• Mitt Romney will be nominated as the GOP’s candidate in 2012. He will defeat President Obama by a small margin, but by a large margin in the Electoral College. Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina, and Florida will all shift to the GOP column on Election Night.

  Partially Right: I was right in predicting that Romney would get the nomination, but his campaign failed to take on the data-driven Obama reelection effort, which stomped Romney in key battleground states. No longer will I predict that Pennsylvania will swing into the GOP column, as the chances of that are slim to none. Indiana and North Carolina did swing back to the GOP, but Romney’s losses in critical states like Florida, Ohio, Colorado, and Iowa doomed his candidacy.

• The GOP will retake the Senate as the Democrats lose seats in North Dakota, Nebraska, Florida, Ohio, Missouri, and Virginia. The GOP will hold their margin in the House.

  Wrong: The GOP did not retake the Senate—in fact, they lost races that they should have won. The damage to the GOP brand is clear, not only in Romney’s loss, but in the Senate results as well. The GOP did retain the House, but much of their success is due to gerrymandering on the district level. The GOP has serious issues that they need to address if they want to be a competitive national party again.

• Unemployment will remain between 7-8%, and the number of discouraged workers will continue to cause problems. Efforts to spin the economy as recovering by the Obama White House will sound painfully out of touch.

  Correct: The Obama team managed to win reelection in spite of a bad economy, but the real state of the economy continues to be poor at best.

• The Eurozone will collapse in 2012 as Greece is unable to maintain its austerity package. Greece will leave the Euro and redenominate its debts in drachmas. Following that Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland will all threaten to leave the Euro, leaving the future of the currency in doubt.

  Wrong: The Eurozone teeters on the edge of collapse, but has not tipped over yet. The question is whether German money can keep the Eurozone afloat and whether the Germans have any interest in keeping that spigot running. With France doing its best to kill its economy, 2013 might be the year that the EU faces the biggest crisis in its history, and the Euro goes down.

• Apple will release an iPad 3 with a Retina display as well as an iPhone 5 with a new form factor. They will sell like hotcakes. Apple will not sell a TV, however.

  Correct: What I wouldn’t have seen last year was the iPad mini and an updated iPad coming so soon after the launch of the retina iPad. Apple seems to be wanting to push the pace of its product update cycles to keep ahead of the competition.

• Iran will continue to threaten to close off the Strait of Hormuz, but will not actually try. Sanctions will serve to weaken Ahmadinejad and internal corruption will cause a new round of riots in Tehran and other major cities.

  Incorrect: Iran has been relatively quiet this year, especially given that Syria has so dominated the headlines.

• Iraq will fall into civil war, with the Shi’ites fighting the Kurds and the Sunnis. President Obama will do nothing to help the Iraqis, but will blame everything on Bush.

  Thankfully incorrect: However, the situation in Iraq remains highly restive, and there is a risk of Iraq becoming a powder keg thanks to U.S. indifference. But thankfully, Iraq is holding together despite some flares of violence.

• China will face a banking crisis that will spread throughout Asia. Along with the problems in Europe, the global economy will take yet another beating.

  Incorrect: China’s economy may be much more troubled than the Chinese authorities will ever admit, but so far the country’s problems have been successfully papered over.

• “The Avengers,” “Hunger Games,” and “Prometheus” will do well with both audiences and critics, but amount of total box office receipts will continue to decline as even more people discover that it’s cheaper and easy to stay home and watch Netflix.

  Correct: Despite some decent tentpole movies this year, the box office continues to take a beating while upstarts like Netflix continue to gain marketshare and support.

• SpaceX’s first resupply mission to the ISS will be a complete success, just as heads start rolling at Russia’s Roscosmos. As Russia’s Soyuz launcher starts having more and more technical issues, NASA will fast-track plans for private companies to lift astronauts to the ISS.

  Correct: Despite an engine failure on their second mission, SpaceX has shown that it can perform resupply missions to the ISS and is rapidly moving towards being able to lift astronauts into orbit. And amazingly, the Obama Administration has been willing to support the development of private spaceflight in a way than the Republicans have not. Space policy is the one area that this Administration gets right.

• On December 21, 2012, the universe will end when the Mayan god Kukulkan descends from the heavens and decrees an end to all existence. Unfortunately for Kukulkan, he arrives in the middle of a Lady Gaga concert, where a blood-soaked feathered serpent would attract little notice. Disgusted by everything, he figures that non-existence would actually be better than what we have, so he ascends back up into the heaven and has a few too many glasses of wine with Zeus and Thor as they complain that no one actually believes in them any more.

  Incorrect?: While neither the Yellowstone volcano nor a reversal of the Earth’s magnetic poles nor aliens nor Planet X doomed all life on Earth, one never knows how close to doomsday we actually came… Then again, we have our own ignorance which presents a far greater threat to humanity than anything else.

On a more personal note, I have not been blogging much in the last few years, as is obvious from the state of this site. Being employed full-time as an attorney makes the prospect of doing more rigorous analytical writing much less fun. Further, 2012 was an annus horribilis for me in a great many ways, and has left me utterly drained. For those who still come to visit, thank you for your patronage, and hopefully 2013 will be much brighter. (But for those who will read my forthcoming predictions, don’t count on it…)

Yet like nearly everything else in society today, the Newtown atrocity has become yet another excuse for the crudest of partisan politics. Mere minutes after the shootings, the predictable calls for gun control were echoing online. We are being told, in that typically histrionic style, that opposition to gun control might as well be the same as siding with the murderer. The political-media complex are already in full swing, doing all they can to shape the narrative in favor of more firearms restrictions.

Blame the Person, Not the Object

The problem with this convenient narrative is that it misses the points. Guns didn’t kill 26 people in Newtown, Connecticut. Guns are inanimate objects, not evil talismans that possess innocents and turn them into mindless killing machines. The Newtown atrocity was committed by a deeply disturbed person with what appears to be a substantial history of mental illness. It is easy to try and “control” firearms—at least on paper. But admitting that this country has a crisis in mental health is a much harder debate. Instead, the focus is on the longstanding objective of the left: disarming the American populace.

For one, that will never work. Guns exist. High-powered assault rifles exist. We can make them marginally harder to obtain, but criminals will still find a way to get them. The idea that Congress can pass a law banning certain weapons and those weapons will magically disappear is childish thinking. Indeed, we’ve already tried with the Assault Weapons Ban. But when that ban expired in 2004, the number of shootings remained constant.

The anti-gun crowd keeps making predictions of imminent disaster: if the Assault Weapons Ban is not reauthorized, blood will run in the streets! The ban was not reauthorized, and the level of violent crime continued to go down. We heard that if states adopted Concealed Carry laws, that the result would be the Wild West all over again—but the hard evidence shows that concealed-carry permit holders are in fact less likely to be involved in violent crime than the general population. The fact is that as terrible as mass shootings like the ones we have seen this year are the exception, not the rule.

Culture Matters, But Not in the Way You Think

Saying that America’s “gun culture” is to blame is equally facetious. For one, it’s not like these shooters are card-carrying members of the National Rifle Association. The people who care about Second Amendment rights tend to be people who have a healthy respect for firearms. The NRA itself is diligent in promoting safety training and the responsible use of firearms.

There is a cultural problem here, but it has less to do with guns and everything to do with the media. The media breathlessly reports on these mass killings, even going so far as to ghoulishly shove their microphones into the faces of traumatized children from Sandy Hook School. And these killers, almost always mentally ill young men who feel ostracized from society, get exactly what they want: publicity and notoriety.

At The Week, Matt K. Lewis has a deft takedown of the media’s irresponsibility over the Newtown shootings:

To be sure, a transparent society demands reporting newsworthy incidents — and this definitely qualifies. But it should be done responsibly. And that is not what we have witnessed. We have instead a feeding frenzy that is all about beating the competition — not disseminating information.

It’s about being first, beating other media outlets, and making a name for themselves. It’s a ghoulish mentality that stokes controversy and violence — for business purposes. It’s a sort of “if it bleeds it leads” mentality that causes cable networks to create logos and theme music for such tragic events (all the while, they feign maudlin concern and outrage.)

Come to think of it, the media is guilty of doing what they criticize big business for — putting money (in this case, ratings, newsstand sales, and web traffic) ahead of humanity and decency. Just as greedy businessmen put profit and personal gain ahead of ethics, so too do our media outlets.

It is a commentary on our media that there’s a mad rush to repeal the rights protected by the Second Amendment, but none to restrict the dangers of the First Amendment. After all, the Founders never envisioned a world where irresponsible mass media could broadcast falsehoods and misinformation across the globe in a matter of seconds. The Founders could not have envisioned a world when a handful of media outlets would have such control over the public discourse and could use their power to advance their own agendas. In their time, the press consisted of numerous small region publications that could check the excesses of one another. Should not the freedom of the press be restricted only to reasonable technologies such as a basic Gutenberg press? After all, that would be more in tune with what the Founders really intended, wouldn’t it?

Of course that’s a silly argument—but why then are the same arguments used in the context of firearms? Yes, the Founders lived in a time when firearms were relatively crude and cumbersome. But that is not the point of the Second Amendment. The point is that the last and most crucial bulwark against despotism is an armed and capable populace—a nation of riflemen is far more resilient than a nation that has been thoroughly disarmed.

Our culture is the problem, but its a culture that is created by the very same media that wants to disarm the rest of us. If we want to reduce the incentives for these horrific attacks, then the media should have policy that the name of the shooter is never released, the focus is only on the victims, and sensationalism is to be avoided at all costs. Fat chance of the media ever agreeing to that, even in principle.

As The Atlantic‘s Conor Friedersdorf points out this country has already had an in-depth conversation about guns, and the pro-gun side won decisively, with anti-gun efforts failing across the country. The right to self-defense has been recognized as such, and the American people have spoken. We value our ability to keep and bear arms, and that is a choice that represents the democratic will of the American people.

Does that mean that gun violence will continue to be endemic in America? Only if you assume that the availability of firearms is the biggest factor, rather than mental illness, the breakdown of the American family, a failing prison system, etc. The fact is that the number of firearms in this country continues to rise while restrictions on firearms have been loosened—and violent crime continues to decrease.

What happened in Newtown was undeniably a heartbreaking tragedy. But using it as a launching pad for another campaign to restrict the rights of tens of millions of law-abiding Americans is not only a poor way of honoring the dead, but ultimately counterproductive as well.

Postscript: Oddly enough, it is Saturday Night Live that had the most appropriate reaction to this tragedy: having their cold open this week be a children’s choir singing “Silent Night” in front of a single candle. That a comedy show showed more class and dignity than their news operation says a great deal about the media today.

And what is the result of California’s full-throated embrace of liberal policy? This article in The Washington Examiner lays the truth bare:

What are Californians getting for all this government spending? According to a new census report released Friday, almost one-quarter, 23.5 percent, of all Californians are in poverty. One-third of all the nation’s welfare recipients live in the state, despite the fact that California has only one-eighth of the country’s population. That’s four times as many as the next-highest welfare population, which is New York. Meanwhile, California eighth-graders finished ahead of only Mississippi and District of Columbia students on reading and math test scores in 2011.

Middle-class families that want actual jobs, not welfare, are fleeing California in droves. According to IRS data compiled by the Manhattan Institute, since 2000, almost 2 million Americans have left California for other states. Their most popular destination: Texas.

It is ironic that the Democratic Party champions itself as guardians of the middle class, when California shows how liberal policies have the effect of hollowing out the middle class. California has become an enclave for the super-wealthy and the super poor—those in the middle take the worst squeeze. California has become a state where income inequality is some of the highest in the country, despite the notion that liberal social and fiscal policies will create a more equitable society. Despite years of liberal policymaking, California has not become a more equitable place to live.

