The Bosque Boys

Yes, that line forms on the right, babe
Now that Macky’s back in town …
Look out … old Macky is back!!

For McCain, this must seem like deja vu all over again. After the astounding win in New Hampshire this week, he faces all the same questions he did in 2000. Can he convert his triumph in the Granite State into victories out West and down South? As before, he is comparatively low on money, and he must rise above his counter-productive popularity with the liberal-leaning mainstream media and the stigma of winning New Hampshire with the wrong voters.

Last time around, he won Michigan following New Hampshire but then met his Waterloo in South Carolina--after which, the wheels came off with disturbing rapidity.

Will history repeat itself? Will John McCain be the Ohio State of American politics?

South Carolina 2008 will not shake out exactly as it did in 2000, for this current race is so fundamentally different from eight years ago. Back then it was a two-man contest. Today there are perhaps five viable candidates--three of whom see South Carolina as a must-win (McCain, Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson).

Significantly, Romney has backed off in South Carolina for the moment--concentrating on the showdown with McCain in Michigan. Will Romney fold, if he loses Michigan? Maybe--but the Romney camp swears he will press on. We will see.

An Aside: In general, I have wondered whether Romney would stay in this race even after his own chances diminished, just to hammer McCain. That is, no matter what, would Romney remain an inexhaustible ubiquitous force in this campaign as a generic funder of anti-McCain media? But, evidently, he will not play that role in South Carolina (or Florida?)--which means there are limits to how much effort and fortune Romney is willing to expend in this campaign.

Bottom line: The other guys are going to have to pay their own freight and come up with their own anti-McCain ads. This is a huge help to McCain in the Palmetto State and good news for him in general.

Huckabee and Thompson. The media is playing up Huckabee's "southernness" and his affinity with evangelicals, who make up a large segment of Republican primary voters in South Carolina. All of this may work out just fine for Huckabee--but I would not be at all surprised if we find that South Carolinians see Arkansans as less southern than Tennesseans.

What a fool believes (speaking of myself, of course): considering the full spectrum of conservative policy positions, Fred Thompson has a chance (his absolutely last opportunity) to emerge victorious in the first southern state primary. Again, we'll see; Fred has a long way to go and a short time to get there.

One other thing, evangelicals are much more diverse and complicated than the folks who work at Rockefeller Center can ever fathom. Huckabee is not necessarily a slam dunk for conservative evangelicals in the Deep South. Remember, a significant number of southern evangelicals abandoned their fellow Baptist, Jimmy Carter, to vote for a divorced Presbyterian from Hollywood in 1980.

One last note on Fred. For the first one hundred years of American politics, candidates for president never ran for office; rather, they stood for office. That is, instead of soliciting votes personally, candidates announced that they would accept elective office as servants of the public interest, if the public so desired. Although this pose was somewhat disingenuous, candidates eschewed personal campaigns (no kissing babies, endless handshaking, or litany of promises). In theory, they waited for the electorate to find them.

Fred is running the closest thing to an old-style campaign that we have witnessed in one hundred years. It is interesting--and in this tumultuous year in which the unexpected has become the rule, his off-beat approach has a chance of working. We will see.

Can McCain win South Carolina? Yes. He is great on the war--and that is great in the South. He has Lindsey Graham--and that helps. Having said that, things are still very tough for him. The conservative establishment is still extremely antagonistic and unforgiving. As for Republican voters in general, McCain is most vulnerable on immigration. I suppose we will see how powerful that issue really resonates with the base--but McCain's defense does not stand up to much scrutiny on this subject. For a self-proclaimed straight shooter, McCain's Clintonesque reliance on a semantically slippery definition of "amnesty" does real damage to his image.

One last cheap shot at McCain (but maybe it is worth noting):

In an era in which "forty is the new thirty," forty-six year-old Barack Obama seems much younger than the forty-three year-old 1960-vintage JFK, whom we view through the prism of history and mostly gray scale images.

In contrast, in an era in which "seventy is the new sixty," John McCain looks every day his age. The oldest president ever was Ronald Reagan--but he was a movie star, who maintained his matinee idol good looks and athletic vigor for all of his public life. The seventy-one year-old McCain is craggy-faced and unhealthy looking. In this era, McCain's physical appearance and stamina could prove a significant deficit to his campaign.

Read this. From my favorite left-leaning social/political commentator.

