As Senator John McCain moves into the formidable position of presumed front-runner we're seeing the start of the punditry class trotting out arguments that he is, in fact, a conservative Republican.  However, given the insidious way in which the definitions of 'liberal' and 'conservative' have suffered a kind of values bracket creep, yesterday's moderate Republican is today's conservative, and onward down the chain.

It's the malleability of definitions that disturb those of us who consider themselves true conservatives, and one serviceable definition is that a real conservative is the arch-enemy of the media, academia, the Beltway and cultural elites, and just about everyone except--other conservatives.  But real conservatives are immune from the threat of being politically ostracized and for their intellectual succor prefer to read the Federalist Papers than the local papers.

More concretely, if you think that Governors Schwarzenegger and Crist or Senators Collins or Snow are conservatives, McCain will make you deliriously happy.

Conservatism is clearly out of step with our culture which is unconditionally permissive across the board.  Indeed, it has the unfortunate blueprint of principles that demands that we often say no:  No to taxes, regulation, political correctness, race-based hiring practices, multiculturalism, on-demand slaughtering of the innocent unborn, activist judges, undisciplined children, emasculating the military, proscriptions on drilling for oil, or coffee klatches with barbaric leaders.  And, as we all know, telling people 'no' when they yearn to hear a warm 'yes' is culturally proscribed today and can earn you a one-way ticket to the political hinterland. 

That's because the media, the entertainment industry, and our public school system, have achieved a measure of success in demonizing conservatives as uncaring, indifferent to the plight of the needy, and only looking for the next increase in military spending to jump-start their next war.

In light of that working definition, McCain really doesn't measure up, because whether it's global warming, political speech, health care, immigration, or taxes, he has a record of being America's premier first-responder to scene of every compromise.  That stated, those schooled in the art of negotiation know that compromising is inherent in politics, but the McCains of the world seem eager to elbow their way to the podium to announce the latest concession--what he and the Democrats call 'bipartisanship.'

Indeed, there are times when a studied intransigence is indicated as a way to telegraph one's resolve which, if sincere and resilient, can cause one's opponent to reconsider positions he previously considered non-negotiable.  And, though it is probably the case that McCain would hold the line against the radical extremists, in virtually every other area he has a record of abject compromise--and that's simply not acceptable to conservatives.

It will be fascinating to see whether he can win the nomination without support of real conservatives.

I.  The Florida Surprise

One of the attractions of political handicapping is that it's a relatively risk-free endeavor.  But election results often provide further evidence that human behavior is unpredictable and when it comes to presidential elections, prognostications are best characterized as recreation.

In light of the results in Florida, yesterday's post is a case in point as voters gave the nod to Senators Clinton and McCain. Were the elderly, moderates, and Hispanics that won the day for McCain indifferent to his senate record that not only reflects a left-leaning political temperament but a disturbing kind of consistency?  And, have Floridians who voted for Clinton contemplated four or eight years of a dual presidency?

In any event, this scrambles the equation for super Tuesday in ways that would cause heartburn in an MIT mathematician. But there may be one lesson on each side of the equation:  First, for Democrats, the charisma of Obama may be trumped by his callow political persona; and second, for Republicans, Romney may be seen as a general election liability against either Clinton or Obama.

II. Biting the Hand that Feeds Us

Proving once again that the secular left’s agenda to excise religion from public life is predicated on totalitarianism, Colorado House Majority Leader Alice Madden has authored a bill that would prohibit religious charities from using religious preferences in their hiring practices.

People with even a modicum of understanding of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment understand that the Founding Fathers’ intent was to prevent the establishment of any one religion, not to sever the relationship between government and all religions.

It’s axiomatic that the only absolute in the land of liberalism is moral relativism, which is the legislative impulse that drives the Maddens of the world to take action against this Quixote-esque sea of troubles. The thought that a recipient of services at Catholic Charities might actually adopt its religious precepts of universal beneficence to those in need or the primacy of Jesus Christ in their lives, is apparently more than Madden can tolerate.

We are routinely reminded by liberals that recent judicial decisions concerning church and state matters have supported a strict separation.  But that argument is only credible when viewed in light of the judicial activism of the past half-century, the most egregious example of which is Roe v. Wade.  Known by laymen as 'legislating from the bench,' it's a way for liberal judges to judicially achieve what they can't legislatively. 

If this bill passes, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver was quoted the Denver Catholic Register as saying that,

When it [Catholic Charities] can no longer have the freedom it needs to be ‘Catholic,’ it will end its services. This is not idle talk.

And, Bishop Michael Sheridan of the diocese in Colorado Springs said he would refuse the government's 3 to 5 percent of the Catholic Charities' budget if the law forces him to forgo religious preferences in their hiring practices.

Knowing this diocese as we do it's unambiguously clear that Catholics would respond overwhelmingly to make up the lost revenues.  However, the more profound issue is the extreme, radical nature of Madden's proposed bill which seeks to stifle the free expression of religious values that is constitutionally guaranteed. 

It's curious because secularists lecture Christians to keep their values and principles to themselves, demanding that they silently witness the slow degradation of our traditional values.  Moral agnostics are free to embrace ethical anarchy, but Christians will not stand idly by and let the secularists muzzle them in the name of some hallowed liberal goal.