At the same time, California’s tax rates are some of the highest in the nation. While liberals love to argue that Proposition 13, which limited the Legislature’s powers to raise property taxes, are the reason for California’s woes, the truth is far different. California has some of the highest tax rates of any state in the country, and has a highly progressive tax structure with seven brackets. Despite having a tax system that does everything that the left argues should be done, California is a fiscal basket case.

So what is California’s real problem?:

The real cause for California’s fiscal crisis is simple: They spend too much money. Between 1996 and 2012, the state’s population grew by just 15 percent, but spending more than doubled, from $45.4 billion to $92.5 billion (in 2005 constant dollars).

California simply spends far more than it takes in, despite having some of the richest parts of the country, California’s unquestionable prosperity cannot accommodate the needs of an ever-expanding government. And the response of California’s left-wing government has been to further raise taxes, forcing an even-greater exodus of middle-class jobs to states like Arizona and Texas. What we are seeing is a state that is coasting by on past successes, but rapidly reaching the inflection point where California threatens to become a failed state.

If that seems like hyperbole, it is not. We can already see it happening on the municipal level. The city of Stockton, California has become the largest municipality in the country to file Chapter 9 bankruptcy. (Chapter 9 is a rarely-used part of the federal Bankruptcy Code that allows cities and counties to reorganize their debts in the same way that companies may file Chapter 11 bankruptcy.) But Stockton isn’t alone: three other California cities have also filed for bankruptcy protection, an almost unprecedented event.

The root causes of these bankruptcies are overly-generous public-sector pensions that are no longer sustainable, massive public spending, and tax revenues that are shrinking as the middle class flees for more sustainable climates. Yet these trends are not being fixed, they are being exacerbated as Sacramento continues to push for more and more spending and higher and higher taxes.

Indeed, California faces a fiscal time bomb that could swamp the entire state. CalPERS, the public-sector pension system in California is facing a fiscal crisis. It has even resorted to filing lawsuits against bankrupt cities to try and get additional money to remain solvent. As California’s tax base becomes increasingly polarized, the flow of money needed to give public-sector employees lavish benefits decreases. But the powerful public sector unions have a stranglehold over state government, which makes meaningful reform virtually impossible. When CalPERS goes bust, as is inevitable, the economic effects would be dire.

And that doesn’t even get to immigration: California’s lax immigration enforcement and lavish welfare benefits have created a massive Latino underclass. Illegal immigration costs California taxpayers up to $1.6 billion every year, a sizable fraction of California’s overall yearly deficit. Even if those costs are inflated, the very real cost of providing benefits to hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants is having an effect on California’s already-precarious fiscal situation.

The California Canary in the Fiscal Coal Mine

California’s looming failure is a warning to the rest of us. California is being buoyed by its prior good fortune, it’s abundant natural resources, and its excellent climate and geography. But even these natural advantages cannot hold its decline at bay forever. Should nothing change, California will face fiscal collapse, and it could take the rest of the country down with it. A fiscal crisis in California would have massive ripple effects across the entire United States economy. But the political will for reform is simply not there. With no effective resistance to the liberal orthodoxy in California, there is nothing to slow down the stream of bad policies contributing to this mess.

But what cannot go on forever will not, and sooner or later the results of these bad policies will hit in full force. Sooner or later the unsustainable trajectory that California is on will meet the ground, and when it does, the end result will be messy at best—and that’s the most optimistic way of putting it.

What California show us is that liberalism is rife with internal contradictions. Liberalism teaches that economic inequality is dangerous, yet years of liberal policies have produced shocking inequality in California, The rich Los Angeles suburbs like Beverly Hills, Malibu, or Brentwood exist just miles from some of the most blighted urban landscapes in the country. Liberalism says that the middle class must be defended, yet California’s middle class is fleeing the state, and those that remain are getting squeezed ever tighter by high prices and high taxes. Liberalism says that government should be the solution to our problems, but California’s government is one of the most dysfunctional in the country. California is proof that liberal means can never achieve liberal ends—and each year those contradictions only grow.

What California needs is a complete reorganization. California can succeed, it has all the natural benefits in the world and still enjoys the benefits of being a center for technology, aerospace, biotech, and other fields. Despite California’s brain drain, it still has a substantial part of its educated workforce left. The ingredients for success are all there, but California’s dysfunctional government and left-wing hegemony is keeping it from success.

Restoring California’s Dream

What California needs is to reform its pension system, even if it creates massive political costs. It needs to dramatically cut unnecessary spending, including stopping giving such lavish benefits to illegal immigration. Proposition 13 may have kept California’s property taxes artificially low, but that’s been offset in some areas by insanely high property values in certain areas of the state. Property tax reform may well be necessary, but it should be combined with a simpler, flatter, and less punitive income-tax system and a reduction in both business taxes and unnecessary regulations.

California has benefitted from a highly-educated workforce, but that cannot continue so long as California’s schools are failing, both K-12 and higher education. Instead, California needs to do what the rest of the country must do: reform the educational system from a sinecure for bureaucrats into a result-driven system that teaches the skills needed for the 21st Century workforce. Right now many of the people working for California’s high-tech industries are foreigners on H1B visas—and while those workers add a great deal to the state, it’s not sustainable over the long term. Developing a better educational system will make sure that California can maintain its high-tech economy into the future. If they fail to do that, California will become an also-ran.

California demonstrates the reasons why liberalism doesn’t work: because if you do everything that liberalism says, you don’t get a more equitable or modern economy. The problem is that for many of the stakeholders in California’s broken system, there is no impetus to reform. The public sector unions have every reason to keep sucking at the teat until it runs dry. The educational bureaucracy has no desire to reform and threaten its gravy train. The ultra-rich don’t care what tax rate they pay because they have enough wealth that the difference between losing 10% to taxation and losing 5% ultimately doesn’t impact their standard of wealth. A Hollywood movie star doesn’t care what their tax rate is, they are paid an obscenely large amount of money and their finances are handled by an army of lawyers and accountants. The small business owner who can only afford a part-time bookkeeper is acutely aware of the impact of taxation. Yet the Hollywood celebrity has far more political clout than the small-business owner.

Sadly, the only way that this system will likely be reformed is when there is no other way possible. The liberal welfare state is ultimately unsustainable, but is extremely difficult to reform. California was once a symbol of America’s cultural, technological, and economic might. Yet now it is becoming a warning. If we fail to heed that warning, California dreamin’ will become a national nightmare.

But the inhuman events of September 11, 2001 should, must, never be forgotten. The ghosts of September 11 still haunt us today, and while we are fortunate that we haven’t been hit like that again, the world we live in no is in some ways more dangerous than the one that existed on September 10, 2011.

Even though Osama bin Laden is burning in the deepest pits of Hell, and al-Qaeda no longer exists as it did, the same factors that drove the terrorism of September 11 are still out there. Across the Arab and Muslim world, preachers of hate still find receptive audiences. The Muslim Brotherhood, the entity that was instrumental in informing al-Qaeda, is more powerful then ever. The same group that brought us Ayman al-Zamahiri and Mohammad Atta now runs all of Egypt. And rapidly, the Middle East is falling into tyranny rather than freedom. From Tunis to Tehran, radical Islamist groups are gaining new ground, taking over entire countries, and spreading their ideals across the world.

If there is one consolation to this, it is that when these groups try to lead, they fail. The beliefs of radical Islamism are anti-human. They cannot stand in the real world, and the only way they can survive is through nothing more than naked force. As it happened in Iraq, it may happen elsewhere: the people see what livinig under a violent theocracy is like, and they reject it. But that may be too hopeful.

We owe it to the victims of the September 11 attacks not to forget not only what happened on that terrible day, but to make sure than such atrocity never happens again. We are failing. A new iron curtain falls from North Africa to Central Asia, an iron curtain of radicalism and hatred. The roots of the next September 11 are growing silently right now.

As we remember the dead, let us honor them by not only carrying their names and their lives in our hearts, but by committing ourselves to a better world. On that terrible day eleven years ago, we showed the world that the forces of radicalism were nothing compared to the forces of democracy and freedom. They showed us the worst that humanity was capable of. We showed them the best. They murdered innocents in cold blood. We sent heroes into burning buildings to save as many lives as they could.

We would like to think that freedom will always conquer fear, that democracy will always conquer savagery, that peace will always beat out violence. Those are comfortable illusions for us, but they are only that. The ghosts of September 11 compel us to remember that the world is what we make of it, and that we must carry on in defense of the values that make us who we are.

The ghosts of September 11, 2001 whisper to us today. We should stop and listen.

Paul Ryan speaks at the 2012 Republican National Convention

President Obama is the kind of politician who puts promises on the record, and then calls that the record. But we are four years into this presidency. The issue is not the economy as Barack Obama inherited it, not the economy as he envisions it, but this economy as we are living it.

College graduates should not have to live out their 20s in their childhood bedrooms, staring up at fading Obama posters and wondering when they can move out and get going with life. Everyone who feels stuck in the Obama economy is right to focus on the here and now. And I hope you understand this too, if you’re feeling left out or passed by: You have not failed, your leaders have failed you.

That is one of the most damning indictments of the Obama Administration possible. Because it cuts to the quick of why Obama has failed. He came into office promising to be a different kind of politician—someone who would transcend the petty divisions of everyday politics and get America back on track. As our future Vice President eloquently stated, his lack of leadership has failed us.

Lying Liars and the Lying Lies They Lie About

And the real sign of how successful Ryan’s speech has been the cacophony of idiocy that has been unleashed by the left. The official meme is that Paul Ryan’s speech was filled with “lies”—the definition of “lie” being “things that Democrats disagree with or make Democrats look bad.

Take the most commonly-cited example of one of Ryan’s so-called “lies:”

President Barack Obama came to office during an economic crisis, as he has reminded us a time or two. Those were very tough days, and any fair measure of his record has to take that into account. My home state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory.

A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: “I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.” That’s what he said in 2008.

Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight.

Immediately after the speech, Chris Matthews entered into a foaming-at-the-mouth rage proclaiming that this section of the speech was a “lie.” The left went into their usual paroxysms of rage over the supposed “lie,” claiming that the Janesville plant was shut down in mid-2008 rather than the Obama years.

But, as typical, the self-appointed “fact checkers” got it utterly wrong—the Janesville plant closed its doors for good in May 2009, even though as Ryan said, the plant had been slated to close since 2008.

This is another example of the tactics of the left—they seize upon irrelevant minutiae and try to explode it into an issue, amplifying their silliness through the left-wing echo chamber of liberal blogs, MSNBC, and the Obama Administration itself. The problem for them is that those tactics are becoming less and less effective as more and more Americans are becoming wise to them.

Why Ryan Rose Above

But enough about the left. What matters is whether Ryan connected with the average voter and demonstrated that he could take the job of Vice President. On that account, he hit a home run. Ryan was initially a little nervous—understandable for such a momentous speech in his political career. But as he went on, he hit his stride and spoke with both fluency and authority. Ryan needed to do well last night, and he did. He connected with the audience, both on the convention floor and on television.

One of the jobs of a VP nominee in a campaign is to be the attack dog, and Ryan delivered a blistering speech about Obama. But the way he did it was crucial to his success. This wasn’t a speech about blasting Obama with both barrels, this was a speech that struck a tone of disappointment. Americans don’t like Obama’s record, but they still look at him far more kindly than he deserves. What Ryan did was acknowledge that, but speak directly to the sense of palpable disappointment that many voters feel. As he put it:

It all started off with stirring speeches, Greek columns, the thrill of something new. Now all that’s left is a presidency adrift, surviving on slogans that already seem tired, grasping at a moment that has already passed, like a ship trying to sail on yesterday’s wind.