Excerpt: Hillary's willingness to tolerate Bill's compulsive philandering is a function of her general contempt for men. She distrusts them and feels morally superior to them. Following the pattern of her long-suffering mother, she thinks it is her mission to endure every insult and personal degradation for a higher cause -- which, unlike her self-sacrificing mother, she identifies with her near-messianic personal ambition.

The MSM usually speak of the Gender Gap as the Republican inablity to capture the "Women's Vote." I prefer to think of the Gender Gap as the modern Democrat Party's inability to capture the "Men's Vote."

The things people say when they are confident no one will behead them or blow up their building.

Gateway Pundit has the story, and video links, of comments made on The View by Joy Behar to the effect that the Saints of the Church all were psychotics who heard voices. Today we have no saints, she said, because of medications. From the transcript:

JOY BEHAR: I’m going to get in trouble for this, but you know what? I have a theory that you can’t find any saints any more because of psycho-tropic medication. I think that the old days the saints were hearing voices and they didn’t have any thorazine to calm them down. [laughter] Now that we have all of this medication available to us, you can’t find a saint any more.

In the same post Gateway Pundit has information on another anti-Christian attack, this time against evangelicals and Huckabee that aired on an NPR station.

But, did Joy Behar have a point? I think she did, though not in the way she thought. I do not believe that all the Saints were psychotic, but, I do believe that their lifestyles and beliefs would today get them diagnosed as pyschotic or neurotic, and perhaps even committed or medicated.

Take Saint Francis, since he is familiar to most people. At a fairly young age he renounced the considerable wealth of his family, turned to a celibate lifestyle, and left home with no clear plan. St. Francis lived an essentially homeless life, begged for food, repaired chapels and churches, and taught. All free of charge. It is not hard to imagine that a wealthy family today could get a son committed for behaving this way. Or, to imagine the family calling their pastor to "talk to the boy."

Other saints had visions, most lived without regard for their own safety or comfort, many voluntarily withdrew into the desert or forest as hermits--no saint conformed to accepted social norms.

Perhaps we do have fewer saints today because we confine or medicate them. But that does not mean it is they who are insane.

I am listening to Hugh Hewitt tonight.

I love Hugh Hewitt (and I like Mitt Romney okay). But Hugh is completely irrational when it comes to Mitt and this election.

He has overtly limited his callers tonight to listeners who support Romney and adamantly desire him to stay in the race. If anyone violates this rule (and expresses a dissenting opinion), they are rudely ejected off the show. All the while, after every positive call, Hewitt announces: "another vote for Romney to stay in!"

The Romney-ites are curiously and comically insistent that their man is winning this race.

The Facts: Romney is an extremely wealthy person, who built and funded a great organization, and devised a brilliant strategy. The plan: win the Iowa caucus (spending more money there than all the other candidates combined and utilizing his army of paid volunteers). From there, win the New Hampshire primary, where he was well positioned as a former governor of neighboring Massachusetts. Next capture Michigan, where his father served as a popular governor during the 1960s. These early victories would begin an avalanche of inevitability, allowing Romney to win the GOP nomination. It was a great plan—but it went awry.

He did not miss by much. Romney almost "bought the pot" in Iowa, chasing all of his big-name competitors from the field, but, in the end, he lost by nine points to an under-funded long shot, Mike Huckabee. In New Hampshire, five days later, lightening struck again when John McCain, long given up for dead, dramatically climbed out of the crypt and took the Granite State by six points. Moreover, Hewitt concedes that Romney may well come in second in Michigan next week and possibly do even worse in South Carolina after that. Nevertheless, Hewitt asserts with complete confidence that all is going according to plan (Plan B), and Romney remains in the best position to secure the nomination.

Plan B: outlast the other hopefuls and win by default.

Now that is the Audacity of Hope.

Of course, the crazy thing is that things are so chaotic that I am not ready to say that this line of thinking is completely foolish. Nobody Knows Anything. At this point in the GOP canvass, nothing is impossible. McCain and Huckabee, the presumptive frontrunners, have troubles of their own—lingering skepticism with core conservatives. Rudy is betting heavy on his ability to draw an inside-straight in Florida (the first card of his big-state strategy), and Fred is still a mystery (are we waiting on a broken-down bus?).

So, conceivably, all these candidates could run out of gas and the ever-smiling, optimistic, all-America Mitt Romney, currently running second everywhere and giving pleasantly gracious concession speeches, might be there to pick up the pieces.

I doubt it, but damn if I know…

UPDATE: The AP is reporting the Romney is pulling ads in South Carolina and Florida.