This field of presidential candidates, in particular the Democrats, persuades us that charisma and likability, rather than executive experience, are paramount in voters' decision making.  Indeed, front-runners Obama and Clinton are arguably the least qualified in modern history to assume the title of commander-in-chief since neither has managed complex, large-scale organizations such as a Fortune 500 corporation or a state.  Yet people seem magnetically drawn to Mr. Obama whose likability index approaches sainthood but with none of the abrasiveness of Hillary or Machiavellian traits of Bill.

Senator Clinton has more experience, if only because of her age, but it's not the tiered executive or managerial profile we typically see in presidential candidates.  When combined with what we might charitably call a husband with ego problems, voters are taking a second look and visceral displeasure might be the most succinct response. 

Using the gender lever against liberals is always a delightful exercise, so we're compelled to ask what the feminists think about a woman seeking the highest office in the land on the strength of name recognition?  The image, as Maureen Dowd recently wrote, of Hillary being pulled across the finish line by Bill does seem contrary to the goal of feminist emancipation, but all of this is well-earned retribution for a movement that sought to rewrite our genetic code.

On the Republican side, attentive voters must be tiring of McCain's caustic attacks on Mitt Romney who, like a prize fighter, is bobbing and weaving his way through the onslaught while maintaining a cheerful disposition--a lesson the Arizona senator ought to, but won't, take to heart.  By now the tempest in a teapot concerning Romney's discussion of an internal time table for withdrawal from Iraq, which McCain twisted to comport with his politically motivated conclusion, is old news.  What voters should remember, however, is that puerile antics are the hallmark of intellectual insecurity and people who know McCain best, know he wrote the textbook on that.

If we had to venture a guess, it appears as though the post-February 5th field will be effectively, if not de facto winnowed.  Giuliani will return to his international security consulting firm, Huckabee will hang on by the proverbial thread, albeit one that's fraying, and Edwards will drop, fly-like.  Clinton, due to organizational strength and residual finances, will push on, but Obama will be the anointed nominee.  McCain's personality will lose the day for him as Romney's sunny optimism and demonstrated expertise on economic matters, makes him the man to beat.

Although voters are instinctively drawn to a bright, charismatic personality such as Obama's, ours is an age that demands a defined measure of confidence in a man who seeks the highest office in the world.  Beyond understanding how best to manage the economy, critical to that calculus is the capacity to negotiate the foreign policy minefield, and Obama's pledge to talk with Iran and--under certain circumstances--attack Pakistan won't convince the folks in Peoria.

Political maturity can't be feigned and therein lies Obama's weakness.  This is clearly not a time for second string quarterbacks, and two years in the senate combined with a stint in the state legislature is simply not major league material.

That bodes well for Romney, who has the temperament, judgment, experience, and depth of understanding necessary to prevail.

I.  The Economy:  Truth & Fiction

Obtaining a balanced perspective is always a worthwhile exercise, but more so in our age of economic illiteracy, when many Americans seem to have attention spans best measured in milliseconds, as well as a depth of historical understanding on a par with freshness dates.

For a dose of comparative data, we turn to Brian Wesbury's exceptionally detailed analysis in today's Wall Street Journal.  It's a rich loam of information that you can digest at your own pace, but we cite it to illustrate two points:  First, that the media will exploit any hint of bad economic news, and second, the superficial and distorted nature of their reporting, which, in an age of an informed electorate would be laughable, can be foisted upon us with impunity and recycled as truth.

Against that backdrop, the rush to execute a stimulus package--"rush" meaning it will happen before the election--is equally ludicrous and a shameful indictment of the low esteem in which the Bush Administration and Congress hold the American people.

II.  Why McCain Will Lose

What's remarkable about Senator McCain's recent ascendancy is not the fawning way in which the media and liberals have embraced him--with Bill Clinton telling us that a McCain-Clinton race would be "civilized"--but rather how faithfully it tracks with the nascent fissures in the Republican Party. 

We've argued that the electorate is softening around the edges, that what is currently called 'fiscal conservativism' is a pale and lifeless example of the genus represented by a Newt Gingrich or a Dick Army.  As such, it's not surprising that McCain can assume the mantle of a fiscal conservative, or a champion of free speech for that matter, while maintaining a straight face.

Moreover, when a candidate such as McCain, who has routinely, and with obvious glee, flouted the base and joined arch liberals such as Senators Feingold and Kennedy (and, calling it "bipartisan"), when he appears on Meet the Press, as he did yesterday, and claim he's been with conservatives all along, we can expect independents and amorphous Republicans will nod their heads in agreement.

However, as we've also argued, reports of the death of the base have been greatly exaggerated and with tomorrow's primary in Florida and the Mother of primaries coming up next week, reality may realign itself with the truth.  Winning in New Hampshire, with its absolutely obtuse primary rules, is a poor predictor of electoral viability.  Nor is McCain's narrow victory in South Carolina dispositive of the remaining contests.