President Obama was asked not long ago to reflect on any mistakes he might have made. He said, well, “I haven’t communicated enough.” He said his job is to “tell a story to the American people” – as if that’s the whole problem here? He needs to talk more, and we need to be better listeners?

Ladies and gentlemen, these past four years we have suffered no shortage of words in the White House. What’s missing is leadership in the White House. And the story that Barack Obama does tell, forever shifting blame to the last administration, is getting old. The man assumed office almost four years ago – isn’t it about time he assumed responsibility?

Again, damning stuff, but not a full-barreled attack. Ryan didn’t need to call the President names. He didn’t need to insult his honor, he didn’t need to accuse him of wanting to harm seniors or call him a “sociopath” or go down the low road so well-trodden by the left. Ryan simply told it like it is. He hit Obama right where it hurts, and right where Obama is weakest. This is the message that the GOP needs to take to all those voters not already in Obama’s camp. This is the message that says “we get why you chose Obama in 2008, but things are different now.”

Now, Romney needs to close the deal. And I have a feeling that if he matches the rhetorical prowess that Paul Ryan displayed last night, he’ll be doing very well this fall.

A Word on Condi

But one quick post-script. I’ve been a fan of Dr. Condoleezza Rice for some time. I think she was a highly-effective Secretary of State in a tough time. But last night Dr. Rice demonstrated that she is one of the brightest stars in the GOP firmament. Her speech was powerful, direct, eloquent, and emotional at times. She displayed a passion for education reform, a deep understanding of foreign policy, and a real sense of what it is to be a conservative.

I suspect she’s far too smart to ever really consider running for President. But that’s a great loss to this country, because she would be a wonderful President.

Oh, and that supposed “war on women” that the GOP has been fighting. Judging from Dr. Rice, Ann Romney, Nikki Haley, Susannah Martinez, and the rest, that talking point is not only stale and odious. And who will the Democrats feature? Sandra Fluke, a woman whose claim to fame is a demand that government give her free birth control. Compare her to Dr. Rice, a woman who went from the Jim Crow-era South to being a concert pianist, an expert on Russian affairs, Secretary of State, and now teaches at Stanford—the contrast in what party values women as individuals of accomplishment and which party just panders to women could not be more clear.

Now, just before next week’s Republican National Convention, Team Romney has reason to be happy. The polls are showing a major tightening in the race, and several polls are showing a narrow Romney lead. The Ryan pick has energized the Republican base. And Team Obama is looking increasingly desperate, and are about to make a major mistake that could cost them the election.

But first, let’s take a closer look at the polls. Fox News shows Romney with a narrow lead, while CNN shows an Obama lead of 2% – well within the poll’s 3.5% margin of error. Meanwhile, both the Rassmussen and the Gallup daily tracking polls show Romney and the President neck-and-neck. The national polls show an incredibly tight race.

The stage for the 2012 Republican National Convention

The swing-state polls are more troublesome for Romney. Ohio is a virtual must-win state for Romney, but he’s lagging in the polls there. While the new bipartisan pollster Purple Strategies shows Romney with a narrow lead in the Buckeye State, a more recent poll from CNN/NYT/Quinnipiac shows Obama with a formidable 6-point lead in Ohio. Under all but a few highly unlikely scenarios, the path to the Presidency runs through Ohio, and Romney is going to have to improve his numbers there if he wants to win the White House. Look for Ohio to be the biggest of the battleground states once more in 2012 as it was in 2008 and 2004.

What makes the 2012 race especially interesting is that the number of swing states is increasing. At the beginning of this race, Wisconsin was not considered a serious swing state. In 2008, Barack Obama swept the Badger State in a 14-point blowout. But now, Wisconsin is very much in play. Democratic pollster PPP shows Romney with a narrow lead, a finding that’s supported by GOP-leaning pollster Rassmussen. Even the CNN/NYT/Quinnipiac poll shows only a slim 2-point lead for Obama in Wisconsin. Wisconsin appears to be shifting from a reliably Democratic state to a true swing state – Kerry only narrowly won Wisconsin in 2004, and Obama’s huge win there appears to have only been an interruption of the pro-GOP trend there. With Paul Ryan hailing from the Milwaukee suburbs, it’s possible that Romney could win Wisconsin, which would help pad out his Electoral College position in a tight race.

Romney’s Missouri Problem

But Romney has a big problem in Missouri, and its name is Todd Akin. Akin’s moronic comments about women being able to “shut down” a pregnancy caused by a “legitimate rape” was absolutely inexcusable, and led to massive condemnation by nearly every member of the GOP. Akin, whose campaign is being run by his family (a major mistake for any political candidate), insists that he can still win. The chances of that are slim to zero. And what’s worse is that Akin’s idiocy could impact Romney’s chances in Missouri as well as keeping the Senate in Democratic hands. Losing Missouri would significantly impair Romney’s chances of winning in this highly-competitive race.

This is the second election cycle in a row where the Tea Party has blown a Senate race. In 2010 Christine O’Donnell and Sharron Angle took winnable races for the GOP and blew them to hell. While there is plenty about the Tea Party that I like, they have not gotten it through their collective heads that picking a hardcore conservative who says incredibly stupid things on national TV is A Very Bad Idea Indeed™. It’s not about picking the most conservative candidate. It’s about picking the most conservative candidate that can win. If Harry Reid remains Majority Leader, it will be in large part due to the Tea Party, a fact that has to be taken into account when assessing the pros and cons of the Tea Party movement.

Obama’s Impending Blunder

But, there is a silver lining to the dark cloud that is Todd Akin. And that’s that President Obama is about to completely overplay his hand on social issues. The Democratic National Convention is looking increasingly like it will be a celebration of abortion. Sandra Fluke, the abortion-rights activist will be a headline speaker along with representatives of Planned Parenthood and the pro-abortion extremist movement. While Todd Akin represents one extreme of the abortion question, the Democrats are going to embrace the other extreme. This is a mistake for two reasons:

First, the American people care about jobs and the economy, not abortion and contraception. People are wondering whether they’ll have a paycheck next year and are trying to make the paychecks they do have stretch to pay for higher gas and food costs. The more the Democrats talk about divisive social issues, the more they carry themselves away from the mainstream of American politics today.

Secondly, for the voters that do care about social issues, they tend to be more socially conservative voters. Evangelicals may not be crazy about Mitt Romney’s Mormonism, but when contrasted with the Democrats celebrating the idea of taxpayer-funded abortion on demand, that’s only going to get the more enthused about voting against the Democrats.

Obama and the Politics of Division

But all of this plays into Obama’s strategy for 2012. Obama knows he can’t run on his record. Even Democratic strategists like James Carville realized early on that running on an “economic recovery” theme was not working with voters. So what can Obama do? He can try to make Romney toxic. He can’t run on himself, so he has to bring Romney down.

And that’s why you’ve seen a barrage of attacks against Romney on Bain, on Medicare, on his tax returns, etc. It’s a scorched-earth campaign designed to keep Romney’s poll numbers down far enough for Obama to maintain a narrow win. And while it’s been partially successful, it’s beginning to backfire on the President.

Obama’s appeal with independent voters was that he was a post-partisan, post-racial President. He’s no longer even trying to make that case anymore. Instead, he’s playing it like a typical Chicago politician. That does not make him very attractive in the eyes of voters, and that’s why he’s locked in such a tight race with Romney—while voters are not sure about Romney, they are equally if not more skeptical about President Hope-and-Change becoming just another political hack.

What to Watch for at the Republican National Convention

With that background on the state of the race, the question is what the RNC must do. And first and foremost, it’s got to introduce Mitt Romney to the American people. It seems odd to suggest that someone that’s run for President twice now is not well-known to the American public, but Romney has been largely unwilling to tell his own personal story. That needs to change at the RNC. Romney needs to embrace his personal narrative and give the American electorate a look at why they should vote for him over Obama.

And that’s why the Romney campaign needs to reject the media narrative on this race. The media says that Romney dare not run on his record at Bain—that’s a load of crap. Romney should not run from what he did, but should highlight the businesses that Bain saved from Sports Authority to Staples. The media says that Romney can’t run on his record at the Olympics—again, the media is acting as a wing of the Obama campaign. Romney can and should run on his record.

The American people don’t know Mitt Romney well yet, especially in contrast to a President who wrote two autobiographies before he even accomplished anything. (Even if those autobiographies were carefully-manipulated fictions.) Romney doesn’t need to spend that much time attacking Obama—Obama’s dismal economic record speaks for itself. What Romney must do is introduce himself to the American people and paint his vision of an American Comeback.

If he can do that successfully, watch the polls. Right now Romney’s numbers are moving the right way. If he does what he needs to do at the RNC, the poll numbers are going to start to diverge into Romney’s favor. The fundamentals on the ground favor Romney, and now that the election season is beginning in earnest, the Romney campaign has the opportunity to seize on those natural advantages and build them into a political wave. Romney definitely can win, and he’s in a position to do so as he heads into the week of the Republican National Convention.

When Milton Friedman won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1976, the world was enamored with the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, who taught that government spending would somehow produce a "mulitplier effect" that would lead to economic growth. The theory was that if the government were to spend $1 it would produce more than $1 in economic activity. In the 1960s, Friedman famously wrote that "we’re all Keynesians now"—a position later adopted by Richard Nixon in 1971.

In the 1950s through the 1970s, one could credibly think that the future lay not with free markets but with centrally-planned economies. Keynesianism was the dominant theory in economics and government policy. Governments across the globe were expanding the reach of central planning in a whole host of economic sectors. The ideas of the Austrian Economic School were dismissed as crackpot theories.

But then, the crash hit.

Friedman’s Revolution

In the 1970s, the world economy entered into a massive downslide. The Arab oil embargo pushed gas prices through the roof. But more critically, something happened that Keynesian theory said was impossible: stagflation – high inflation and economic recession. Conventional Keynesian theory taught that inflation and economic recession were opposites and could not happen at the same time. Yet in the 1970s, that is precisely what happened.

Across the globe, politicians tried the conventional Keynesian remedies. In the United States, Richard Nixon instituted wage and price controls to try to stop inflation, an effort that appeared to work at first until it led to massive shortages of goods. Governments tried to spend their way out of the recession, to little forward growth. The world economy was hanging by a thread, and the conventional economic theories were not helping the world pull out of its economic recession.

But it was Milton Friedman that popularized the way out of the mess. Friedman had already chipped away at the intellectual foundations of Keynesianism. He observed that Keynesian spending and the Keynesian multiplier did not work in practice—once the spigots were turned off, a fiscal hangover resulted. Because there was no new production happening to support all the extra spending, the result of Keynesian stimulus was inflation and recession. Governments wanted to try to inflate their way out of the borrowing costs of all the extra spending, which only made things worse. Further, government “investment” was taking place at the expense of private investment that would produce long-term growth.

Friedman’s theories were right, and his work led him to receive the Nobel Prize in 1976. It was not until the end of the 1970s into the early 1980s that leaders such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher embraced his ideas that the world economy truly began to recover.

Free To Choose

But Friedman was more than just a theoretical economist. He was a gifted philosopher and writer as well, and his work on why free markets are so important to a free society is some of his most important work. His first major popular work, Capitalism and Freedom went into the details of why the economic theory of capitalism was so deeply entwined with having a free society. When it was first published, Capitalism and Freedom was a revolutionary work: Friedman advocated such bizarre notions as a “negative income tax,” an all-volunteer military, and school vouchers.

Friedman continued to popularize his pro-free market ideas in the press, writing columns for Newsweek and other publications. But it was in 1980 when Friedman published one of his most accessible works, Free to Choose, that Friedman’s ideas started truly influencing the popular conversation.

