Kunstler says, appeal to voters who are proud to have made it as far as first grade. Romney is a grownup. He plans to talk about the economy - the one issue on which President Obama remains vulnerable - more than on ideology - and he has the bona fides to back himself up, as a successful venture capitalist, the rescuer of the 2002 Salt Lake City Winter Olympics, and governor of Massachusetts.

Romney's biggest liability with the libertarians who now control the Republican party is the health care reform legislation he sired in Massachusetts, because of the mandate that all Massachusetts residents buy health insurance. Except that it's working to bring down health care costs, and Romney has said that, while he opposes doing anything similar on the federal level, each state should do as it sees fit to reform health care on its own - and that his approach happened to be compatible with his state. He won't renounce the Massachusetts health care plan. His Mormon faith may remain a sore spot among the evangelical Protestant voters who dominate the Republican primaries and caucuses. But I don't think many other voters, Republican or otherwise, will fear that a President Romney will take orders from the Mormon Church.

Unfortunately for Romney, one advantage Sarah Palin has over Romney is her ability to generate buzz. He announced his presidential candidacy in New Hampshire at the same time she was in the state, and so she bumped him off the front page of the Manchester Union-Leader. Romney should be glad the Internet's killing print media. He probably isn't thankful, though, that anyone can search the Internet and find video clips of his TV interviews demonstrating that he can't get his position on the auto company bailout straight.

Nevertheless, Romney, like Obama, has the substance. If he's the 2012 nominee, the debate between Romney and Obama on the economy will be most substantial debate on the topic in years - maybe even decades.