Mount Virtus

Tomorrow is the annual Blogs for Life conference at Family Research Council headquarters in Washington, DC, a somber commemoration of the 35th anniversary of the terrible and infamous Roe v Wade decision from the U.S. Supreme Court.

A provocative NewsMax essay today from Joseph Sobran summarizes three and a half decades of the debate:

Note the strange progress of the advocates of abortion. A generation ago, just before the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that virtually all legal restrictions on abortion violated the U.S. Constitution, these people agreed that killing the unborn was evil; but they held that its evil might be minimized by legalizing and regulating it.

Then they shifted to what might be called an agnostic position: that nobody could say whether abortion is right or wrong — the question was always vague: “individual,” or “religious,” or something. Finally they arrived at a third position, flatly contradicting the first two: that abortion is a positively good thing, or as some put it, “a fundamental human and constitutional right.” Fundamental!

The more abortions, it follows, the better. At each step of the political battle, the reason is different, but the practical conclusion is the same. This is how the controversy has gone for a full generation now. At the same time, the anti-abortion side has never budged an inch. It is still exactly where it stood on Jan. 22, 1973. Neither its premise nor its conclusion has varied.

The pro-life movement has a long way to go, that’s for sure. The battle for hearts and minds is crucial. But, legally speaking, we should continue to persuade moderate-minded citizens that Roe v Wade should be overturned so states can decide this important question, and to elect officials who will nominate and confirm justices with originalist views of the Constitution who inevitably would make that happen. These are the next steps on which serious pro-lifers need to stay focused.

If Michael (picking McCain) and Steven (picking Huckabee) can do it, let me venture a stab-in-the-dark prediction at today’s South Carolina Republican primary results. Because, with Rasmussen seeing an extraordinary amount of uncertainty and the unusual weather apparently driving down turnout, this one is up in the air.

So without further ado, here is my prognostication:

Huckabee … 28
Thompson … 24
McCain … 22
Romney … 13
Paul … 7
Giuliani … 6

Such a finish would knock McCain down a couple notches and give Thompson the boost he needs heading into Super Tuesday as a viable competitor with Huckabee in the Southern states and with Giuliani & Romney in some of the other states (provided Rudy can win Florida, of course – but his chances would be bolstered with McCain beaten). My other related prediction is the results of the SC primary will further lower the credibility of Zogby as a reliable pollster.

We’ll see. You can check results here, starting at 7 PM Eastern (5 PM Mountain).

Up to this point, I haven’t taken time to comment on the Douglas Bruce brouhaha. So here it is: I’m glad to see good, intelligent, respected voices from my side able to distinguish between the free market, limited government views he espouses and the shameful behavior he has demonstrated. A few of them are highlighted below…
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Update: It’s good to see Michael at Best Destiny and Phil at Clear Commentary thinking along similar lines.

With all the news of economic slowdown nearing fevered pitch, some Americans will like the sound of a few hundred extra bucks in their pockets. Hey, it sounds good to me, too. Except it’s not a tax break in the sense of getting to keep more of your own hard-earned money. It’s plain old wealth redistribution, as explained by George Mason economist Russell Roberts in this piece (HT Rossputin):

The money has to come from somewhere. If you raise taxes to fund the plan, the people who are taxed are poorer and they’ll spend less. If you borrow money to fund the plan, the people who buy the government bonds have less money to spend and that offsets the stimulus. It’s like taking a bucket of water from the deep end of a pool and dumping it into the shallow end. Funny thing—the water in the shallow end doesn’t get any deeper.

And even the people who get the money often save more of it than they spend.

That’s why stimulus schemes based on giving people money have a poor track record of energizing the economy. Usually, the only thing that gets stimulated is a politician’s approval rating.

We’ve got a lot of politicians making pie-in-the-sky promises, and even a few plausible-sounding ones, like doling out a few hundred bucks of revenue to everyone will kickstart the economy.

It would be short-term relief, yes.

But certainly not good long-term economic policy (which, of course, has very little to do with getting elected).