Friedman dedicated himself to pursuing advocacy for free markets and limited government, and he did it with a sense of clarity and purpose. He was able to explain why even the most well-intentioned government programs are thwarted by the complexity of a modern economy. The following clip from the Donohue show in the 1980s shows Friedman at his best:

Friedman, of course, had the better argument, and was able to not only write about economics, but to get millions of people to look at economics in a new way. Instead of viewing economics as the “dismal science,” concerned with the shuffling of abstract value, Friedman popularly imbued economics with a moral aspect. Economics was about maximizing the freedom of the individual rather than the collective or the State. It was about ensuring that individuals were best able to pursue their own ends, provide for their own families, grow their own businesses, and prosper. This shift seems common-sense to us now, and that is due in large part to the influence of Milton Friedman.

A Legacy of Freedom

Today, some of the revolutionary ideas in Capitalism and Freedom are a common part of our day-to-day lives. Milton Friedman pushed for an all-volunteer military prior to the Vietnam War, and today the military is and will remain an all-volunteer force. Friedman’s idea of a “negative income tax” blossomed into the Earned Income Tax Credit, a system where people in poverty who choose to work are rewarded for their efforts with a payment from the government. Instead of welfare, which subsidizes poverty, the EITC encourages work and employment. In 2010 alone, the EITC was responsible for lifting an estimated 5.4 million Americans out of poverty. Friedman’s ideas have lifted 200 million people from poverty into prosperity, an achievement that will stand the test of time.

Now, more than ever, we need leaders who will carry Friedman’s mantle of freedom. Keynesianism, discredited in the 1970s and later by the Japanese “lost decade” in the 1990s is making a resurgence. It isn’t that Keynesian theories suddenly work better than they did in the past, it is that governments are using Keynesianism as a rationale for consolidating political power and justifying more and more control over the world economy. Friedman would have seen right through these efforts.

Just as it was in the 1970s, what the world needs now is not more central State planning, but more economic freedom. The solution to our economic problems is to unleash the creative energies of our people and to get government out of the way of economic growth. Friedman understood this from both a philosophical and a practical viewpoint. Friedman was right back then, and he is right today. And if we listed to his wise counsel again, our economy can come roaring back once again. Milton Friedman’s legacy of freedom can bring millions more from poverty to prosperity again if we are only willing to listen.

Chief Justice John Roberts of the United States Supreme Court (AP Photo)

What Roberts did, in other words, was a betrayal of his principles as a judge. Greenberg explains why Roberts switched his vote:

Some of the conservatives, such as Justice Clarence Thomas, deliberately avoid news articles on the court when issues are pending (and avoid some publications altogether, such as The New York Times). They’ve explained that they don’t want to be influenced by outside opinion or feel pressure from outlets that are perceived as liberal.

But Roberts pays attention to media coverage. As chief justice, he is keenly aware of his leadership role on the court, and he also is sensitive to how the court is perceived by the public.

There were countless news articles in May warning of damage to the court – and to Roberts’ reputation – if the court were to strike down the mandate. Leading politicians, including the president himself, had expressed confidence the mandate would be upheld.

Some even suggested that if Roberts struck down the mandate, it would prove he had been deceitful during his confirmation hearings, when he explained a philosophy of judicial restraint.

It was around this time that it also became clear to the conservative justices that Roberts was, as one put it, “wobbly,” the sources said.

It is not known why Roberts changed his view on the mandate and decided to uphold the law. At least one conservative justice tried to get him to explain it, but was unsatisfied with the response, according to a source with knowledge of the conversation.

The problem with Roberts’ switch is that it doesn’t accomplish what he was apparently tempted to do. Yes, right now the left-wing media is praising Roberts for taking their side and saving ObamaCare, but does anyone believe that will last? If Roberts presides over another 5-4 defeat of a major liberal initiative, he’ll be damned and criticized as before. The legitimacy of the Supreme Court will always be called into question by the left so long as the Supreme Court does its job in enforcing substantive limits on the power of the federal government. All Roberts has done is buy some temporary credit.

And that temporary credit comes at the expense of the Constitution. Ostensibly, Roberts’ opinion limits the government’s ability to use the Commerce Clause to justify mandates on individuals. But there is reason to believe that future Courts will not be bound by that language as precedent. The benefit of Roberts’ alleged limitation of the Commerce Clause may not be anywhere near as great as some conservative commentators are making it to be.

Not only that, but the logic used to justify upholding the mandate as a tax is not consistent. That argument was generally rejected by lower courts, and not taken seriously during oral arguments. The whole point of a tax is to raise revenue—which the individual mandate is not supposed to do if it actually works. If you refuse to pay a tax, the government can fine you or put you in jail—yet the individual mandate is not enforceable in that manner. Congress did not intend to turn the individual mandate into a tax, and as much as Congressional intent matters in interpreting a statute, Roberts’ decision contradicts it. The dissent treats Roberts’ arguments on the tax issue with a thinly-veiled contempt—and largely for good reason.

Roberts’ decision comes off as nakedly political—and even Roberts himself seems to want to back away from its full consequences, painting it as a choice that he did not want to make by one he made because the law demanded it. But his legal arguments are so thin that his protestations ring hollow: the argument that Roberts upheld ObamaCare in the vain hopes of preserving the legitimacy of the Court in the eyes of The New York Times seems to be the most likely explanation.

But a Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States, no less the Chief Justice, should not answer to the editorial board of The New York Times. Roberts’ initial vote was the correct one: the individual mandate is an unprecedented intrusion upon the individual liberties of the people of the United States. It is not justified in a system where we have a federal government of limited and enumerated powers. Seven Justices voted that the federal government cannot use federal funding to coerce a state into enacting a federal policy: so why can the federal government use the coercion of taxation to force individuals into supporting a federal policy that would not be otherwise justified under the Constitution? The answer should have been that the federal government can no more justify the individual mandate through taxation than they could demand that individuals quarter soldiers in their homes or pay a tax “penalty.” Both are a naked end-run around the limits placed upon the federal government by the Constitution.

Chief Justice Roberts may have justified his decision by saying that it would preserve the reputation of the Court: but he is wrong. The Court should be above the whims of politics and should act in accordance with law rather than than the opinions of newspaper editorialists. Roberts’ switch on ObamaCare was a betrayal, and however justified it diminishes the legitimacy and the independence of the Supreme Court. That was clearly not the Chief Justice’s intent, but will be the outcome.

But why? What is it that’s keeping the economy in the doldrums?

President Obama has his answer: it’s all George W. Bush’s fault. And a plurality of Americans even agree with that. The problem with that theory is Bush hasn’t been President for almost four years and all the things that he did that were supposedly so terrible (Foreign wars! Tax cuts for the rich! Wasteful government spending!) have all been ratified by the Obama Administration.

They’re All Keynesians Now

The other theory popular on the Democratic side and advanced by people like New York Times columnist Paul Krugman is that what we really need is massive government spending – or what economists would call “Keynesian stimulus.”

Keynesianism is named (appropriately enough) for John Maynard Keynes, a British economist and one of the most crucial (if frequently wrong) economic minds of the 20th Century. While Keynesian economic theory is far more advanced than could be explained in a blog post (no less one that anyone would want to read), the sort of “dimestore Keynesianism” that’s popular among today’s Democrats involves the simple theory that government spending produces economic growth.

Here’s how that theory is supposed to work: it posits that the reason why the economy sucks is because of a lack of “aggregate demand.” What that means in more conventional terms is that people aren’t buying enough shiznit. And because people aren’t buying enough shiznit, factories that make said shiznit aren’t running and are laying people off, and the economy is swirling the toilet.

That sounds pretty convincing at first blush – the reason why the economy sucks is because a lack of demand. It’s simple, it’s intuitive, but as I’ll get to later, it’s also wrong.

But first let’s look to what the dimestore Keynesians think is the solution. And they say that if the problem is a lack of aggregate demand, let’s stimulate demand! We take all those unemployed workers and we put them to work on “shovel-ready” jobs. They work for 8 hours a day repairing infrastructure and the government gives them a paycheck for it. Then, they go out and spend that paycheck, which creates demand. Suddenly those people are buying shiznit again, and the shiznit factories are producing their shiznit again, and the economy restarts.

Again, on the surface this all makes sense – it’s a nice and simple description of the problem, it’s a nice and simple solution, and maybe it just might work.

But it doesn’t.

The Economy Is Turning Japanese

In fact, we know that demand stimulus doesn’t work. It’s been tried before. In the 1990s, Japan’s economy took a nosedive after a major financial crisis and a housing bubble. (Sound familiar?) So the Japanese government engaged in a massive orgy of spending. (Sound familiar again?—and I mean the spending part, not the “Japanese orgy” part…) And what was the result? The Japanese economy went into a “lost decade” in which economic growth stagnated.

In 2009, President Obama passed the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act that was supposed to have created thousands of “shovel-ready” jobs and get the economy moving again. Obviously, it didn’t. Instead, unemployment continued to increase at a much higher rate than predicted. Even President Obama was forced to admit that those “shovel-ready jobs” weren’t exactly “shovel ready.” The stimulus didn’t produce the kind of job growth or GDP growth that President Obama promised. But why?

On the surface, Keynesianism makes sense, if you want to get the economy moving, get people jobs and get them to spend money. But once you scratch the surface, it all falls apart. Reason explains why in discussing the Japanese stimulus efforts:

In an attempt to encourage growth, the Japanese embarked on a massive, multi-billion-yen infrastructure program. They built roads, bridges, and airports, all with the goal of creating jobs and reviving the economy. This didn’t work either.

During the 1990s, Japan passed 10 fiscal stimulus packages, focused largely on public works, totaling more than ¥120 trillion ($1.4 trillion in today’s dollars). When one construction plan failed to stimulate economic growth, another was tried. Those plans did not succeed in reviving the economy, but they did saddle the nation with a mountain of IOUs that helped postpone recovery for years. Including “off-budget” borrowing, Japan’s debt was estimated to exceed 200 percent of GDP in 2001.

Construction plans often set job growth targets but rarely focused on project prices. From 1992 to 1999, the Japanese government spent more than $500 billion (in today’s dollars) on public works projects. Yet the construction jobs were not long-term and did not lead to sustained economic growth. Public debt sky-rocketed, unemployment actually doubled from 2.3 percent to 5 percent, and the economy remained stagnant. As Gavan McCormack, a historian at Australian National University, noted in his 1996 book The Emptiness of Japanese Affluence, “The construction state is in some respects akin to the military-industrial complex in Cold War America (or the Soviet Union), sucking in the country’s wealth, consuming it inefficiently, growing like a cancer and bequeathing both fiscal crisis and environmental devastation.” The government failed to properly identify which projects should be pursued, ignoring demand signals that the private sector is better at recognizing and responding to.

Taking Keynes To The Woodshed

So we know that Keynesian stimulus didn’t work in Japan and it didn’t work here in 2009. The passage above gives us some reasons why. Stimulus spending doesn’t work because of the way government spends money. Government does not spend money based on an economic calculus, they spend it based on a political calculus. This difference is crucial to understanding why most attempts at government intervention in the economy fails.

In a normal market, goods and services are allocated based on price signals. How does the economy know what to produce and how much of it? It’s all based on prices: when there’s too little of something the price shoots up—suddenly it makes sense to produce more of it. Then when there’s too much, the prices fall again. Supply and demand will, under normal circumstances, find an equilibrium.

The problem with government spending is that it doesn’t follow the rules of supply and demand. If a powerful Senator from South Dakota says that we need a six-lane superhighway between Podunk and East Armpit, that Senator can have the political clout to make it happen. The problem with that is that suddenly the government is spending millions to build a six-lane superhighway that isn’t actually needed and won’t produce economic growth over the long term.