III.  Another Look at Romney

With the one unalloyed conservative, Fred Thompson, out of the race, and the one who might compete well in a general election against either Democrat, Giuliani, likely to drop out soon, having another look at Romney makes sense.  Huckabee might merit an honorable mention but we see his populist stock plummeting after super Tuesday as well.

As a prelude, we would caution against reading too much into the polls that show McCain is the only Republican who can win against either Clinton or Obama.  There's an artificiality inherent in polling, which merely means we often express different views about our thinking when the actual decision is an abstraction many months away.

That stated, there is a disconcerting air of perfection in Mr. Romney, from his polished, Ward Cleaver appearance to his measured responses to questions.  Indeed, his assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, we're convinced this is a man who hasn't experienced failure, in everything from never having been turned down for a date in high school to getting every job he ever applied for.

But, we know that beneath his steely carapace is a man who truly loves this nation, but, crucially, not in the way that liberals do.  He appears to see in his fellow Americans the potential for greatness, but a greatness not derived from government.  Rather, it's something unleashed by eliminating the economic and civic inhibitions caused by government intrusion, in the form of hobbling regulations and confiscatory taxation.

Romney's performance in recent debates confirms this analysis because he's becoming more animated and fervent in his belief of what's possible if we put government back in its cage.  Mr. Obama, in contrast, is equally charismatic, but his prescription is for a heavier dose of government than we already have, which is to say we can tax our way out of any problem.

We can only thank God we have so many news and information outlets, not just the Mastodons of the Neolithic era--CBS, NBC, ABC, and the NY and LA Times, that impose a liberal filter over every utterance or story.  Now, at least the truth has a chance to survive beyond the first moments of its earthly life.

Beyond the requisite political qualifications, an obvious precondition for someone seeking the presidency in America is a burning desire to win, what pundits call the "fire in the belly."  However, for nearly every president in history, that lust for power and prestige is checked by an abiding respect for the office. 

If there were an award for the poster-adolescent exception to this rule it would have to be Bill Clinton, whose scurrilous besmirching of the office is as legendary as it is apparently forgiven by his brethren on the left.  In a predictable, but nonetheless disturbing reprisal of that role, Mr. Clinton has demonstrated that ill will is a genetic, not a learned behavior, and what's striking about this post-presidential chapter is that his fellow Democrats are expressing their displeasure at his antics.

For the only sitting president to have been impeached, stripped of his law license and fined, his temerity must certainly be measured in Napoleonic metrics.  But beneath his obvious disregard for the office he once inhabited and one day hopes to have peripheral access to through his wife, lies a dark, acerbic personality on a par with Richard III.  That Shakespearean character was the prototypical study of man of consummate duplicity sans even a trace of a conscience.

In Clinton's cross-hairs is the affable, charismatic, Senator Barack Obama, who has had the political audacity of upstaging Hillary Clinton, whose grasping, visceral desire for the White House approaches the level of a birthright.  Voters not only forgive human frailties, if candidly expressed, they can become touchstones of identification between the common man and presidential aspirants who, modern pretensions to the contrary notwithstanding, we still view as well above us poor mortals.  However, hubris, arrogance, or the monarchical stain of electoral presumption is something they will not countenance.

With the able assistance of Bill, that is precisely what Hillary has created in the past few weeks and it has spread like a plague throughout the Democratic Party.  Indeed, stalwart Clinton loyalists in the media and in Washington have expressed their discomfort with Bill's unpresidential, finger-wagging, red-faced confrontations, suggesting that party unity--read, the election--is at stake.  But since the Clintons' ambitions have always trumped everything from politics to common sense, the storm is showing no sign of abating.

Although the goal of keeping Obama off balance has been achieved, the likability factor has clearly redounded to the senator from Illinois, not New York.  And, despite the fact that both are photo-finish liberals, juxtaposing the image of eight years of him versus her makes many, perhaps most Democrats giddy at the thought of the first African-American president.

With so many regional conflicts and economic upheavals in play today it's important to recognize the fact that freedom is, in fact, on the march.  As reported by John Stossel, two economists have tracked the relationship between freedom and economic vitality, and, as they recently reported, economic freedom is expanding, not contracting.

That contradicts the received wisdom emanating from our media and much of academia which, for reasons we'll explore later, seem inordinately focused on isolated evidence and atypical patterns to argue that the world's in a sorry state. 

Their evidence comports with our intuitive understanding of freedom, in particular that real freedom has corollary responsibilities and obligations, which are often enforced through a regulatory apparatus.  That takes the form of the rule of law and the enforcement of contracts, which bring a level of confidence to participants that the playing field is nominally level.

At the microcosmic level, it means people's hard work and successful business strategies may one day produce results and afford them a higher standard of living for themselves and, in particular, for their children.  Critically, although there's a broad-based consensus about that equation, it's curious that some seem to believe it's exclusively reserved to the West.

There were many justifications for the invasion of Iraq, from Hussein's flouting of the United Nations' resolutions to the universal belief that he had weapons of mass destruction.  However, the longer-term, which is to say, more profound, interest was to bring a measure of freedom to the Iraqi people and, by extension, the Middle East.  The largess in that desire had an obvious element of self-interest because, as the axiom goes, democracies don't attack one another.  Or, to keep it in the economic world, Bastiat's notion that "Where goods don't cross borders, armies will."