Back when I was a miserably clueless high school algebra student, I spent a lot of time sitting in my seat toward the back of the classroom staring at a poster featuring a befuddled-looking monkey with this caption:

Just when I figured out all the answers, they changed all the questions.

Wow! 8:20 PM CST. With 36 percent of the precincts reporting in NH things look awfully unexpected on the Democratic Party side.

I lost count of all the "end of the Clintons" stories I read between last Thursday night and today, but it was a big number. How many total? A number approximate to the total number of pundits with access to a keyboard.

Perhaps they were a bit premature.

A Personal Aside: it was my good fortune to have been too busy (and too confused) to write such a story.

A Statistical Aside: the number of thoughtfully penned “Clinton is dead” essays over the last five days was approximately equal to the “Clinton is inevitable” essays offered with absolutely certainty two months ago.

There is a lesson here--and it is something we should all remember--and it is one of the elements of American politics that makes it the best show in town: the only thing we know for sure is that Nobody (and that goes double for me) Knows Anything.

But I think you can take this one to the bank, as I said last Friday: Fasten your seatbelts, boys; we're in for a bumpy ride.

An interesting meeting is going on today up the road from me at the University of Oklahoma. Story here.

Excerpts:

NORMAN, Okla. (AP) - University of Oklahoma President David Boren says a conference in Norman today is intended to send a message that Democrats and Republicans should lead a bipartisan government of national unity.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is among more than one dozen political centrists expected to attend the conference one day before the New Hampshire primary.

Other attendees include former Republican senator John Danforth of Missouri and Republican Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska.

One part of me is drawn to this idea: a government by statesmen rather than by party. As I've mentioned, in my political thought, I am a great admirer of Revolutionary-Era Republicanism (the system of ideas underlying a republic): the political thought of the Revolutionary generation. A major idea in that ideology is that citizens should be committed to the Common Good, what's best for all. Also, that politics takes place within a universe governed by laws given by the Creator, in other words, political decisions should conform not only to the natural laws governing politics, but also to the Moral Law. George Washington deplored the idea of political parties. In the 1790s neither the Federalists nor Republicans could or would call themselves political parties. "Parties" were thought to equal "Faction" which meant a group out for themselves, not the Common Good.

But, on the other hand, there is another idea in Revolutionary-Era Republicanism at tension with this: human beings are not to be trusted with power. One major root of republicanism is the Puritan/ Presbyterian/ Separatist Protestant tradition in Britain. Central to the doctrine of these groups is the teaching that mankind has "fallen" into a state of sin. Therefore, in politics vigilance is necessary lest someone, or some group, abuse power because of their fallenness. Madison exemplifies this way of thinking in the establishment of checks-and-balances within our Federal Government, and between the Federal Government and the States. Later, Martin Van Buren (a member of the Kinderhook Dutch Reformed Church, a group very committed to the doctrine of Total Depravity), would justify political parties, in part, because of their ability to maintain vigilance. In a sense, political parties are an extension of Madison's system of dividing power and then limiting the expression of power by having competing groups.

Realistically, we need parties in conflict. Mexico, among other nations, demonstrates that corruption follows the extended rule by one party making itself a monopoly. Even a "bipartisan" group will act like a party.

For some more philosophy, see below.

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A couple of observations from the Republican debate on Saturday evening.

Obviously, all parties turned on Mitt Romney last night. Why? He has played it tough, and it was his time to take some hard shots in return. Blood is in the water. Politics is a tough game.

Nevertheless, for the first time in this campaign my heart went out to Romney. I agreed with him that the caddy remarks and tag-team taunting was unbecoming and a bit excessive.

John McCain would have us believe that his snide remarks were merely "just desserts" for the rich-boy governor who had been distorting his record. On the other hand, I am increasingly less inclined to buy McCain's victim pose. Didn't we hear the same thing from the McCain camp about George Bush back in 2000? According to the legend, all the Bushies were running around slandering the good name of the heroic senator and trotting out all the dirty tricks.

What did Romney say last night that was so bad? Even as I agree with McCain on immigration, in large part, Mr. Straight-Talk Express was playing pretty fast and loose with the facts. Hiding behind a semantically slippery definition of "amnesty" is not heroic. From what I can tell, Romney had it just about right in his characterization of McCain's record in this explosive area. McCain knows he is vulnerable on immigration, and Romney hit him where it hurt. Nothing foul about that. Politics is a tough game.