“But wait!,” the Keynesians say, “Doesn’t building that six-lane superhighway to Warehouse 13 mean that workers will be employed and then they’ll have money to spend, creating economic growth?” The answer is yes, you’ll be paying people, but you won’t get economic growth from it. Why? Because the only way the government has money to spend is taxation or borrowing—so for every dollar you spend on that six-lane superhighway, you have to either take a dollar from elsewhere or borrow it and pay it back with interest.

There’s also a phenomenon called “crowding out.” This article explains the “crowding out” effect of stimulus spending in some detail. The short version is that if you take a dollar from the private sector and devote it to public spending, that’s a dollar that the private sector doesn’t have to spend. In other words, the government isn’t doing anything new, it’s just taking spending that the private sector would have done and doing itself. The net economic impact is, to put it in highly technical terms, bupkis. And if you assume that government spending is less efficient than private spending—and you should for the reasons above—the net economic impact is negative.

“But wait!” say the Keynesians again, “What about the infamous Keynesian multiplier?” The Keynesian multiplier is the theory that $1 in government spending produces more than $1 in economic growth. And whenever you hear President Obama argue that the stimulus saved “3 million jobs” and the like, here’s how he arrived at that conclusion. He had the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) assume that certain government programs had Keynesian multipliers, and then calculate based on what was spent in stimulus funds. So if you assume that infrastructure spending produces $2 in growth for every $1 spent, magically the stimulus was a fantastic success.

But the Keynesian multiplier is a myth: because of the inefficiencies in government spending and “crowding out,” the assumption that $1 in Keynesian spending produces at least $2 in economic growth is a very bad assumption to make. More rigorous studies have said that the real Keynesian multiplier ranges from zero to just over 1—which supports the idea that stimulus doesn’t produce growth over the long term.

And here is the other problem: when you try to “stimulate demand” in this way, what happens when the stimulus ends? The only thing propping up that artificial demand was government spending—and once the government spending ends, so does the stimulus. The conventional Keynesian theory is that the economy would come back, and once it did the government could retract the stimulus payments. But as Japan found out, that never happens. Stimulus becomes a vicious circle because once the stimulus ends the economy takes a nosedive—which just produces the argument that we need more stimulus to fix it. And indeed, you have Paul Krugman making the argument that we need more stimulus to get the economy moving, and if all else fails maybe we can hope for an alien invasion to get it. Someone has watched Watchmen one too many times.

The Myth Of Austerity

But the dimestore Keynesians have one more argument up their sleeves: they say that lowering government spending certainly won’t work, and will make things worse. They look to Europe, where they argue that the EU’s austerity has caused even more problems for the Eurozone. If Europe has been cutting government spending and Europe is now an economic basketcase, doesn’t that mean that fiscal austerity is a bad idea?

There are two problems with that argument: first, European governments really haven’t slashed spending as Krugman intimates they have. Except for Greece (which had little choice), most European countries have only slowed the rate of spending growth rather than cutting spending. That’s hardly “austerity” any more than only getting a 2% raise is a “pay cut.”

Second, Europe did something else that would depress economic growth—they raised taxes. European countries raised income taxes, their Value Added Taxes (VATs), and taxes on business. And sure enough, raising taxes when businesses and consumers are already feeling the pain of a recession is not a smart idea in the slightest. But the dimestore Keynesians propose doing the same thing: increasing government spending and raising taxes to pay for it. What Europe shows is not that austerity is a bad idea, it’s that government spending and tax increases are. What Krugman is doing is applying exactly the opposite message than what Europe is telling us. And the old saying goes, those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

So, How Do We Fix This Mess?

So far I’ve been painting a pretty bleak picture: we can’t use government spending to get us out of this mess. The preferred Keynesian solution of raising taxes to stimulate aggregate demand won’t work because government spending doesn’t produce lasting economic growth. So, what can we do to get out of this hole?

Ultimately, what we need is to encourage economic growth in the private sector. But that’s not something that can be done with government policy—other than a policy of getting the hell out of the way. Government can offer tax credits for R&D and the like, but even that is an example of government picking winners and losers, which doesn’t have a particularly sterling record.

The most important thing is for the government to get its fiscal house in order. We can’t grow the economy with a huge amount of public debt hanging over our heads. We need to cut spending in real terms, not just slow the rate of increase. We need to pay down our national debt, not add to it. If we want to get more revenue into the hands of the government we need to increase growth rather than taxes. Has this been done before? Yes—and quite successfully. But that is a post for another day…

Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI)

Walker pushed through a controversial package of reforms designed to limit the power of Wisconsin’s public sector unions, by limiting their collective bargaining powers and ensuring that union dues were not automatically deducted from employee paychecks. The reaction from the left in Wisconsin was instant and vitriolic. By the tone of the anti-Walker protests one would think that he’d rounded up all public employees and had them drawn and quartered on the Capitol lawn. But despite months of protests organized by the unions and left-wing special interests, it looks like by Wednesday morning Scott Walker will remain Governor of Wisconsin and his efforts to limit the power of union special interests will remain. But how did this firestorm of political protest end up backfiring so decisively on the unions and the Wisconsin left?

The unions turned the battle against Walker into a full-on political crusade, first attacking Justice David Prosser of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and forcing a recall election against him. They lost decisively.

Then the union-led forces continued their attack, forcing recalls on 8 Republican state Senators. Republicans pushed back in recalls against 8 Senate Democrats. In the end, the attempt to shift the balance of power to the Democrats failed—while two vulnerable Republicans were recalled from office, the Senate majority did not shift to the Democrats.

Now, the left and the unions are hoping that the third time will be the charm, a wish that is looking to be yet another sure-fire loser for the Democrats. And the fact that they’re facing a losing battle has engendered a level of political desperation that would be almost comical if it weren’t so dangerous.

For instance, the union-led thugs have reached into the classical bag of dirty tricks and accused Scott Walker of fathering a child out of wedlock—an accusation that a reporter quickly and utterly debunked.

But what is happening in Wisconsin goes beyond mere dirty tricks and directly to voter intimidation. Ann Althouse details an incredibly creepy mailed being sent to Wisconsin residents that shows the voting histories of the recipient and 12 of their neighbors. While the information on the mailer is public record, the intent of the mailer is clearly intimidation—not only does the mailer reveal whether someone voted in the past, but it says that whether someone votes tomorrow will also be part of the public record. Althouse gives the right response:

This is an effort to shame and pressure people about voting, and it is truly despicable. Your vote is private, you have a right not to vote, and anyone who tries to shame and an harass you about it is violating your privacy, and the assumption that I will become active in shaming and pressuring my neighbors is repugnant.

Not only is it repugnant, it’s counterproductive as well. Someone who receives that mailer, which was apparently sent by an anti-Walker group, is not going to be more inclined to vote against Walker when they receive something like that. Such a ham-handed attempt at voter intimidation is not going to play well in Wisconsin.

To demonstrate just how badly things are going for the left in Wisconsin, President Obama has failed to offer any more than token support for the recall. He flew from Minnesota to Illinois last weekend, skipping any appearance with Barrett or on behalf of Barrett. The Democrats have been trying to pretend like the Wisconsin recalls don’t really matter—which would certainly not be the case were Barrett cruising towards victory this week. Watch the campaign spin on Wednesday try to downplay the importance of this race. But the truth is far more complicated than the inevitable political spin, and what is going on in Wisconsin signals a potential shift in the political winds of great consequence to Democrats everywhere.

The Unions’ Last Stand

Why have the unions spent tens of millions of dollars (taking money away from the 2012 Presidential contest) to recall Scott Walker? Walker’s bill that limits (but does not remove) collective bargaining for public sector unions does something even more harmful to unions: it cuts off their money. Under the bill, union dues are no longer automatically removed from a public employee’s paycheck. If the public worker wants to be in the union, they have to affirmatively choose to do so. And what the unions have found is that if it’s a choice, public workers would rather keep the money. The Wall Street Journal notes that internal figures show that membership in the Wisconsin branch of AFSCME has declined precipitously:

Wisconsin membership in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees—the state’s second-largest public-sector union after the National Education Association, which represents teachers—fell to 28,745 in February from 62,818 in March 2011, according to a person who has viewed Afscme’s figures. A spokesman for Afscme declined to comment.

Much of that decline came from Afscme Council 24, which represents Wisconsin state workers, whose membership plunged by two-thirds to 7,100 from 22,300 last year.

Union money is crucial to the Democrats, and without the massive amount of cash from public employee unions, the Democrats are at a decided disadvantage. That’s why the unions went after David Prosser, why they spent tens of millions to try and wrest control of the Wisconsin Senate, and why they’re trying again to unseat Scott Walker—because Walker has gone after their gravy train. The real reason for these recalls has little to do with the rights of public employees and everything to do with making sure that money flows into the Democratic Party.

And that’s why tomorrow’s likely defeat of the hapless Democratic Mayor of Milwaukee is such a major blow to the unions—not only did Scott Walker win, but it’s exposed a harsh reality for unions: their source of money and power is in jeopardy.

Is Wisconsin In Play?

The next question is whether this means that Wisconsin is in play in 2012 for the Presidential race. In 2004, Kerry only barely won Wisconsin, slipping past Bush by a fraction of a percent. In 2012, however, Barack Obama crushed John McCain in a 14-point blowout in the Badger State. The 2012 polls have been all over the place, but some have shown Romney closing in on Obama. But even polls showing Walker comfortably ahead also show Obama with a strong lead.

But here’s where the Democrats made a mistake: the Republicans have been out organizing in three recall elections. They’ve developed a much better ground game then before. The electorate in Wisconsin have had to put up with three Democratically-led recalls and are getting sick and tired of all the constant political ads. The Democrats and the unions have put their best game on, but have fallen short. Instead of defeating Scott Walker, they’ve raised his national standing, and concomitantly his ability to raise money for Romney. All these factors redound to the benefit of the Republicans in a state that is seemingly in play.

It’s still unlikely that Romney can win Wisconsin, although it’s within the realm of possibility. But what Romney can do is force Obama to defend it. Not only that, but Romney can use the main media markets in Wisconsin to reach into parts of Minnesota and Michigan, also putting Obama on the defensive there as well. Romney doesn’t have to win Wisconsin to win the election, but if Romney could pull away Wisconsin and Iowa, he could lose Ohio and still win. Even though that’s a highly unlikely scenario, it shows just how in flux the 2012 race could be.

The Lessons Of The Walker Recall

What is most troubling about this recall election is how dirty it is. The unions, the “progressive” left, and the Democrats have demonized Scott Walker. They’ve invented a narrative in which the Koch Brothers have engineered a takeover of Wisconsin. The rhetoric against Walker is ridiculously over-the-top, and has demonstrated just how obsessed the left has become in trying to crush their opposition. The mailer that Althouse posted is just the tip of the iceberg—there’s a very good chance there will be attempts at direct voter intimidation tomorrow. The left has put all of their chips down on a quest to defeat the object of their hate and derision: what will happen when they lose a third time, and on their biggest target?

The Democrats have tried to turn this race into an attack against Scott Walker, but after pouring millions of dollars into the race and filling the airwaves with attack ads, they’ve failed. Now they’re resorting to desperate allegations of a love child to try and sway the electorate away from Walker. Yet nothing has worked.

And herein lies a lesson for other Republican candidates, especially Mitt Romney. Gov. Walker did not run away from his principles. He did not bow to Democratic attacks, he did not campaign while on the defensive, and he kept his message clear: his reforms led to lower taxes and more private-sector growth for Wisconsin. He kept on message, stayed on message, and did not give an inch against relentless Democratic attack. And he’s likely to win tomorrow because of it.