So, we might want to inquire about the Democrats' motivation for painting a picture of nearly universal doom, on both the civic and economic fronts.  To the degree they adhere to democratic values and the rule of law, the nations of the world grow incrementally freer and more people are enjoying a higher standard of living.  Yet, many on the left seem disinclined to allow those values to take root in Iraq, where 25 million people are now enjoying at least a modicum of freedom.

Indeed, the Democratic presidential candidates seem to be in political lockstep with  their left wing by trying to upstage one another with ever more aggressive withdrawal timetables.  Is it any wonder that in times when America's national security is threatened voters are far more inclined to return Republicans to the White House?

It's a matter of trust, and the obvious conclusion is that liberals can't be trusted to aggressively defend America from the forces of radical Islam which are intent upon our destruction.

A key difference between the fading memory of 9/11 and the Roe v. Wade decision of 35 years ago is that 3,000 Americans died in one day on 9/11 while the savagery of Roe takes 3,200 lives each and every day. 

A revealing theme of the despicable attacks six plus years ago is that we've allowed our collective conscience to become lulled into a false sense of security while seeming to forget the horrors of that day.  Yet before our very eyes, a quiet moral killer takes the lives of the innocent unborn and many of us fail to register even the slightest ethical pang, much less the kind of outrage that it warrants.

When the Supreme Court rendered its decision--a gross breach of judicial restraint which constitutional scholars across the political spectrum agree was a textbook example of fabricating law--the nation had already been on a glide-path to moral anarchy, compliments to the post-modern 60s.  We can trace that abrogation of core moral values to the radical left's blind assertion that marriage is a quaint--read, obsolete--social convention and that sexual intimacy is an unsacred expression of love--an apt oxymoron.

Once the bond between sexuality and marriage was broken, it also sundered the moral underpinnings that had been tacitly internalized for generations in the form of an understanding of the religious value inherent in postponing sex until marriage.  With sexual intercourse redefined as recreational, an entire generation was given the cultural green light to glut its lust sans consequences--except for the occasional "unwanted" pregnancy.

It's been well documented that a vital precursor for sending millions of Jews to the gas chambers during World War Two was the process of dehumanizing them.  When you subtract a person's humanity from their existence you become convinced they no longer have the same rights as others.  Therefore, whether it was the Germans during that war or Saddam Hussein during his reign of terror, torturing and murdering those poor souls was of no consequence.

The same process of dehumanization takes place as people convince themselves of the anonymity of the unborn.  With the advent of ultrasound technology that act becomes less facile, but it's a testimony to the perverse resilience of the human mind that people are able to find comfort in the notion that it's not a person in the woman's womb.

The arrogance and supreme selfishness of people who would snuff the life of a helpless unborn human is simply staggering in its moral depravity.  Yet about every 30 seconds that happens and since 1973 over 47 million human beings were slaughtered before they took their first breath.

Many on the left decry the barbarity of war yet fail to see their moral blind spot when it comes to abortion.  They may assert that they abhor abortion but never left a finger to stop it and reflexively vote for candidates who support that so-called right. 

It's an especially vicious kind of tyranny--the tyranny of the unaborted.

In any election year we can expect to hear exaggerated claims from candidates desperate to reposition themselves as the competition heats up and they scrounge for every last vote.  But when we read that Senator Hillary Clinton considers herself a fiscal conservative and the media faithfully and uncritically communicates her message, we can be assured we've left the world of facts and have entered the Looking Glass world of Clintonomics.

For an editorial that's as lengthy as it is painful to slog through, we turn to today's New York Times on-line, which begins with an assertion--read, a warning--that under a Clinton presidency,

the federal government would take a more active role in the economy to address what she called the excesses of the market and of the Bush administration.

Throughout this piece, Clinton uses the word "appropriate" as code for "common sense" or "sensible," but it means neither in the context of an "appropriately regulated market" or an "appropriate balance between the market and government."  Indeed, we don't need a cryptographer to decipher her cynical intent which is the economic equivalent of a ball and chain for markets. 

More specifically, in the view of liberals, markets only perform well when they are in service to their political goals, which is akin to micromanaging them to the point they guarantee outcomes that comport with their liberal sensibilities. 

From there, Clinton wades into the thicket of taxation, outlining her plan to roll back the Bush tax cuts for "the wealthy," overlooking the fact that the top 1 percent of income earners currently pay 36 percent of federal taxes and that the top 5 percent pay 56 percent.  As illuminating, the bottom 50 percent pay just 4.6 percent of the total--not, apparently, progressive enough for the New York liberal.

At the core of the left's vision for America is a disdain for those who take risks, work hard, and achieve success.  She vilifies corporate managers who "secure the biggest possible pay package at the expense at everybody else," invoking the left's pet misconception that the "pie" is so finite that every dollar that goes to the CEO is balanced on the backs of front-line workers.

