Cruising the Web

Now they're arresting seventh-graders for burping.

The good news is that, if Gingrich becomes president, his wife will be a mix of Nancy Reagan and Laura Bush with some Jackie Kennedy thrown in. Gingrich's grandiosity extends to his wife.

Barney Frank gets angry when he gets a few slightly tough questions on the Today Show. He doesn't enjoy having to walk a few inches in the shoes that Republican politicians walk in every day. Poor boo.

Verum Serum digs up what Gingrich said in his advocacy for Freddy Mac back in 2007 when they were trumpeting his strong support for such government-sponsored enterprises on their website. And of course, what he was saying then is the exact opposite of what he claimed in the CNBC debate a few weeks ago. He was advocating for the model of GSE's and now that we know how damaging these GSE's have been for our economy, he's lying about what he was doing.

Hollywood stars are having to deal with their disappointment in The One.

In order to combat reverse discrimination, some Asians are deciding to not check the Asian box on their college applications. Doesn't this say it all when talking about the inequities of affirmative action?

Yuval Levin makes the argument that Romney and Gingrich are not all that different on policy, but the real difference between them is one of temperament.

Alec Baldwin thinks that the rules don't apply to him when he's having fun playing an online word game. His ugly behavior got him thrown off the plane and he struck back with this gratuitous swipe at American Airlines stewardesses.

“Last flight w American. Where retired Catholic school gym teachers from the 1950’s find jobs as flight attendants.”

What a charmer.

An Indian state auditor finds nearly $300 million in state funds than previously thought. Mitch Daniels wants to either refund it to taxpayers or save it for a rainy day. The Democrats want to spend it. That's the contrast in the parties right there.

Just another Obama supporter in another scandal of federal money going down a deep hole.

Barack Obama's attempt to wear the Teddy Roosevelt mantle of New Nationalism leads Michael Knox Beran to look at what H.L. Mencken wrote abotu Teddy Roosevelt's adoption of the power of big government. The description would fit Obama today.

The “America that Roosevelt dreamed of,” Mencken wrote

was always a sort of swollen Prussia, truculent without and regimented within. . . . He didn’t believe in democracy; he believed simply in government. His remedy for all the great pangs and longings of existence was not a dispersion of authority, but a hard concentration of authority. He was not in favor of unlimited experiment; he was in favor of rigid control from above, a despotism of inspired prophets and policemen. He was not for democracy as his followers understood democracy, and as it actually is and must be; he was for paternalism of the true Bismarckian pattern, almost of the Napoleonic or Ludendorffian pattern—a paternalism concerning itself with all things, from the regulation of coal-mining and meat-packing to the regulation of spelling and marital rights.

There is more than a whiff of President Obama in this, for he too is a Big State Man. And as such he is out of step with the time. A century after Roosevelt called for more government control at Osawatomie, the dead hand of Big Statism is destroying the economies of the West and bankrupting the treasuries. Yet President Obama and his party stubbornly resist policies to restore a more reasonable balance between state power and private enterprise.

And Victor Davis Hanson reflects on all the presidential personas Obama has tried to adopt: FDR, Lincoln, Reagan, Wilson, Truman, and now TR.

This is all pretty pathetic. What we have here is an adolescent president in desperate search of an adult identity of his own, without which he borrows liberally from others, often oddly from Republicans or conservatives. And coming back from Lala-land to reality, today we get Obama’s anti–Wall Street speech as a backdrop to Bill Clinton’s Wall Street lobbying firm taking $50,000 a month from the bankrupt MF Global of liberal Jon Corzine — a progressive whom Joe Biden once assured us was a go-to guy when economic crises were upon us.

Oppo on Newt

Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank have said what a lot of Democrats must be thinking - boy, would be such a gift for the Democrats.

Pelosi knows more about Gingrich than perhaps any other major national political figure. She was a senior Democrat when Gingrich was House Speaker, served on the ethics committee that investigated Gingrich for tax cheating and campaign finance violations, and even cut a 2008 ad with him on the importance of addressing global climate change.

But when TPM asked her to talk a bit about his recent ascent and the possibility that he’ll be the GOP nominee, she mostly demurred.

“I like Barney Frank’s quote the best, where he said ‘I never thought I’d live such a good life that I would see Newt Gingrich be the nominee of the Republican party,’” Pelosi said in an exclusive interview Friday. “That quote I think spoke for a lot of us.”

Pelosi didn’t go into detail about Gingrich’s past transgressions, but she tipped her hand. “One of these days we’ll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich,” Pelosi said. “I know a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff.”