The Democrats ran a classic attempt at an Alinskyite campaign, and it failed. That is exactly the strategy that the Democrats have used and will use against Mitt Romney in the fall. The GOP has got to be ready for such tactics, and as Scott Walker has ably demonstrated if the Republicans can stand firm on principles, elucidate a clear message focused on jobs and the economy, and recognize the campaign landscape, they can win.

I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity. To me, we’re getting to a ridiculous point in America. . . Especially that I know I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people invest in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, they’ve done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses. And [Obama's attacks on Bain], to me, I’m very uncomfortable with.

Needless to say, the Obama campaign was furious with Booker, and he was later forced to recant his heresy, in a video that disturbingly resembles a hostage tape. But the damage had already been done, and Obama’s anti-Bain narrative appeared to be stillborn.

Despite this, the President has doubled down, saying that Bain Capital is “what this campaign will be about.”

Now, even former Obama supporter David Brooks is noticing just how poor a strategy the Bain attacks are for the Obama campaign. Brooks observes that Obama’s populism is painting him into a corner:

While American companies operate in radically different ways than they did 40 years ago, the sheltered, government-dominated sectors of the economy — especially education, health care and the welfare state — operate in astonishingly similar ways.

The implicit argument of the Republican campaign is that Mitt Romney has the experience to extend this transformation into government.

The Obama campaign seems to be drifting willy-nilly into the opposite camp, arguing that the pressures brought to bear by the capital markets over the past few decades were not a good thing, offering no comparably sized agenda to reform the public sector.

In a country that desperately wants change, I have no idea why a party would not compete to be the party of change and transformation. For a candidate like Obama, who successfully ran an unconventional campaign that embodied and promised change, I have no idea why he would want to run a campaign this time that regurgitates the exact same ads and repeats the exact same arguments as so many Democratic campaigns from the ancient past.

Brooks makes a very important point here: the Obama campaign is running a highly traditional Democratic campaign. They are using the politics of division to attract traditional Democratic constituencies: women (and by that mean single women), African-Americans, students, environmentalists, and the tony class of well-healed limousine liberals. The arguments that the Obama campaign have been making have all been targeted with a laser-like focus on bringing those elements of the Democratic base together in support of his campaign. Everything from the “war on women” to Obama’s pivot on gay marriage have been focused on that end.

But that’s a problem for Obama. Even he has privately admitted that he’s running against the Obama of 2008—but the Obama of 2008 managed to beat the tar out of John McCain and took a majority of the electorate in a decisive victory. He did it by convincing independents and even some squishy conservatives (like David Brooks!) that he was a moderate, post-partisan, post-racial, transformative figure who would get things done for the betterment of the country.

If Obama could rekindle that magic in 2012, he’d be doing very well for himself. But he can’t—because the 2008 magic was built on an image of Obama that has been dashed apart on the rocky shoals of his record. He can’t campaign as a post-partisan figure when he’s constantly blaming the “Republican Congress” as being a bunch of “obstructionists”—an argument that’s rather silly considering that the Republicans won because Obama pushed through an expensive and unpopular health care bill. He can’t run as a transformative figure when his signature “achievements”—ObamaCare and the stimulus—are not popular with the American electorate. Obama has a record now, and while he’s done his best to try to change the subject to something else, that record will be the issue in this campaign.

What Romney Can Do

But Obama still is running neck-and-neck with Romney. Romney still can lose, and he can lose big if he fails to adapt to the changing condition of the campaign. All one has to do is look back at 2008 to see how this can happen: after picking Sarah Palin, the McCain campaign was riding high in the polls, even beating Obama in most polls. But then the wheels came off of the McCain campaign: the media savaged Palin and the campaign failed to use Palin’s natural political talent in an effective way. When Lehman collapsed, McCain first said that we was canceling a debate and running to Washington to play the elder statesman—which he did, but only half-heartedly. McCain failed to come up with an adequate response to the crisis, and never recovered. He went from running ahead of Obama to being shellacked by him. The rest, as they say, is history.

So what must Romney do? He has got to start shaping his message now: and while he’s done part of that with his ads focusing on the state of the economy. But it’s not enough to merely suggest that the economy is a bad state— Romney has to make an at least plausible plan for what to do about it.

Here’s why I ultimately think Romney’s Bain experience is relevant to this campaign: Romney needs to make a connection in the voters minds between what Bain did—taking dying companies and fixing them—and what needs to be done for the economy in general and government in particular. Right now the Romney campaign is doing a great job of reacting to the President, but sooner or later (when the voters start paying attention to the race), Romney will have to define himself.

And here’s why the President’s Bain attacks play right into that: they’re opening the door for Romney to make this argument. For every ad that the President cuts showing someone who allegedly lost their job, Romney should have ads prepared showing the people whose jobs were saved by Bain Capital. Romney has to know that Bain would be a major issue in this campaign—as it was in Romney’s prior campaigns. If the Romney campaign doesn’t have a response ready to go by now, they’re in trouble. They may not need to run those ads yet (better to keep their powder dry for when it’s needed), but they had better have them ready for deployment.

And those ads should support the larger narrative: this country needs a turnaround artist. This country needs someone who will make government more responsive, more efficient, and simply better. And yes, that means cutting a lot of dead weight from government, including making sure that workers who don’t pull their weight can be fired. Romney has to make the case that old way that government does things is not working. Indeed, that the government has become just like one of those failing companies that Bain used to deal with: it’s losing money hand-over-foot, it has a dysfunctional management structure, there’s a lack of leadership at the top, and its customers (the citizens) are not happy with what it’s doing. Romney has taken those kind of dysfunctional organizations and turned them around before: and that’s just what this country needs.

The President can talk until he’s blue in the face about “vampire capitalism:” in fact, the more the President goes on the attack the further away from the post-partisan ultra-cool figure of 2008 he gets. Romney can use that to his advantage if he’s smart enough and nimble enough.

The President is unwittingly providing the Romney campaign with a winning strategy for 2012, as David Brooks points out. Even some of the President’s backers, like Mayor Booker have figured this out. Luckily enough for Romney, the President doesn’t understand how he can be outflanked. The real question is whether the Romney campaign can be deft enough to take advantage of the opening that he’s been given. If he can, he can put the President in a defensive posture—exacerbating Obama’s tendency to become whiny and petulant. John McCain’s campaign failed to do this—if Romney wants to win, he’s going to have to learn from that failure.

Whether Obama realizes or not, his attacks are opening a door for Romney. The question is whether Romney will seize the opportunity to use that opening to craft a winning message for his campaign.

In my neck of artisanal, hormone-free Brooklyn, the latest CBS News/New York Times poll, which shows Mitt Scissorhands leading “The First Gay President” by three points, landed with a nasty thud. “I can’t believe he might lose,” my wife said when she spotted the offending numbers on the Web. “People are really willing to vote for Mitt Romney? They hate Obama so much they’d vote for Romney?”

Evidently so—not that you’d know it from a casual read of the print edition of today’s Times. The editors buried the lead in the fifteenth paragraph of a down-page story on A17. (I’ve got a helpful suggestion: if Romney’s ahead in next month’s poll, maybe it could go in the Metro section—the one that no longer exists.) Not surprisingly, conservative news sites made rather more of the story. Under the headline “Kaboom: Romney Leads Obama by 3 in New CBS/NYT Poll,” Guy Benson, the political editor of Townhall.com, pointed out several other noteworthy findings [i]n the survey, including the facts that Romney leads Obama by two points among women (so much for the gender gap) and seven points among independents. Two thirds of the survey’s respondents said the economy was in “very bad” or “fairly bad” shape, and Obama’s favorability rating is still stuck in the mid-forties—at forty-five per cent, to be exact.

Now, the piece does explain why Romney still has a long way to go to win, but the fact that The New Yorker is running a piece worrying about Obama’s electoral chances is in itself telling.

But there’s even more interesting data. Wisconsin was a state that Obama won handily in 2008 and Kerry very narrowly won in 2004. Wisconsin hasn’t really been on the radar as a swing state – but a poll commissioned by the ultra-liberal ghouls at the Daily Kos finds that Obama is leading Romney by only a single point in the Badger State. That result is somewhat shocking, but perhaps less so when you consider that the unions have spent tens of millions to recall Gov. Scott Walker and that same poll shows Walker beating his Democratic opponent by a 4%. Wisconsin is a state where Romney might have a chance, especially given massive voter fatigue on the left.

And there’s gay marriage. While it wasn’t clear whether the gay marriage issue would hurt or help Obama, the polls show that it’s hurting him. As The New Yorker piece mentions, a supermajority of voters think that Obama’s sudden “evolution” on gay marriage was little more than a political stunt. More people dislike Obama’s newfound old position on gay marriage than like it. And North Carolina, the site of the 2012 Democratic National Convention and a potential swing state, is starting to look redder and redder. None of this news is fatal to Obama’s reelection chances, but the slow drip of bad news for his campaign, combined with the Obama campaign’s relatively ham-fisted attempts to shape the narrative suggest that 2012 will not look much like 2008.

Behold, A God Who Bleeds!

This is all starting to remind me of a classic Star Trek episode (as many things often do). In that episode, Captain Kirk’s memory is wiped and he ends up being treated as a god by the local Native American stereotype aliens. One jealous alien manages to cut his hand, and exclaims, “Behold, a god who bleeds!” The same thing is happening here: during 2008 Obama was the epitome of cool, a demi-god in American politics with a following that bordered on a cult of personality.

Today is much different. Obama is just another politician. The American people don’t buy his gay marriage conversion. Obama has a record now, and cannot be what he was in 2008: a blank slate upon which voters could project their hopes and dreams. Instead, Obama has to run on what he’s actually done: and Americans are not feeling the “hope and change” any longer.

That’s the problem with being a cool cipher – the minute you start losing your mystique, the game is over. The same quasi-messianic messaging that worked so well for Obama in 2008 will not work for him in 2012—now it just comes off as creepy. The American people are seeing an increasingly whiny President who is running a tight race against someone who is ostensibly a weak candidate and saying “Behold, a god who bleeds!”

But Romney Has To Define Himself

But don’t count Obama out or Romney in. The American people have soured on President Obama to be sure, but that doesn’t mean that Romney is in the clear. He still has to define himself, and Romney has thus far failed to do so. Voters know that they don’t like Obama, but just that is not necessarily going to be enough for Romney to pull ahead. Voters need to have a clear answer to the question “who is Mitt Romney?”

This is Romney’s Achilles heel—he does not have the “common touch” of someone like Bill Clinton or George W. Bush. He’s hard to relate to on a human level because he doesn’t open himself up in the way that other politicians do. But to win national election, Romney has to define himself as a person. He doesn’t have to be the guy you have beers with, but he has to be someone who voters can trust and relate to. Ann Romney has helped humanize her husband, but Gov. Romney can’t rely on surrogates to make that connection.

The Obama campaign is already running ads trying to define Romney to voters—if Romney can’t define himself first, he’s going to have a lot of trouble winning in the key states he needs to win.

One thing is certain, however: if the Democrats are thinking this will be another 2008, they’re wrong. The political environment has changed, and it has not changed in a way that benefits President Obama.

First, the timing is rather suspicious. The voters of North Carolina (a key swing state that went for Obama in 2008) just handily approved a constitutional amendment that not only bans gay marriage, but civil unions as well. And other voters in key swing states like Ohio and Florida tend to be anti-SSM, including older voters, Catholic voters, and especially African-Americans. Granted, the President’s sudden about-face helps distract from this weeks electoral drubbing—not only did gay marriage lose in North Carolina, but Gov. Scott Walker received nearly as many votes as his potential challengers in Wisconsin and the President only won 59-41 against a federal prisoner in the West Virginia Democratic primary. All-in-all, this week was a very bad week for Democrats nationwide. By throwing himself into the gay marriage debate, the President has created yet another distraction.