Her program of government activism wouldn't be complete without her recommendations for the housing "crisis," which would include a "90-day halt to foreclosures on homes with sub-prime mortgages and a five-year freeze in the interest rates on all sub-prime mortgages."  Markets, for the left, are static, anonymous entities without fiscal lifeblood, so they feel no need to restrain their goals of economic equality, and in the case of housing, it would punish and reward the wrong parties.

Although it would be a challenging analysis, it would be illustrative if someone could calculate the current impact on our financial markets of the prospect of a liberal such as Clinton in the White House.  Markets are on permanent hair-trigger that respond to any hint of instability, and considering the liberals' well-documented love of confiscatory taxation and a regulatory apparatus that would make a Cold War Soviet smile, it shouldn't surprise us that they get the jitters at the prospect of Hillary and Bill in the Oval office.

Passing out money from a printing press is about as heady an experience as we mortals might ever hope to partake in and that's precisely what Congress is contemplating in its $150 billion giveaway.  Erroneously called a 'stimulus package,' the largess from our Potomac Potentates is akin to taking a diabetic to a desert smorgasbord--it's a form of cruel and inhumane treatment.

Moreover, it's premised on a craven motivation, which is to say it's a compulsory political move, the inevitable product of a culture that puts feelings ahead of efficacy.  But that's exactly what we should expect in an election year as our Beltway Bruins chest-thump their way to the podium to announce their own special brand of unhelpful assistance.

President Bush is living up to his well-earned reputation in this regard by not taking a tough stand by telling us what we don't want to hear:  As evidenced by the 2001 handouts, a few hundred dollars passing through our hands to cash registers across America will make no measurable difference in a $13 trillion economy.  Indeed, this is merely the continued infantilization of the electorate, which takes its place along side the liberals' health care reform nostrums.  If you like the results FEMA produced you'll be thrilled with a government delivered health care program.

With the noteworthy exceptions of Republican candidates Giuliani and Thompson, whose voices seem lost in the din, no one is giving voice to the solution most likely to produce results:  Take measured but deliberative steps to invoke capital formation, job creation, and long-term investment, which is to say, reduce corporate tax rates from the current rate of 35%--the second highest on earth--to 25%, drop marginal tax rates, reduce capital gains to 5%, make the Bush tax cuts permanent, and then watch as an economic miracle unfolds.

But macroeconomic responses to problems ginned up by a fawning media intent upon magnifying these molehills into Everests have no political appeal and are, indeed, the third rail of policy recommendations.  In our age where we're obliged to externalize the sources of every failure, our most reliable--if unproductive--recourse is to the government, which is to say, other people's money. 

Of course, in the case of the feds, it's new money, because, as members of both parties apparently agree, cutting taxes commensurately with handouts defeats the purpose--so let's just print more and drown our sorrows in the deficit.  So as a nation of adolescents anxiously awaits their $300 or $500 checks, and those who made abysmally ill-informed decisions in the sub-prime market are immunized from the consequences, we can be assured that the underlying economic problems won't be resolved.

Which leads those of us with historical memories deeper than a Mayfly to ask:  Are there any adults left?

With Mitt Romney's win in Michigan and with South Carolina just over the horizon, the only obvious conclusion political analysts are willing to make is that it's just too hard to handicap.  That can be construed as either a healthy reflection of the competing messages among the Republican candidates or a testimony to the nascently hybrid nature of the modern Republican.  A post at The Nation by Bob Moser effectively argues that it's the latter and that Democrats should be slapping their thighs in glee.

But Moser misses the point by concluding that an indecisive Republican voter bloc is indicative of general election frailty.  Indeed, not unlike the Democratic field, Republican voters in the early primary contests are beta sites that provide valuable political litmus tests for subsequent races.  In that regard, voters in New Hampshire distinguished themselves from Iowans with their flinty brand of independent Republican values, and Michigan, with its unique economic problems and left-leaning electorate, were drawn to Romney for his strong business skills.

Further, the fact that Rudy Giuliani hasn't performed well in these early battles means very little because voters are getting heavy doses of the other candidates, and the more they see of Huckabee and McCain, the less they like.  Indeed, the base is expressing its growing discontent with Huckabee's opportunistic populism and McCain's hollow claims to the mantle of the true conservative. 

Unlike either of them, Giuliani is comfortable in his political skin and has nothing to run or hide from.  In that regard, his popularity might be latently realized as comparisons become more permanently etched in voters' minds.  Further, as more races ensue and the general election looms large before the electorate, we'll have a better idea who the likely Democratic nominee will be, and that will help drive voters' motivations to disproportionately weigh the notion of electability over purity of conservative values.  That, of course, uniquely benefits Giuliani.

We'll parse one final paradox from Moser's piece, beginning with this quote:

The oddest thing about Romney's win is that it came in a state in economic crisis--a place that you'd have expected to overwhelmingly reject a man who made millions as a downsizing consultant.

In a stroke of ironic genius, Moser makes one of the left's most telling assumptions:  that voters would have rejected Romney because he "made millions as a downsizing consultant."  In truth, that's an insult to voters and obfuscates their remarkable political insight for choosing someone with Romney's business skills because that's exactly the kind of man you want to combat complex economic woes.  But for the left, the fact that he made millions for successfully bringing companies back from the dead is a glaring disqualification.