“The man finally comes around,” writes Red State‘s Erick Erickson for Human Events, as he travels with the Thompson campaign in South Carolina:

Though barely mentioned in the national media, Senator Fred Thompson has been on a barn storming tour crisscrossing South Carolina for more than a week. In a unique approach, he is not just going to major media markets, but to rural areas of South Carolina. On my first day on the trail with Senator Thompson, he drew a crowd of 180 people to a small Mennonite restaurant in Abbeville, South Carolina — population 26,000 with a median income of $15,370. He capped off the day at the Orangeburg-Calhoun County Technical College in Orangeburg, South Carolina with over 200 people braving a rare snow shower to hear him. The day before I joined him on the campaign trail, Senator Thompson’s campaign saw large capacity auditoriums overflowing with people standing outside the buildings waiting to get in.

The crowds are enthusiastic and relieved. Finally, the Fred Thompson they hoped for is on the campaign trail. “Saying the Reagan Coalition is dead is like saying the Constitution is dead,” Thompson began one speech, taking on Newt Gingrich and Mike Huckabee. “The Reagan Coalition was never about the man. It was and is about the principles and values we apply to issues.” He continued, “The issues may change, but the principles do not.” The crowd roared its enthusiasm.

As always, read the whole thing. I have a feeling some in the MSM may be surprised by tomorrow’s results from the South Carolina primary.

David Limbaugh eloquently tells conservatives why now is the time to give Fred Thompson a second look and fearlessly answer the call of his campaign:

Fred does not run from his record — more to the point, he doesn’t need to. He shoots straight without the constant self-serving reminders that he does, as in telling us he’s driving the “Straight Talk Express.”

More importantly, Fred is right on the issues, and there’s little doubt his positions are firm. Research his stances; read his position papers. You’ll find he’s very strong in all areas important to mainstream conservatives, including national defense, taxes, spending, life, immigration, federalism, appointing originalist judges, health care and education.

I’m not drooling over Fred or saying his record is flawless, but I am saying he’s the real deal, and it’s a bit disappointing that more haven’t taken a closer look.

I think this is due partly to his laid-back personality and partly to his timing. He peaked about the time he was contemplating entering the race but not acting on it. By the time he jumped in, it was anticlimactic, and he still hasn’t recovered from that reversal.

There has also been a negative momentum hovering over his already-stalled campaign, acting as a psychological barrier to his catching fire among conservative voters.

There is simply too much herd mentality among us about electability. We tell ourselves a candidate is not inspiring, then pretty soon we’re convinced he’s unelectable, and, voila, he almost becomes so. Yet, at that very moment, he’s proving to us that he is quite presidential, quite electable and quite motivated for the job — if we can only shed our predispositions against his “electability.” Since electability is often a matter of collective perception, it can turn on a dime, as with the reversal of the respective fortunes of screaming Howard Dean and somniferous John Kerry in 2004.

This primary season, relatively speaking, has just begun. But Fred is now up against the wall. How can we expect him to have done much better than he has to date with everyone prattling on about the overwhelming odds against him? The “experts” continue to be wrong at almost every turn, so why can’t they be wrong about Fred, too? It’s time to quit empowering them by following their dictatorial doom-prophecies. It’s encouraging that John Zogby’s latest South Carolina poll shows that while levels of support for McCain and Huckabee “have remained static,” Fred is starting to move up.

Supporters have asked Fred to step up, and he has — he has shone brilliantly in the last month, setting himself head and shoulders above the pack in many cases. Now it’s time for conservative voters to step up and quit placing artificial limitations on Fred, and on themselves.

Fred has answered the conservatives’ call. Shouldn’t we answer his?

(HT: Blogs for Fred Thompson)

Now is the time: The do-or-die South Carolina primary is Saturday. If you are so inclined and able, please find a way to show your support on Fred’s official campaign website.

At the American Spectator, Quin Hilyer makes the best case I’ve seen for South Carolinians to support Fred Thompson in Saturday’s primary:

If I were a South Carolina Republican voter on Saturday, then for parochial, tactical, and philosophical reasons, I would vote for Fred Thompson.

This doesn’t mean that I would not have voted for Mitt Romney in Michigan on Tuesday, if I were a Michigander, or that I would not vote for Rudy Giuliani in Florida later this month. Voting in each state, especially in a drawn-out nomination battle, involves particularly local considerations as well as national ones.

But for South Carolinians who are mainstream conservatives, those local considerations seem to cry out for a boost for Fred Thompson.

Read the whole thing. (HT: Jonathan Adler at The Corner)

Over at the new Face the State is a story about the ascension of State Rep. Mike Merrifield back to the chair of the House Education Committee, after last year’s controversy and resignation:

Rep. Mike Merrifield, D-Manitou Springs, quietly resumed his post at the helm of the House Education Committee on Monday more than nine months after his resignation over a well-publicized email that condemned school choice supporters to a “special place in hell.”