Pressed for more detail she wouldn’t go further.

“Not right here,” Pelosi joked. “When the time’s right.”

Of course, it would be unethical for her to leak information from the Ethics Committee investigation of Newt, but there are plenty of sources for such oppo on Newt. Atlantic Magazine does a little googling on Newt and comes up with a non-exhaustive list of Newt's less-than-stellar moments. Reporters and opponents don't need Pelosi to violate her position on the Ethics Committee for this sort of stuff.

Or if you don't like the list of old baggage from Newt's past, how about the arrogance of the guy. Check out this list of famous people that Newt has favorably compared himself to: Charles de Gaulle, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Abraham, Lincoln, the Duke of Wellington, Henry Clay, and also Marion Barry and Ho Chi Minh. Sheesh! We've had to live through the years of Obama's off-putting arrogance. Is Newt's arrogance any more appealing?

And then there is this list of Newtonian flip-flops that he himself admits were stupid ideas in the first place.

Conservatives may prefer to just return with taunts about Obama. But that isn't sufficient. Will a dumping of this sort of stuff lead independent voters to choose Newt over The One? I doubt it. He wasn't appealing to them in the 1990s, and a reminder of the reasons why isn't going to lead those voters to like him better now. And like it or not, presidential elections are won by winning those very moderates. And that is why GOP primary voters need to pay attention to such dumps of oppo research.

A devastating comparison

Victor Davis Hanson thinks that Newt Gingrich's biggest weakness will come from his advocacy for Freddie Mac and his lame explanation that he was hired to give advice as a historian. Yeah, sure. And Hanson dares to term Gingrich's obvious advocacy on behalf of Freddie Mac as "Daschleism."

But I think his biggest problem on this score was his mea culpa that he was not a consultant, but a “historian.” Is that laughable assertion supposed to be “candor”? If so, a historian would quickly have reviewed the record of Freddie and Fannie assets and liabilities, and then in quite dry fashion offered a conclusion that something was beginning to go quite wrong with these sorts of unaccountable, but costly, agencies.

But more to the point, there are literally hundreds of historians who deal in both economic and financial history and the history of U.S. government/private partnerships. Most such academics would probably have eagerly sought bids for consulting work at $30,000 a month (if it were open for bidding), done it far more cheaply, and stayed out of the politics of the agency’s funding. No one believes, then, that Freddie was looking for, or found, historical expertise.

Gingrich must know that he was hired, not because he was a better historian than his colleagues in the field, but to ensure bipartisan support from the conservative side for an agency that was starting to ring alarm bells about its very solvency, and indeed ethics. On his end, his stamp of approval would be aimed, in the manner of the later Pelosi global-warming ads, as a refreshing statesman-like embrace of a needed initiative that transcended politics; “home ownership,” after all, was often a conservative talking point about a larger “ownership” society. The lobbying was a win/win deal for both parties — as long as we think away a corrupt and near-insolvent agency paying huge sums to former politicians and political appointees without any banking experience: Review the compensation and quite immoral Fannie careers of those who, like a Franklin Raines ($90 million in aggregate Fannie income and bonuses), James A. Johnson ($200 million in aggregate Fannie income and bonuses), or Jamie Gorelick ($26 million-plus in aggregate Fannie income and bonuses), had no financial expertise, walked away with lots of money, left disasters in their wake, and were never really held to moral or legal account.

And that is the problem, is it not — that lobbying transcends politics, as liberal agencies court conservatives to pose as statesmen in their support, and more conservative bureaucracies sometimes seek out liberals who can pose as being “reasonable” — not for the idea of “reaching across the aisle,” but simply for profit.

It is quite common for members of Congress to leave office and then strike it rich selling their name and access to their former colleagues. No matter what Newt claims, that was what he was doing. And does that make him any different from Tom Daschle?

Gingrich has spent the past decade trying to win strange, new respect from the media and liberals by endorsing such liberal beliefs such as his appearance with Nancy Pelosi and palling around with Al Sharpton. That was what was behind his bashing of Paul Ryan's budget and Medicare reform plan earlier this year. He tried to pair criticism of Obama with criticism of Ryan in an attempt to appear above it all and the senior politician. Why did it take blowback from conservatives for Gingrich to back-peddle on those comments? Those comments were all part of his long attempt to win back the love of the elites.