More evidence of the curious things we can see through the skewed lens of liberalism.

There was a time when the most fundamental distinction between Republicans and Democrats was that the former were more reticent to inject government solutions into the market place.  With the notable exception of Richard Nixon's disastrous brush with wage and price controls, most Republicans believe problems related to our capitalist system are best resolved internally.

The justifications for adherence to the laissez-faire approach begin with the fact that the government has no inherent right to interfere with markets, but just as crucially is the fact that doing so is a form of policy malpractice because it's so politically freighted.  Further, the blunt hand of government is never aware of its many unintended--and adverse--downstream impacts.  Moreover, its interference skews the normal incentives and disincentives that create a kind of motivational symmetry by rewarding success and punishing failure.

But, for underlying reasons that have a clear cultural imprint, even Republicans are succumbing to the siren song of government intervention in areas that were off limits just a few years ago.  Indeed, the motivation to 'help others' has outweighed the principles of restricted government and individual responsibility, and former governor Mitt Romney is exhibit A in this unfortunate development.

In a radio interview with Hugh Hewitt, Mr. Romney talked about an activist approach to solving the alleged housing crisis by sheltering homeowners from the consequences of their imprudent decisions.  Further, his health plan initiative in Massachusetts is a government mandate and its operated by the Commonwealth Health Insurance Connector, a government entity.

As reported in the American Spectator, RomneyCare is expected to have cost taxpayers about $619 million in 2007, or $147 million (31 percent) higher than its original projections.  But as the article documents, for all his vaunted business acumen, from economic output to manufacturing to jobs growth, Romney oversaw a lackluster economy.

Moreover, he increased the taxes for subchapter S corporations owned by business trusts from 5.3 percent to 9.8 percent, called for a 10-year sales tax moratorium for hybrid gas/electric cars, which won the fawning--read, unflattering--praise of Democrats state-wide.

Good intentions in politics often score more points than they should because comparative outcomes can't take into consideration the cost of increased regulation, taxes, and the collateral reduction in individual freedom, not to mention the special obligations and consequences that our markets demand and exact from us.

If Mr. Romney was comfortable as governor with an aggressive menu of government solutions for issues that are rightfully the charge of markets, we can be assured he'll be a champion of robust government interference in our capitalist system. 

We already have a trio of Democrats advancing that agenda, do we really want to add a fourth, and a "Republican" to boot?

One of the many unintended and culturally noxious byproducts of modern liberalism is the racial blow-back currently creating fissures in the Democratic Party.  When Senator Clinton said that it took President Lyndon Johnson to codify the civil rights era reforms of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., it ignited a racial firestorm that predictably produced far more heat than light.  

In response, Senator Obama and his troops made the credible claim that they weren't to blame for injecting race into the debate, that his response to Clinton's charge that Obama was offering false hope flew in the face of modern legacy of civil rights initiatives.  We can perform the political forensics and produce a scorecard to determine which candidate was most persuasive, but the more interesting analysis takes us below the surface of combative racial politics.

Having been privileged to have seen and heard Dr. King speak, the editor can attest to his viscerally moving appeal to the uniquely American notion that our rights are God-given and that they apply equally to all human beings.  Conspicuous by their absence in his rhetorical repertoire is any evidence that race is itself dispositive concerning values or character.  Indeed, the paragon of quotable King axioms is that we should judge others not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

Somehow in the ensuing years, a hyperactive liberal cabal mistranslated his message for cynical political advantage.  The result, as we're all painfully aware, is what President Bush aptly called the "soft bigotry of low expectations," which translates into the Great Society's abysmally misguided efforts to help minorities.  Nearly seven trillion dollars later they are just beginning to understand the racism inherent in stipulating that blacks are somehow less capable of success due to their race, or that 'the system' is always to blame for disparate scholastic aptitude between blacks and whites.

However, since we've been successfully inculcated with the liberal creed that insists that racial diversity is a civic goal on a par with achieving eternal salvation, and that we can divine the values of people based on a calculus of race or ethnicity, we shouldn't be surprised when Democrats such as Clinton and Obama take the gloves off to debate whose politics is more racially pure.

Indeed, whether it's incarceration rates or income or education, there remains a remarkably resilient ignorance concerning the core truths of racial politics and how we might advance the cause of equality among all Americans.  But when you juxtapose that with the political ownership that is gained in the exchange it makes perfect, if perverse sense.

What is dispiriting is that the perpetuation of racial quotas--or, to use the more 'enlightened' term, "preferences"--which can blindly provide advantages to the son of an orthopedic surgeon of African descent and hamstring the son of a Caucasian day laborer, seems to continue unabated.  We can extend that argument to the left's hallowed belief that multiculturalism is a goal worthy of warping common sense and re-writing our civil rights laws accordingly.

Although we don't expect liberals such as Clinton and Obama to see the rich irony in this latest racial spat, we can only hope that a modicum of daylight might one day penetrate their studied ignorance.  In that regard, the work of Bill Cosby, who routinely chastises fellow blacks who indulge the seductive, if corrosive comfort of victimhood and Fox News commentator Juan Williams, whose book, Enough, is a sturdy rejoinder to liberals who would excuse aberrant behavior by recourse to charges of racism, are causes for celebration.