Of course, if you’ve been reading Denise at Colorado Charters or Mr. Bob at The Daily Blogster, you would already be aware of this un-parent-friendly political event in our fair state.

More from Face the State:

Political consultant Katy Atkinson, a consultant to moderate and conservative political causes, said top Democrats may have perceived that they had little reason to replace Merrifield with a legislator more open to supporting charters and other parent-friendly education options. “The Democratic leadership is not that concerned in particular about their standing in the school choice community,” she said. “They’re more concerned about all the money they get from the [Colorado Education Association].”

Colorado’s Democrat candidates received nearly $280,000 in direct teachers union contributions in 2006, compared to just over $20,000 for Republicans. According to Colorado League of Charter Schools Executive Director Jim Griffin, Democrats did little to soften their reputation as the anti-school choice party after Merrifield stepped down from his post last Spring. Merrifield was replaced by another union-funded legislator, Rep. Judy Solano, D-Brighton, who temporarily assumed the chair. “I never viewed having one or the other in charge as a particularly big deal,” he said.

Well put. Party trumps person.

Why as a conservative don’t I support the presidential candidacy of Mike Huckabee? Another great example is highlighted this morning by Jim Geraghty at NRO’s Campaign Spot:

The Thompson campaign has video of one of those pro-Huckabee push polls.

More than a few South Carolina readers have reported the same calls, as well as Campaign Spot Senior South Carolina Correspondent.

I’m neither impressed by the Huckabee campaign, nor from Common Sense Issues, the group behind the calls.

Sure, the Huckabee campaign says they don’t support this, and they’re calling on it to stop. But let’s see some anger. Let’s have Huckabee call up Davis, the guy who’s doing this and say, “stop it, you’re hurting my campaign.” Come on out and denounce Davis as a mudslinging slime merchant who’s manufacturing cynicism on a grand scale. (They’re saying they’ll make a million calls in South Carolina!) The governor’s a good wordsmith, I’m sure he can put it even better than that. Let’s see some fire and brimstone. Tepid words to the Associated Press aren’t going to deter Davis.

If Huckabee supporters want to make Thompson’s lobbying in two or three meetings 17 years ago the reason Republicans shouldn’t vote for him in the primary, they should come on out and say it. Don’t do this in the dark of night, hoping to reach primary voters who aren’t familiar with the issue. If this really was such an objectionable, disqualifying bit of Thompson’s background, we would be hearing it from the candidate himself.

In short, it’s cheap political slime.
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Mitt Romney recorded an impressive win in the Michigan primary tonight. Hats off to him. Now here’s hoping that Fred Thompson surges back to take South Carolina and Rudy makes a comeback with a Florida victory. It will drive all the pundits mad, simply mad – especially those in the MSM beginning to mourn McCain’s demise. Can you imagine it? The phrase “Republican frontrunner” will set off unending fireworks on all the cable news programs.

So should the word “momentum,” which professional and amateur prognosticators appear to have put too much stock into this far. Huckabee’s Iowa win got him what? Back-to-back third-place finishes. And McCain went from one week as the New Hampshire darling to badly beaten in Michigan the next. So who will be the first to mistakenly suggest that Romney’s impressive victory tonight will sweep him forward in the Palmetto State on Saturday?

Maybe, just maybe, we’ll see an old-fashioned brokered GOP convention this summer in St. Paul – like this one. I can dream, can’t I?

Today is the Michigan Republican Presidential primary: Here’s hoping that my home state can do its part to derail the McCain Train before it carries the whole Republican Party and conservative movement off the cliff.

Meanwhile, Fred is on fire in South Carolina: See here and here for a sample of the details.

On the other hand, Paul Mirengoff at Powerline opines that a McCain Michigan victory catapulting him to frontrunner status coupled with Fred’s rising status as the leading conservative challenger in South Carolina might do wonders for Fred’s campaign. Perhaps, but I’m not willing to take the chance with McCain. Today, I cheer for Romney.