It’s All About the Benjamins

But that doesn’t seem to be sufficient explanation for why the President has suddenly embraced gay marriage. This article at RealClearPolitics suggests a much more plausible explanation for the President’s changed stance:

As the campaign shifts into a more intense phase and Obama maintains a brisk schedule to raise campaign cash, he has appealed to wealthy Democrats who are active in the gay rights movement. Some have been slow to open their wallets for the super PACs that support Obama’s re-election, explaining publicly that they wanted to see movement from Obama on marriage and other issues. Obama’s gay rights supporters have commended the administration on at least two fronts: first, repealing with Congress the law barring openly gay members from military service, and second, the president’s decision to stand down on enforcement of the Defense of Marriage Act. That law, signed by President Clinton in 1996, defines marriage as the union of one man and one woman.

On Thursday, some gay rights advocates will attend a $12 million Hollywood fundraiser at the Los Angeles home of actor George Clooney, co-hosted with DreamWorks Animation CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg. Next week in New York, the president will receive Barnard College’s Medal of Distinction and deliver the commencement address, alongside fellow honoree Evan Wolfson, founder of advocacy group Freedom to Marry. And on Monday in New York, the president will attend a fundraiser for gay rights supporters. On June 6, leading into annual gay pride events in Los Angeles, the president expects to return to the West Coast to headline an event for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, at which rocker Pink is expected to perform.

In short, it’s all about the money. Obama’s fundraising is not matching 2008 levels, and Romney has plenty of SuperPAC cash running in. The Obama campaign is making a calculated play here: they are thinking that the gay marriage issue will help him enough with big-money donors that it won’t matter that he’s potentially hurting his standing with key swing voters. After all, African-Americans are going to vote for Obama at a rate of 90%+ no matter what—so why does Obama care whether they are the most strongly anti-SSM group in the country? The worst that could happen is that they stay home, and even if that happens, Obama is hoping that he’ll have enough margin elsewhere to make up for those losses.

There’s also the youth vote: Obama knows that gay marriage is much more popular with younger voters than it is with older ones. But younger voters are the ones that have been hit the hardest in the Obama economy, and they’re not nearly as motivated to go out and vote for Obama as they were four years ago. By highlighting the gay marriage issue, Obama is hoping to get those 20-something voters to get out again.

And of course, this is also part and parcel of the Obama campaign’s plan: do whatever it takes to distract voters from the state of the economy. The Obama team has access to the same numbers that the rest of us do, and they know that their idea of running on an economic recovery is looking less and less realistic as more bad news keeps dribbling out. So the Obama campaign is doing whatever it can to focus attention on anything but economic issues: they’ve tried to launch the “war on women” meme, they “spiked the football” on the bin Laden killing, and now the President is going gaga for gay marriage. It’s a transparent attempt at distraction.

Playing Into Romney’s Hands

But ultimately, the Obama campaign is making a serious mistake by focusing the campaign on social issues. They are assuming, as most Democrats do, that “social issues” are a loser for the Republicans. That assumption isn’t true: the majority of states have voted against same-sex marriage. If the polling showing that same-sex marriage is broadly popular is right, what explains the disconnect? The most cogent explanation is that what people are telling pollsters doesn’t match what they really believe and are expressing in the voting booth. In other words, gay marriage is not nearly as popular as the Democrats believe it to be. In the end, while Obama’s support of gay marriage may energize certain parts of the Democratic base, it will have less effect on independent voters.

It will also help Romney consolidate his support among conservative and evangelical voters. Right now Romney is doing very well with independents, but does not have strong support with conservatives and evangelicals. The Obama team is betting that by focusing the debate on social issues it might bring liberal voters to their side—which is true, but it will also motivate conservative and evangelical voters to vote against Obama and for Romney. While it’s hard to say now whether the President’s move benefits him or Romney, the fact that he doubled down on gay marriage is suggestive of his weakened political position.

The President’s “evolution” on the subject of gay marriage was a risky move by the President. He is clearly hoping to achieve two things by embracing gay marriage: motivate the liberal base and get them to open their wallets. It’s very likely that the President will achieve those goals, but at the cost of potentially losing swing voters and helping Romney consolidate the conservative vote.

Even though this move ultimately benefits Romney, he can still misplay his hand. The Romney campaign has to show a laser-like focus on the economy. To borrow a line from the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign: “it’s the economy, stupid!” The President will do his damnedest to push the narrative away from the dismal state of the U.S. economy, and his allies in the media will go right along with the campaign’s narrative. The Romney campaign must use social media, grassroots campaigning, and well-place political ads to remind the country that there’s one candidate focused on the issues that actually matter to Americans, and it’s not Barack Obama.

Even though polling this far out is of limited usefulness, it does give us some idea of how the race could turn out in seven months. There are certain factors and historical data that can give us some idea of where this race will go. But elections are shaped by current events rather than past history—in September 2008, John McCain was briefly ahead of Obama until Sarah Palin flamed out and McCain’s bizarre campaign suspension eliminated his momentum through the end of the race. In 2000, George W. Bush was looking to beat Al Gore by a substantial margin—until DWI allegations put him on the defensive and cost him votes, resulting in one of the closest races in American history and a popular vote loss. We have no idea what may happen in 2012 that could have a profound impact on the race.

But, with those caveats in mind, we can start to see the shape of the race as it stands now, and what it means for President Obama and Governor Romney:

This Race Will Be A Referendum

First, this is a race between an incumbent President and a challenger – which means that the 2012 election will largely be a referendum on Barack Obama. (Joe Klein’s arguments notwithstanding.) In general, an incumbent President either stands or falls based on his performance in office. If the American electorate is generally happy with the performance of a President, he’ll be reelected. If they are not, and the other side puts up a credible challenger, that President will lose.

That dynamic appears most clearly in the President’s approval ratings on a state-by-state basis. An incumbent President’s approval ratings are a good predictor of whether they will be reelected or not. As it stands right now, President Obama’s approval rating is at 47% in the RealClearPolitics polling composite. He’s slightly underwater with his disapproval rating at 48%. For an incumbent, that’s a danger zone—not fatal, but not where an incumbent President wants to be. As a point of comparison, President Bush was at 52% approval in mid-April 2004.

As we dig down to the state level, this becomes more important. Traditionally, an incumbent with approval rating over 50% is regarded as “safe” and one with an approval rating under 50% is regarded as “in trouble.” Political prognosticator Ronald Brownstein, writing in the National Journal, argues that 47% is the real “tipping point”, and if a President’s approval rating is below 47%, then he’s in real trouble.

So, we can assume that if President Obama is over 50% approval in a state, he’s likely to win that state’s electoral votes. On the other hand, if he’s at 45% or below, he’s not going to win that state unless his approval rating changes dramatically. If he’s at 47% or less, that state would lean towards the Romney, and if Obama’s approval rating is over 47%, the state would lean towards Obama.

Obama’s Electoral Battlefield

Gallup performed state by state polling in 2011 that gives some contours to where Obama stands in each state. It isn’t pretty for Obama. He is above 50% in only a few states. If we use the 47% approval rating as a guidepost, Obama is cruising towards a huge loss in the Electoral College. He would lose 215 to 323, an electoral blowout. Crucially, he’d lose the key states that he needs to hold to win: namely Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Virginia, and Iowa. He’d also lose Oregon, a state that has tended to be Democratic, but only by a close margin.

Obviously, Obama losing Oregon seems like a rather distant proposition, and Gallup’s numbers are fairly old, and were taken before the GOP race had settled. But, what this does show is that the race is far from over: Obama’s approval rating on a national and a state-by-state basis indicates a much tighter race than 2008.

It’s The Economy, Stupid

The biggest factor in this race will be the economy. Unemployment is trending downward, but the results are mixed at best. But, it’s hard to judge just what effect the unemployment rate really has an election—electoral data doesn’t give us much to go on in predicting how unemployment will effect the race. It’s true that no President since FDR has won reelection with more than 7.2% unemployment, but that by itself does’t give us much to go on. The sample set is simply too small.

But subjective feelings will matter. If in the fall of 2012 people really do feel that the economy is getting better, they’ll be more inclined to reelect the President. If they feel that they are no better off than they were in 2008, they’ll be more inclined to get rid of him. The data on Obama’s economic record spells trouble for Obama—high gas prices are hurting his rating on economic issues, and the electorate doesn’t really seem to think that the economy is truly turning a corner.

That’s why the data points will only tell you so much. In the 1992 election the economy was recovering, but George H.W. Bush still lost to Bill Clinton (thanks in large part to Ross Perot). People don’t respond to economic data, they respond to their subjective feelings. Unfortunately, that’s hard to measure and doesn’t follow the raw data—it could well be that unemployment drifts down by November 2012, but that doesn’t mean that President Obama is a lock for re-election.

The Hope And Change Is Gone

There is one more subjective factor worthy of mention: this isn’t 2008. In 2008, Obama could run as a cypher, a blank slate upon which voters could project their hopes and dreams. His campaign of “hope” and “change” and his ability to position himself as a post-partisan, post-racial figure helped him appeal to independents and even some Republicans. He ran less on his record (scant as it was), and more on a set of vague promises. But four years later, that is no longer an option for the President. He has to run on his record now, and his policies from from bailouts to Obamacare have been more divisive than uniting. The 2010 election could also be considered a referendum on his performance, and that should give the Obama team pause.

Obama simply doesn’t have the option of running as the Obama of 2008—but that doesn’t mean that he can’t reinvent himself into a form that’s palatable to enough independents to get reelected. But that also means that the unprecedented wave of support that lifted him up in 2008 may not materialize this time: in 2008 Barack Obama was the Next Big Thing, the great figure that would bring the country together and wipe away the supposed sins of the Bush years. Now, he’s just another politician. The Democrats may have a deep reserve of support to draw upon, but they’ve always had that. At this time, it doesn’t seem like Obama can rekindle the magic of 2008. It’s safe to assume that even if Obama is re-elected, it won’t be by the same margins he got four years ago.

Where Do We Go From Here?

So, with all those factors in play, what can we say about the current state of the race? The honest answer is that it’s looking close, but we don’t know much more than that. It’s too early to say that Obama is a shoe-in for re-election or Romney should start thinking about Cabinet appointments. This is anyone’s game, and with such partisan polarization, it’s very likely that it will stay a tight race for most (if not all) of the race.

That being said, the structural factors give a slight edge to Romney. Obama has a weak approval rating for an incumbent President. The economy may recover, but it’s questionable whether it would be enough. Obama’s state-by-state approval ratings show weakness in key swing states. But that slight edge is very slight indeed, and could disappear if trends change.

As the race continues other factors will start emerging—the most important of which may be the discipline and effectiveness of Romney’s campaign. The McCain campaign was horrendously mismanaged, botching McCain’s “suspension” of his campaign, mishandling Sarah Palin, and was generally weak and ineffective. So far Romney has shown great discipline and messaging—but also a tendency to put his foot in his mouth. If you want to know how the dynamics of the race may play out, watch how well organized the Romney camp is over the next few months. Because when it gets down to the post-Labor Day crunch time, campaign discipline can make or break a political campaign.

ObamaCare supporters argue that health care is somehow different from everything else: because we will all use the health care system at some point in our lives, the government has a higher interest in regulating it and making sure that costs are allocated “fairly.” There’s a huge flaw in that argument: it’s a license for unlimited government power. As the example goes, why couldn’t the government make everyone buy broccoli? After all, you must participate in the market for food. Even those wraith-thin supermodels have to eat at one point or another. And broccoli is good for you, which would reduce health care costs. So why can’t Michelle Obama make everyone eat broccoli, or choose to pay a “penalty?”