Not unlike our personal lives, many of our nation's foibles and missteps are directly or obliquely the products of our own creation.  When, through misjudgment or merely being misinformed, we journey down a path that began benignly enough but which became antagonistic, course corrections are indicated.

That's at the core of Madeleine Albright's editorial in today's Boston Globe, but it's her course correction that is itself flawed, because the problems themselves, the recommendations, or both can be traced to the obtuse hand of liberalism.  She walks us through a litany of challenges the next president must face and provides ten essential recommendations based, of course, on fidelity to the liberal creed, which is to say manifestly ill-advised.

Vital to that coda is the premise that our military is stretched too thinly due to the misguided commitments of the Bush Administration.  At about 4.5 percent of Gross Domestic Product, there's no question that it's underfunded.  Recall that during the Kennedy Administration that figure was about 9 percent, and with the notable exception of the Reagan years, where it was substantially increased and the Clinton years when it was decimated, it's been on a steady decline ever since.

Curiously, it's liberals such as Albright who at once decry the fact that our military is under-resourced and who are 'shocked' that in real dollars it's more than all of Western Europe's budgets combined.  Sternly counseling, as she does, that the next president must limit military deployments to "essential missions" is effectively meaningless because that calculation is in the eyes of the beholder.  In that regard, that the left's view of "essential" closely tracks with Rep. Ron Paul's non-interventionist policy, which, as we noted in yesterday's post, is simply not prudent in this day and age.

An inevitable component of the left's recipe for success is bipartisanship, which is transparent code for Republican capitulation to its liberal agenda.  And, if you have the temerity to suggest that higher taxes and regulation are unwise, or that a robust foreign policy premised on American exceptionalism is wise, you're led to the political stocks at the edge of town and vilified as 'partisan.'

We can't avoid the lecture concerning our allegedly tarnished reputation overseas and Albright is at the ready with rhetorical guns blazing, telling us that we must

...understand that, to many overseas, America today is identified more with violence and arrogance than justice and liberty - more with Guantanamo than Omaha Beach.

Well, she must not be talking about France and most of Eastern Europe, as the former under President Sarkozy has reanimated its support for American values and the latter has always been staunchly in our camp, in large measure because they are more credible witnesses to the horrors of despotic atrocities.  Beyond that, it's the Albrights of today who would have been unqualified supporters of Chamberlain as he stepped off the plane from Munich in September 1938 waving the agreement he had signed with Hitler--which the Fuhrer ignored just six months later by invading Czechoslovakia.

She next suggests an approach to dealing with al-Qaeda, but her nostrums fall flat, first because she makes no mention of winning by annihilating them, and second, because she calls their acts of war "crimes," the left's instinctive down-grading of terrorism to the level of armed robbery.

There are other recommendations that invoke responses, ranging from the circumflexed eyebrow to head-scratching, but we'll close with this gem:

...intelligent acts of diplomacy should not be confused with appeasement.

We might ask Albright to provide an example of an "intelligent act of diplomacy," one which led to an unequivocally positive outcome for America, versus an a priori concession.  For an incisive view of the skewed way in which the State Department has conducted diplomacy over the years, we would recommend former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton's recently released book.

Indeed, it's unfortunate that the kind of steely diplomacy discharged by Jeane Kirkpatrick, which unapologetically advances American values, has been the exception in recent decades.  In its stead, we've suffered a kind of intellectually incestuous diplomacy based on a pre-qualified list of America's foreign policy sins.

If a Democrat wins the White House this year it's abundantly evident that Albright's wish list will be faithfully executed, and the weakening of American values--and might--on the global stage will follow in its wake. 

That leads us to ask the logical question at the heart of it all:  Is an emasculated America liberalism's goal?

There are elements in the libertarian creed that make sense, especially in our age when the major parties seem indistinguishable from one another in areas such as fiscal profligacy and over-regulation.  However, there's an impractical insistence on operational absolutes that mar libertarianism, which Rep. Ron Paul faithfully, if naively supports.

Novice political historians will recall former president Jimmy Carter's realpolitik approach to the Middle East which reeked of disdain for the kind of U.S. policy based on establishing pragmatic relationships predicated on a calculus of relative evil.  In this week's Republican debate Mr. Paul chastised traditional Republicans, especially of the neoconservative stripe, for cozying up to the Shah and Saddam Hussein, and for their support at one time of bin Laden. 

Those arguments, whether from a Democrat or Republican, illustrate the libertarian's founding principles of non-intervention as justified by the inevitable evolution of unpredictable foreign leaders, in particular those in unstable regimes.  The argument makes the realistic charge that countries such as Iraq and Iran, that the U.S. had supported at certain times, will exploit our good will for their own cynical purposes which are ultimately antagonistic to our interests.  They further argue that, our best intentions notwithstanding, it's impossible to parse the good from the bad and so it's a exercise in self-delusion to engage in the first place.