Conservatives fear Romney's ideological squishiness and I don't disagree. I worry about the misjudgment that led Romney to support Romneycare in the first place. But I think that Romney can be held in check by conservatives in Congress. I think Gingrich (if he should by chance win the presidency, which I doubt) would take an impish delight in back-stabbing Congressional Republicans if he thought he had a great, futuristic-sounding idea that would also let him stroke elite soft spots and win plaudits from the press.

It astounds me that conservative voters have glommed onto Newt Gingrich to express their populist discontent with the tawdriness of Washington politics and Obamaism just because he comes across as a grandiose thinker in the debates. Much of that reputation came from his tangling with the journalists asking the questions. Great. Conservatives always love them some media-bashing, but Gingrich is going to have to do more than talk about how he's mellowed with age and grandchildren before I forget his performance as Speaker. And his transparent pretense that, for some reason, Freddie Mac need his experiences as a historian is a clear-cut demonstration that he has no defense for that item on his resume.

Outsiders vs. Insiders on Newt Gingrich

Byron York details the insider-outsider divide over Newt Gingrich. Those that know him best, Republicans who have worked with him or journalists who have followed his career for years, all seem to agree that he's an undisciplined and arrogant blowhard. Republican voters are more forgiving.

"There are all types of leaders," Coburn continued. "Leaders that instill confidence, leaders that are somewhat abrupt and brisk, leaders that have one standard for the people they are leading and a different standard for themselves. I just found his leadership lacking and…I will have difficulty supporting him as president of the United States."

Gingrich has also taken flak from another former colleague, Rep. Peter King. "The problem was, over a period of time, he couldn't stay focused," King said of Gingrich a few days ago. "He was undisciplined. Too often, he made it about himself."

It's more than just former colleagues. If one were to survey politicos, journalists and others who lived through Gingrich's years as speaker in Washington, there would likely be a near-consensus that Gingrich will blow up his candidacy through some mixture of arrogance and indiscipline. Those insiders simply don't believe there is a New Newt. Old Newt, the Gingrich who alienated many of his colleagues back in the 90s, will reassert himself soon enough, they believe.

Those opinions are colored by personal experience with Gingrich during his years as speaker. That's not the case for most voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Florida and the rest of the primary and caucus states. While insiders remember Gingrich's low points from the 90s, outsiders remember his triumphs. They remember a Gingrich who had the vision to imagine a Republican takeover of the House when no one else could, and the skill to make it happen. And when outsiders think of the two greatest policy achievements of the Clinton years -- a balanced budget and welfare reform -- they know Gingrich can legitimately claim a lot of credit for both. So what if he was abrupt with colleagues? Or, for that matter, if he was the target of a Democratic-driven ethics attack? As far as the 1990s are concerned, outsiders remember Gingrich's high points.

Insiders who are dumbfounded that we are the point that Newt Gingrich seems to be running away with the nomination must be tearing their hair out. It was one thing to think that the GOP was going to have to settle for an unexciting Mitt Romney, but Newt? Geesh!

Politico notices that there has been somewhat of a silence from some of Gingrich's former allies-turned critics on Newt today.

Even by the standards of politics – where partisans know better than to throw rocks at their prospective presidential candidate – the muffled voices of the no-Newt chorus are breathtaking.

This is a man who led the push for Bill Clinton’s impeachment even as he carried on his own extramarital affair. He was fined $300,000 for obstructing a House ethics probe against him. He spearheaded the 1995 budget showdown with Clinton that led to two government closures and a resurgence in Clinton’s popularity despite the “Republican Revolution” the year before.

But it was more than that. Gingrich’s ego made him want to be constantly at the center of all the action. He was thin-skinned and arrogant in dealing with the press and critics in both parties. He dismantled the House seniority system and accrued power in the speaker’s office, a trend that continued under his successors. And his lack of discipline often resulted in a morning strategy that was discarded by day’s end if not noon, much to the dismay of his own caucus.

Gingrich has fresh problems, too. Despite well-received performances in a long series of Republican primary debates, the familiar grandiosity that made Gingrich an easy caricature for political opponents has re-emerged with his surge in the polls. He credited himself with winning the Cold War and predicted he’ll be the Republican nominee.

He recently referred to himself as a “celebrity” in defending against charges that he shouldn’t have taken $1.6 million in fees from embattled home mortgage giant Freddie Mac. Gingrich argued that he didn’t need the money because he made $60,000 per speech — more than most American households earn all year. He also offended many when he suggested that poor kids should take up janitorial work at elementary schools.