Thanks, Mr. Snaggle-Tooth, for your lengthy treatise in response to my prior arguments. In it you write:

Ole Ben links a Liberty article by libertarian attorney Timothy Sandefur, ‘n I mus’ say it’s jus’ ‘bout as good as the pro-Unionist argumint kin git. Quite Jaffian it wuz, with the acrid odor of Claremont about it. But that article got picked to pieces in-iss un’, written by anothah libertarian attorney, Stephan Kinsella. (See this here response by Kinsella too.)

Well, in the interest of time, here’s an even better version of Sandefur’s argument (link leads to abstract, from which you can download a PDF). It’s a very well-documented and well-argued essay, and there isn’t much I can add to it in this forum. Some of its salient points: 1) The “compact theory” of the Constitution is weak and doesn’t hold up to careful scrutiny; 2) Unilateral secession is unconstitutional; 3) The South’s actions were not justifiable as a revolution; 4) The Confederate States were primarily motivated by a desire to protect slave property; and 5) Libertarians ascribing all the ills of national government consolidation at the feet of Lincoln and the Civil War have overreached and committed the post hoc fallacy.
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Weird political story: Paranoid Ron Paul supporters harass a New Hampshire town official over a simple mistake that initially cost their candidate 31 votes but was quickly corrected.

Two words for the Ronulans (in the vernacular): Chill out.

Though, as Paul’s campaign continues to sink like a piece of lead, I’m sure many will find a conspiracy in that, too. All part of an American political tradition, a leading historian once argued.

(Before you begin, please remember to take this through the filter of a writer who has been described as “one of the most virulent anti-public education individuals” in Colorado.)

Yesterday I wrote about the Colorado caucus (25 days to go). Today I found the most comprehensive guide of them all – created by the Colorado Education Association. Everything you need to know about the caucus is in there.

And more. Including the following suggested resolutions for CEA members to make at their caucuses: (more…)

The Denver Business Journal interviewed one of the two national labor experts who spoke at an event this morning sponsored by the Colorado chapter of the Federalist Society. From the article headlined “Labor experts make case against Ritter’s union order”:

The governor and Democrats in the House and Senate argue the order is non-binding and won’t have a direct bearing on budgets or businesses. Many in the business community also say they’re hard pressed to see how the order effects them.

But Stan Greer, senior programming director for the National Institute of Labor Relations, based in Springfield, Va., made the case that Ritter’s executive order isn’t in the state’s best economic interests — particularly if state workers are forced to pay union dues.

Greer spoke in front of some prominent local Republicans, including Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, Senate Minority Leader John McElhany, R-Colorado Springs, Sen. Shawn Mitchell, R-Broomfield, and other legislators, at Denver’s University Club Friday morning.

Based on what he’s seen in other states, Greer said, the executive order increases the chances that most state workers will belong to a union — especially because Ritter’s order didn’t explicitly bar forced union fees.

“The governor is bending over backwards to say forced unionization is not what he’s imposing,” Greer said. “But if the governor was against union dues and agency fees, he would have explicitly put that in the order. … He wants to leave the door open, but it’s not convenient for him to talk about it at this time.”

I’ve written a lot about Gov. Ritter’s executive order. But until I heard Greer and his colleague Raymond LaJeunesse bring up this point, I had pretty much conceded that the order wouldn’t be a big issue when it came to worker freedom. Sure, some state employees will have to accept union representation regardless of whether or not they believe it benefits them.

But what about setting up “agency shops” in Colorado state government – where everyone has to pay tribute to the “exclusive representative” union to keep their job? Gov. Ritter could have explicitly prohibited non-member “agency fees” in his executive order. But he didn’t.

As Greer and LaJeunesse pointed out, Ritter could have followed the example of President John F. Kennedy, who in 1962 signed Executive Order 10988, enabling monopoly collective bargaining among federal government employees. Included in the order: “Employees of the Federal Government shall have, and shall be protected in the exercise of, the right, freely and without feel of penalty or reprisal, to form, join and assist any employee organization or to refrain from any such activity. [Emphasis added]”

Ritter’s order has nothing to say about state government workers’ rights along these lines. Why not? The governor has told us that his order doesn’t provide for agency fees, and that he retains final authority over the process. But when Big Labor negotiates “fair share” agency fees into a union “partnership agreement” as a trade-off for a smaller pay raise, who will be there to counter the union’s political pressure?

Hint, hint … Someone needs to follow up on the Denver Business Journal story and ask Gov. Ritter whether he intends to amend his order by adding individual worker protections.

Cross posted at Ritter Watch