Although those arguments do have a certain plausibility, as we have advanced from the 18th through the 21st centuries, they are rendered progressively less persuasive based on the three tiered reality of a world that grows more inextricably interconnected with each passing year, the advent of nuclear weapons, and the genesis of asymmetrical warfare in the form of the omnipresent danger of radical Islam. 

Indeed, a reading of history in the hundred years preceding the Treaty of Vienna in 1815 provides a paradigmatic example of the vast complexities of foreign agents competing for regional economic and geographical hegemony.  The rapidly shifting alliances and fleeting tactical conveniences that were formed and discarded based on permanent interests ought to be instructive for those who understand that the only thing worse than entering the murky world of strategic battles in foreign affairs is to passively sit on the sidelines and be forced to accept the outcome.

It's that apparent failure to understand, or willingness to discount the need for the world's sole superpower to be involved in every key region of the globe, if only to ensure that trade routes are kept viable, that is most perplexing.  The secondary conundrum is the libertarian's argument--and here Mr. Paul is its most vocal acolyte--that the U.S. has caused the radical Islamic elements to attack us, because we've insinuated ourselves into the inner-workings of their region.

Given the hundreds of attacks by Islamo-fascists in the past thirty years against nations as varied as Indonesia and Spain, including, of course, America, it's curious that they don't see the true cause which is the Islamists' desire to impose Sharia law on the West--at all costs.  Indeed, if you read Osama bin Laden's October 2001 statement concerning his motivations for attacking the U.S., it's retribution for the abolition of the Caliphate which was a post-Ottoman Empire event about which most Americans know very little.

Yet, the Islamic radicals speak about it as though it were yesterday, and the grim reality is that it's rekindled centuries old hostilities between Christianity and Islam, a history most in the West have long forgotten if they ever truly knew it.  Most crucially, since radicals might be able to obtain tactical nuclear weapons, the Paulite policy of non-intervention is a de facto formula for self-destruction.

In that regard, it's an anachronistic policy that may have had a measure of credibility in a different age, but today it only reflects an astounding naivete and abiding ignorance of the world in which we find ourselves.

In scoring last evening's Republican debate in South Carolina, two observations seem paramount:  First, Mike Huckabee is a remarkably skilled politician who effortlessly recasts pejorative characterizations of his record and apparently seamless questions intended to penetrate chinks in his political armor into transparently positive, nay, heroic efforts against daunting odds and opportunities to expand on esoteric Biblical passages; and, second, Fred Thompson may be the best qualified conservative in modern history who will never be the Republican nominee.

Indeed, although a key question from one of the moderators focused on the fact that Huckabee raised taxes dozens of times in Arkansas, he turned the issue on its head by arguing that he was court ordered to improve highways and education, and, deftly lifting a page from liberals, sternly admonished us that he wasn't about to let safety jeopardize his citizens and children suffer a poor education.  His response brilliantly avoided the tougher questions concerning his apparent unwillingness or inability to cut spending in other parts of the budget, something former governor Mitt Romney and mayor Rudy Giuliani routinely did--besides cutting taxes.

But since we're convinced that Huckabee's moment upon the stage will ingloriously sunset, we'll turn to the far more intriguing development from last evening, and that is Fred Thompson.  Long before his belated entry into the race, which, itself may have telegraphed a tactical blind spot, we supported the former senator from Tennessee, in part because he's the only unalloyed conservative in the race, but just as critically, because he brings a convincing, if subdued sense of flinty leadership to the table.

Over the centuries the Brits were famous for politicians who rose up through the ranks because they demonstrated a deep and abiding indifference for public office.  Whether that's a cultural gene specific to our friends across the pond or a universal tactic readily adaptable to our own political battles may never be known, but there is something to be said for the man who exhibits a sense ambition tempered by a heartfelt identification with the truly important things of life--love of family and friends, quiet time alone, walks in the woods, you name it, but anything other than politics.

In that regard, interviews with Thompson reveal a man who is passionate about traditional values and deeply concerned about the future of our nation, but one who admits he doesn't have the "fire in the belly" for politics.  Therefore, a quiet evening with family and retiring to his own bed is his definition of happiness, not the rigors of the campaign trail with its inbred need to look presidential and answer questions with a careful mix of forced sincerity and choreographed sensitivity.

But, last evening he came out of the blocks blazing, attacking Huckabee's checkered record as a 'conservative' and wading into complex economic and foreign policy issues, and doing so with obvious conviction and a heretofore unexpressed sense of urgency.  That's the Thompson we had always hoped would dance into the ring of the presidential contest ready to take on all comers.  Indeed, last evening we saw the side of Thompson we knew was always there, the federal prosecutor he played in real life, with the obvious aptitude to eviscerate the facile arguments of his opponents.

In contrast, what we've seen up until last evening was a man whose values and principles are unimpeachable but whose heart just wasn't in the race.  That's lamentable because each of the other candidates have conspicuous and serious flaws, which may be electorally disqualifying. 

And the thought of a man who has exhibited unambiguous shadings of Ronald Reagan, someone with a quiet confidence, concern for the common man, and unbridled love of country as originally contemplated by our Founders, kindled the kind of hope in his fellow Americans that is as rare as it is welcome.