As one commentator said this weekend, it's only a question of whether Newt will implode before or after he gets the nomination. The Obama team must be thrilled. Whether there is a new Newt or an old Newt, they can combine their criticisms of both Newts as soon as he becomes the nominee.

Cruising the Web

Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey explains why neither Elena Kagan nor Clarence Thomas need or should recuse themselves from the case hearing the constitutionality of the health-care law.

Ross Douhat makes the argument that Occupy Wall Street is, at least, better than the union-backed protests in Wisconsin or the environmentalist protests against the XL Keystone pipeline.

Better a protest movement that casts itself (however quixotically) as the defender of “the 99 percent” than a protest movement that just represents Democratic interest groups. And better a left that flirts with utopianism than a left that adheres to the dictum attributed to Leonid Brezhnev during the Prague Spring: “Don’t talk to me about ‘socialism.’ What we have, we hold.”

Joshua Green writes that "If Gingrich is the answer, the Tea Party has failed." Absolutely.

Friday's administration document dump on Fast and furious proves that they were misleading the public and Congress back in February. The only remaining question is why the administration adopted the policy in the first place. Don't expect any answers.

When the president regards private business as the enemy, it's no surprise that he adopts policies that cost jobs.

But government’s metabolic urge to boss people around has grown exponentially and today CKE’s California restaurants are governed by 57 categories of regulations. One compels employees to take breaks during the busiest hours, lest one of California’s 200,000 lawyers comes trolling for business at the expense of business.

Barack Obama has written that during his very brief sojourn in the private sector he felt like “a spy behind enemy lines.” Puzder knows what it feels like when gargantuan government is composed of multitudes of regulators who regard business as the enemy. And 22.9 million Americans who are unemployed, underemployed or too discouraged to look for employment know what it feels like to be collateral damage in the regulatory state’s war on business.

Does Barack Obama have a tin ear?

Robert Samuelson explains how Europe's financial crisis is an inevitable result of an expanded welfare state accompanied by sluggish economic and demographic growth. The model is unsustainable. And what can't be sustained, collapses. Americans should take note.

Anti-teacher union groups are growing in that bastion of union strength - Los Angeles. There is a growing divide between young and older teachers. The newer teachers see how the unions are making it harder for them to find or keep jobs. And they don't see why they should be so opposed to jobs being based on merit rather than seniority.

The self-grandiosity of Newt Gingrich

There seems to be a mismatch between how conservative pundits regard Newt Gingrich and how the GOP public being polled today regard him. People who have other things to do in their lives to obsess over what politicians have been saying and doing over the past few decades are able to look at the GOP debates this season and see a confident and intelligent-sounding, smooth debater who takes it to the media and Obama. They remember that he was the leader of the Republicans who took over the House in 1994 and led the impeachment efforts against Bill Clinton. And that's enough for them.

Pundits and analysts who have been paying much closer attention remember that Gingrich tarnished his leadership of the House from the beginning with running his mouth constantly from the moment the 1994 elections thrust him into a leadership role. He went up against Clinton in the government shutdown and got his rear handed to him. He led the impeachment effort against Clinton for lying under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky while engaging in his own extra-marital affair. He was forced to resign as his own Republican allies got tired of him. He has since been on an effort to build a career as a self-important lobbyist-in-all-but-name while cozying up to such liberals as Nancy Pelosi, John Kerry, and Al Sharpton.

And while doing all of that he keeps talking about himself as “world historical transformational figure”. Who, other than Barack Obama, talks that way about himself? Does that sort of self-grandiosity appeal to anyone but himself?

Over at Pundit & Pundette there is a great post examining "Newtworld" examining some of Gingrich's wackier ideas and with links to satirical commentary on Newt's writing including this great 1998 article from Mark Steyn after Gingrich had resigned as speaker.

He was fond of movements and 'Movement Planning Proposals', but he couldn't resist moving from movement to movement. He's responsible for more movements than a crate of Ease-O-Lax: from 'The Triangle of American Progress' to the 'Caring Humanitarian Reform Movement' to 'The America That Can Be' to the 'Citizens' Opportunities Movement' to 'Renewing American Civilisation'.

If you're wondering what 'The Triangle of American Progress' is, relax: pretty soon it had evolved into 'The Four Pillars of American Civilisation', which in turn expanded into the 'Five Pillars of the 21st Century'. The collected brainstorms of Newt sound like a cross between T.E. Lawrence and the numerologically obsessed Fruit of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan who claims that once a month he's taken up into a spacecraft floating above earth to commune with the spirits of deceased African-Americans. Aside from his 'Five Pillars', Newt had the 'Four Great Truths', the 'Nine Zones of Creativity', the 'Fourteen Steps to RAC' (see Renewing American Civilisation above), the Four Can'ts, the Five Cs, the Four Tops, the Jackson Five, the McGuire Sisters, and on and on.