One Important note on the Democratic Race in New Hampshire. Although Hillary retains a one-point advantage in the most recent Reuters / C-SPAN / Zogby Daily Tracking Poll, this is misleading. That poll is based on a rolling canvass; that is, the latest poll reflects an average of the last three days.

However, I heard John Zogby say on C-SPAN this morning that yesterdays numbers, when taken alone, reveal an eight-point Obama advantage. This would indicate that the tide has turned in a dramatic way, which explains why the Clinton folks are running for the hills, and the pundits are predicting a crushing defeat for Mrs. Clinton in the Granite State.

When a society abandons faith and confidence in its own worth, and ceases to demand a reasonable level of social integration and assimilation, the result is a mulitiplicity of enclaves who happen to share national borders.

Such a future is coming into being in Great Britain. One result is that it is increasingly dangerous for non-Muslims to live and work in Muslim dominated areas of Britain, so says Michael Nazir-Ali, the Pakistani-born convert from Islam who now is a Bishop in the Church of England. Story here from the Telegraph, link from Jihadwatch.

Some excerpts:

The Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali, the Bishop of Rochester and the Church's only Asian bishop, says that people of a different race or faith face physical attack if they live or work in communities dominated by a strict Muslim ideology.
. . .
Bishop Nazir-Ali, who was born in Pakistan, gives warning that attempts are being made to give Britain an increasingly Islamic character by introducing the call to prayer and wider use of sharia law, a legal system based on the Koran.

In an attack on the Government's response to immigration and the influx of "people of other faiths to these shores", he blames its "novel philosophy of multiculturalism" for allowing society to become deeply divided, and accuses ministers of lacking a "moral and spiritual vision".

Echoing Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Equalities and Human Rights, who has said that the country is "sleepwalking into segregation", the bishop argues that multiculturalism has led to deep divisions.

David Davis, the shadow home secretary, has accused Muslims of promoting a kind of "voluntary apartheid" by shutting themselves in closed societies and demanding immunity from criticism.
. . .
The Rt Rev Nicholas Reade, the Bishop of Blackburn, which has a large Muslim community, said that it was increasingly difficult for Christians to share their faith in areas where there was a high proportion of immigrants of other faiths.

Will this become the situation in the United States? Will our abandonment of a "national narrative", our loss of a sense of shared history and identity, our disavowal of assimilation, lead to a collection of cultures who happen to share national borders?

The Okie Gardener continues to encourage me to write more campaign pieces concentrating on substantive issues. In my defense, I have argued, among other things, that the candidates are basically similar on their policy proposals within their respective party races.

For example, I am currently watching the Democratic Party edition of the ABC News debate.

Thus far (half-way point), the discussion has been mainly an argument over who can withdraw from Iraq the fastest, who can nationalize healthcare the soonest, and who can best explain how the troop surge in Iraq has failed (despite all evidence to the contrary).

Another Reason for my dearth of substance: Horse race and personality are what the primaries are all about. It can be a lot of fun. Back in the nineteenth century, before TV, organized sports leagues, or the internet, (or primaries, for that matter), Americans entertained themselves with politics. For the record, approximately 80 percent of eligible voters participated in electing leaders back then. This is what I call fun. I am watching the debate instead of the wild card playoff game.

Once we pick two candidates, we can do much more with the platforms and policy statements. Until then, expect a generous portion of horse race and other sports metaphors.

New Year's Eve my wife and I went to dinner and a move. (Our 29th wedding anniversary) We saw National Treasure: Book of Secrets.

It is an enjoyable movie, a thrill ride of clues and places and treasure. If you liked the first National Treasure, you probably will like this one. Since the movie depends on twists and turns and breakneck speed, I will try not to provide any spoilers. I do, however, want to comment on the hero, the Nicolas Cage character Franklin Gates.

In many ways, he is an old-fashioned hero. He is determined to defend his family honor by proving the innocence of a maligned ancestor. He is loyal to his father and his friends. With the exception of "necessary" deceptions to sneak into places not open to the public, he is an honest man. And he keeps his word, even to the villain of the movie. Not to mention that Gates is brave, resourceful, and determined. And, he loves his country in an old fashioned way. He is that rare thing from Hollywood, a character you would be a better person for imitating.

But, here is the new-fashioned part. In the beginning of the movie we learn that Franklin Gates has been living with Abigail Chase, the curator he met in the first movie. And that she has kicked him out and changed the locks. Not surprisingly for the old-fashioned tone of the movie, man gets woman back by the end. But, instead of a marriage proposal, she tells him he can move back in.

I guess I should just be grateful that we have a hero to emulate in most ways.