The Democrats demonised Newt as an extreme right-wing crazy. They were right - apart from the 'extreme' and 'right-wing', that is. Most of the above seem more like the burblings of a frustrated self-help guru than blueprints for conservative government. For example, Pillar No. 5 of the 'Five Pillars of American Civilisation' is: 'Total quality management'. Unfortunately for Newt, the person who most needed a self-help manual was him - How to Win Friends and Influence People for a start.

Jim Geraghty compiled a list of proposals that Newt has spewed forth in just the past seven years. Think of the ad that could be made, perhaps by Ron Paul, with these "not-so-greatest-hits."

And then there is his tendency to take credit for anything conservatives might admire. This week he explained his conservative credentials to Sean Hannity.

I helped Ronald Reagan and Jack Kemp develop supply-side economics. I helped lead the effort to defeat communism in the Congress.

Oh, yes. Communism would still be around today if it weren't for what a back-bencher did in the House in the 1980s. And who knew that it was Newt Gingrich who was at the table for developing supply-side economics?

Jill at Pundit & Pundette remembers this self-important Newt and isn't impressed today.

That Newt is why I can't take today's Newt seriously. He's full-to-bursting of himself and his multi-point "solutions," which he cranks out at will and inflates with portentous language. (Try it at home. It's mostly in the adverbs. Instead of saying, "Gee, Aunt Martha, this new pumpkin pie tastes delicious," spice it up with a few of Newt's favorite modifiers and your simple compliment will take on a grand and weighty significance: "This dramatically reconfigured, deeply compelling pumpkin pie tastes extraordinarily delicious.")

This led Steyn, guest-hosting for Rush Limbaugh, to pile on.

“You watch him in the debates,” Steyn said. “It’s all ‘profoundly, dramatically deeply compelling. All the action is in the adverbs. One of my problems again with Newt is like he’s bursting with ideas that sound all as if they are coming from a self-help manual.

Steyn expanded on Hugh Hewitt's show.

I think Newt is a great salesman for Newt. But if you ask me, he hops and skips like a giddy frog across lily pads across the pond, from one, little, itsy-bitsy novelty idea to another, not awfully well thought out. And when I look at some of the things he’s managed to sign onto over the last fifteen years, I find that very worrying. Even the Contract With America, by the way, all the programs it was supposed to eliminate not only weren’t eliminated, 96 of them or whatever, but by 2000, the spending on them had gone up 30%. He’s very good. He’s a very plausible salesman when he wants to be. But the idea of Newt as the Republican presidential candidate is, I have to say, extremely dismaying to me.

Charles Krauthammer examines the battle between Newt and Mitt and comes down where I have been and blogged about yesterday. As Krauthammer writes, yes, Mitt Romney has serious defects as a conservative candidate. But Gingrich is not the answer.

Two ideologically problematic finalists: One is a man of center-right temperament who has of late adopted a conservative agenda.

The other, more conservative by nature, is possessed of an unbounded need for grand display that has already led him to unconservative places even he is at a loss to explain, and that as president would leave him in constant search of the out-of-box experience — the confoundedly brilliant Nixon-to-China flipperoo regarding his fancy of the day, be it health care, taxes, energy, foreign policy, whatever.

The second, more obvious, Gingrich vulnerability is electability. Given his considerable service to the movement, many conservatives understandably seem prepared to overlook his baggage, ideological and otherwise.

But the independents and disaffected Democrats upon whom the election will hinge will not be so forgiving.

They will find it harder to overlook the fact that the man who denounces Freddie Mac to the point of suggesting that those in Congress who aided and abetted it be imprisoned, took $30,000 a month from that very same parasitic federal creation.

Nor will independents believe that more than $1.5 million was paid for Gingrich's advice as "a historian" rather than as an influence peddler.

My own view is that Republicans would have been better served by the candidacies of Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan or Chris Christie. Unfortunately, none is running.

You play the hand you're dealt. This is a weak Republican field with two flawed front-runners contesting an immensely important election. If Obama wins, he'll take the country to a place from which it will not be able to return (precisely his goal for a second term).

Every conservative has thus to ask himself two questions: Who is more likely to prevent that second term? And who, if elected, is less likely to unpleasantly surprise?

That's exactly where I come down on the idea of Newt Gingrich as the Republican nominee. I don't think he can win independents and worry about what he'd do as president. Romney doesn't thrill me, but I think he's more electable and less likely to be filled with his own importance so that he would rush off to try to win inside-the-beltway cred by teaming up with liberal leaders just to appear to fulfill his historical, transformational role as a world figure.

Obama's rocky path to reelection

Jay Cost analyzes the strategy that Obama's aides have recently indicated will be how Obama plans to win reelection. In several recent stories, it's become clear that there are three main goals of the Obama campaign.

1. Do as well with the non-white vote as Obama did in 2008, with the expectation that it continues to increase as a share of the total electorate.

2. Hold steady with upscale white voters, who tend to be more focused on quality of life issues like environmentalism.

3. Mitigate losses among the white working class, but expect to lose this group once again.

I always wonder why aides to candidates are so open about their strategy for victory. Why announce ahead of time what they're trying to do, especially when part of that strategy includes assuming a loss among such a large part of the electorate as the white working class. James Taranto tackles that question and the only reason he can come up with is that the Obama team is trying to indicate that they do indeed have a plan for winning even if having such a plan means they have to indicate that they're planning on losing a big chunk of the electorate. Yeah, it's a lame explanation for a dumb announcement. As Taranto writes, they might indeed write off those voters, but it is gratuitous to make their indifference to those voters so public.

But even with these self-identified goals for the Obama strategy, as Jay Cost demonstrates, it is going to be extremely tough for Obama to win. For example, they might assume that they're going to lose the white working class, but examining the numbers of the vote that he got in 2008 in important swing states in the Midwest, it's clear that the white working class made up close to 50% of his victory. However, right now, his poll numbers are much worse among that group. If he loses 8 to 10% off his vote total in 2008 this time, it is going to be very hard for him to win some of the key states in the Midwest, much less in other parts of the country.

Cost goes on to examine the premise that Obama has it all wrapped up with upscale white voters who, in poor economic times, might not have the luxury of voting on quality of life issues rather than on economic issues. And while Obama is sure to win the African-American vote in a big way, it is not a guarantee that the non-black, non-white vote will go for him in the same numbers as they did in 2008.

So how does Obama appeal to these disparate groups of minority voters and high-income white voters. The best he can do is attack the Republicans and try to emulate the Truman 1948 strategy. But it is pretty difficult to duplicate a strategy that worked over 60 years ago. The situation is just not the same. For one thing, Obama is less popular than Harry Truman was at a similar point in his presidency - remember Truman had just presided over victory in a world war and could count on most of the New Deal coalition sticking with him. Labor support meant a lot more in 1948 than it means today.

And, as Karl Rove points out, it is going to be difficult to campaign against a "do-nothing" Congress" when the Democrats control one-half of Congress and have refused to pass a budget in several years. And Obama had a "do-something" Congress with a filibuster-proof majority for the first two years of his presidency and people didn't like the things that they did. What does he have to promise people other than more of the same stuff that the public wasn't pleased about at the time?

So Obama's path to reelection is indeed rocky. But we can't project in a straight line from today to next year. The economy could dramatically improve and Obama could claim credit for that. There could be some foreign policy breakthrough such as the fall of Iran's ayatollahs that Obama could claim credit for.

Or, and this is his best hope, the GOP could nominate someone who would be so unappealing that he would make Obama look good. And that is what I'm afraid of. It makes me heartsick that, in an election year when things are looking so good to defeat Obama, the Republicans main choices are now between Mitt and Newt, neither of whom is all that appealing. Mitt's weaknesses as a flip-flopper are well-known and the DNC is already trying to soften him up and perhaps take him out by putting up in key states an ad targeting him on abortion and Romneycare. It's an ad that could be run by any of his GOP opponents. And that's no coincidence. The DNC and Obama team are paying him the compliment by indicating he is the candidate they fear most.

But today Ron Paul launched an even more devastating attack on Newt Gingrich.

Romney must be so thankful to Paul for doing his dirty work against Gingrich.

History is full of "if only's," but gosh, think of what it would look like if Mitch Daniels or Paul Ryan had overcome their personal and family's objections and run this year. Or Jeb Bush. Or Bobby Jindal. If Obama wins next year, I fear it will be due to GOP weakness rather than Obama's own appeal. And that would be just a dang shame. I'm used to voting for the candidate who repels me the least, but I'm also full of daydreams about the "if only's" that would have both made Obama's path to reelection even more rocky and given us hope for much more promising future president in January, 2013.