For that matter, since the Chevy Volt is a massive taxpayer-financed boondoggle, why not mandate that everyone must buy a Chevy Volt or pay a “penalty?” After all, everyone must somehow participate in the “transportation market,” even those people whose only interaction with the market is when they buy their motorized wheelchair to carry their beached-whale bodies to the local buffet. So why not just mandate that everyone buy a Chevy Volt or pay a fine?

In fact, since Disney is taking a bath on John Carter, why shouldn’t they lobby Congress to make everyone in the country see the movie or pay a fine? After all, everyone participates in the “entertainment market” too.

And that’s the major constitutional problem with ObamaCare: a broccoli mandate, a Chevy Volt mandate, a John Carter mandate, they’re all separated from the individual insurance mandate by degree, not by principle.

The individual mandate is the most sweeping power grab of our generation—in terms of real-world impact it makes the PATRIOT Act look timid. And yet there’s been nowhere near the outcry about ObamaCare as they has been about the PATRIOT Act.

The Tax Man (Doesn’t) Cometh

The government has argued that the individual mandate’s penalty really is a tax. The reason why the government makes this argument is because of a federal law called the Anti-Injunction Act. The Anti-Injunction Act is a federal law that prevents people from challenging taxes in courts as a way of getting out of paying taxes. In other words, if the Court bought this argument, the challenges to ObamaCare would fail.

The government’s argument that the ObamaCare penalty really is a “tax” doesn’t save them. For one, it’s an argument that goes against the facts: nothing in the health care law makes the penalty into a tax other than the fact that it was shoved into the Internal Revenue Code. The President and Congressional Democrats were adamant that it was not really a tax, otherwise they would be accused of breaking their promise not to raise taxes on the middle class. Nor is the tax But when it became legally convenient to say that the “penalty” really was a tax, the government is now making that argument. But the penalty isn’t a tax in either form or substance, so that argument is unlikely to go anywhere. And, based on the Court’s skeptical questions in today’s arguments, it looks like the tax argument isn’t likely to carry much weight.

Kill (the) Bill

The problems with ObamaCare are legion, not only is it bad policy, but it sets a precedent that wipes away the system of checks and balances that keep our system of government functioning. The Supreme Court has this opportunity to stand up for the established constitutional order and strike down the individual mandate as a violation of both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. If they do not, the costs could be grave. There’s not only the risk of eroding freedoms, but there’s a much more concrete risk as well: ObamaCare is bad law. It won’t make health care cheaper, it won’t make it easier for people to see a doctor, it won’t save lives. It will create a system where medical care is artificially limited by the government (both directly and indirectly). If that sounds a bit like a “death panel” concept, it should. Because that’s what has to happen: the government has no magic fairy wand that they can waive over our healthcare system to make health care cost less. The only way to reduce costs is to ration, and that’s exactly what would have to be done in order to make ObamaCare work.

But the Supreme Court isn’t concerned with health care policy, at least not directly. Their concern is with the question of whether ObamaCare is consistent with our constitutional order. It is not. The individual mandate in ObamaCare is no less unconstitutional than a broccoli mandate, a Chevy Volt mandate, or a mandate to see John Carter. The Commerce Clause isn’t a blank check for the government to take effective control of an entire sector of the American economy. The Supreme Court should serve as ObamaCare’s “death panel.”

Last Thursday, the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released a survey that revealed what Pew termed “Mixed Views of Government Regulation.” But “mixed,” in this case, means anti-regulatory in matters of ideology and pro-regulatory in practice. Asked whether they believed that government regulation of business was necessary to protect the public or that such regulation usually does more harm than good, just 40 percent answered that regulation was necessary, while 52 percent said it did more harm than good.

But then came the specifics. Pew asked whether federal regulations should be strengthened, kept as is, or reduced in particular areas. When it came to food production and packaging, 53 percent said strengthen, 36 percent said keep as is, and just 7 percent said reduce. In environmental safeguards, the breakdown was 50 percent strengthen, 36 percent keep as is, 17 percent reduce. In car safety and efficiency, the split was 45, 42, and 9 percent. In workplace safety and health, it was 41, 45, and 10 percent. And with prescription drugs, it was 39, 33, and 20 percent.

This is hardly a new discovery—public opinion polls have shown similar results for decades. In general, Americans dislike government regulations, but they want stronger regulations in specific areas.

The Overreaches of the Regulatory State

Meyerson thinks that this is hypocrisy and that Americans are “in denial.” Meyerson misses the point:
when Americans are directly effected by regulations, they oppose them. But it’s easy for Americans to want those “other guys” to be regulated. And in fact, the numbers are not that heavily weighted towards more regulation. A plurality thinks that there’s too much regulation, a slightly larger plurality thinks that there are two little. A smaller plurality thinks that the amount of regulations are fine the way they are. Together, the number of people who want fewer regulations or the status quo outnumber those who want to expand the regulatory state.

And as the regulatory state grows and the state and federal level, we will likely see the number of people wanting to roll back government regulation rise. Take these examples:

A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because the school told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.

The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the person who was inspecting all lunch boxes in the More at Four classroom that day.

The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs — including in-home day care centers — to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.

When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones.

Imagine what will happen when something like that becomes commonplace. It’s one thing for a government regulator to go after “big corporations” with stupid and destructive regulations. But the second those stupid and destructive regulations effect the average American, it will be time to break out the tar and feathers.

And the school-lunch police aren’t the only example of regulatory insanity going on in America today.As one Nevada farmer found out, the regulatory state doesn’t give a damn about common sense or your rights:

I can’t tell you how sick to my stomach I was watching that first dish of Mint Lamb Meatballs hit the bottom of the unsanitized trash can. Here we were with guests who had paid in advance and had come from long distances away anticipating a wonderful dining experience, waiting for dinner while we were behind the kitchen curtain throwing it away! I know of the hours and labor that went into the preparation of that food. We asked the inspector if we could save the food for a private family event that we were having the next day. (A personal family choice to use our own food.) We were denied and she was insulted that we would even consider endangering our families health. I assured her that I had complete faith and trust in Giovanni our chef and the food that was prepared, (obviously, or I wouldn’t be wanting to serve it to our guests).

I then asked if we couldn’t feed the food to our “public guests” or even to our private family, then at least let us feed it to our pigs. (I think it should be a criminal action to waste any resource of the land. Being dedicated to our organic farm, we are forever looking for good inputs into our compost and soil and good food that can be fed to our animals. The animals and compost pile always get our left over garden surplus and food. We truly are trying to be as sustainable as possible.) Again, a call to Susan and another negative response. Okay, so let me get this right. So the food that was raised here on our farm and selected and gathered from familiar local sources, cooked and prepared with skill and love was even unfit to feed to my pigs!?! Who gave them the right to tell me what I feed my animals? Not only were we denied the use of the food for any purpose, to ensure that it truly was unfit for feed of any kind we were again threatened with police action if we did not only throw the food in the trash, but then to add insult to injury, we were ordered to pour bleach on it.

There was nothing wrong with the food, other than it didn’t meet the purely bureaucratic whims of the health inspector. And this wasn’t one deranged idiot going off on a whim: the state health inspector was constantly on the phone with her superior, who not only ratified each decision, but was apparently calling the shots.

This is the face of government regulation in America: it’s not about protecting people, it’s about power and control. Was the state protecting that elementary school student from anything? No, the options she was later given were worse than what her parents had packed. Was there any danger to the guests of that Nevada farmer? No, but because the government doesn’t want any deviation from their narrow rules, they acted like tinpot dictators and made the farmers throw away the food and pour bleach on it.

In a sane world, the people responsible for those decisions would be fired immediately. But this is not a sane world. It’s a world where too much power has been abdicated, too much common sense abandoned, and too much authority ceded ever upwards. And that is why Americans hate regulation—and as more Americans experience this kind of rampant idiocy, the number of Americans who see the regulatory state as the enemy will only increase.

And when Americans say that there are too many regulations on small business, they are absolutely right. Take for example what happened to a small business trying to operate a beer garden in Arlington, Virginia. Government bureaucrats at the local level are ofter just as rapacious and just as foolhardy as their compatriots on the state and federal level. For another example, watch this video outlining the many needless hurdles a small business owner has to go through to open an ice cream parlor in San Francisco.

We talk about how important it is to foster the growth of small businesses and how critical it is to get Americans working again. But as the above examples demonstrate, our system of massive government overregulation costs jobs and takes thousands of dollars out of the economy and into the hands of the government apparatchiks who administer this maddening system.

So yes, it’s easy for the average American to say that someone else should be regulated—given that the media has turned big corporations into mustache-twirling villains at every opportunity it’s no wonder that a plurality support more regulation. But when Americans look at the issue of regulation holistically, they see the reality that regulations hurt more people than they protect.

Meyerson thinks that the problem with America is that government isn’t powerful enough. But a government powerful enough to make BP, GE, or any other company do whatever government wants is a government that is powerful enough to make you do whatever government wants. And that doesn’t even get into a discussion of regulatory capture. Big business doesn’t hate government regulation—they’ve learned to use it as a cudgel to beat down competition before they can rise up to challenge the established players. That beer garden in Virginia can’t afford an army of lawyers and lobbyists to negotiate with the regulators—but a chain restaurant can. What is the result of this nonsensical regulatory overreach? Fewer small business and more powerful big ones.

American’s aren’t hypocrits—at least not in the way Meyerson accuses them of being. Rather, Americans need to understand that the same sort of regulatory insanity that causes schoolchildren to be given chicken nuggets or farmers to have to throw away perfectly good food is no less idiotic and no less harmful when it’s applied to big corporations.

The problem with Friedman’s ideology is that we’re already watching it fail. The blue-state model is failing here, and the European welfare-state model that the Democrats want to emulate is teetering on the edge of chaos. (Just observe the inevitable end-state of the European welfare state as exemplified in Greece.)

Friedman argues that we need spend more on infrastructure and education—the same old cliched thinking we’ve heard before. The problem with such spending is that it doesn’t produce anything: it’s the equivalent of digging ditches to keep people busy. Take “high speed rail,” the fetish of statophiles everywhere. Nearly every rail project in this country goes massively over-budget and few people ride in them. Yet we spend billions of dollars developing “solutions” no one wants to problems no one has. But that’s how America is supposed to compete in the 21st Century.

What we don’t need is more bureaucratic pipe-dreams. We don’t need more top-down initiatives made by Washington D.C. that have no basis in the needs of real people. Have we learned nothing from the 20th Century: central planning does not work. No government agency, no matter how well-functioning, has the level of knowledge necessary to make better economic decisions than the people who are actually effected by those decisions. Trying to direct the economy from afar does not work, never has worked, and won’t work in the future.

And of course, Friedman wants to “raise revenue” to fulfill all of his dreams of high speed trains and elaborate (and pointless) fights against global warming. The problem with “raising revenue” is every dollar taken out of the productive economy and put into wild-eyed government initiatives is a dollar that can’t be invested in something actually worthwhile—the fact is that the “Keynesian multiplier” is a myth and $1 in government spending does not magically produce more than $1 in growth.

And that’s why we shouldn’t listen to people like Tom Friedman. It’s not that the Republican Party lacks ideas, it’s that the Democratic Party is threatened by change. The poles of American politics have reversed. From the union battles in Wisconsin to the 2012 Presidential race, it’s been the conservative upstarts trying to overturn the sclerotic and malfunctioning status quo while the left tries to defend their fiefdoms from substantive change.

Friedman doesn’t want to embrace the 20th Century, he wants to repeat its mistakes. The 21st Century is all about the decentralized over the centralized, autonomous and intelligent networks over large institutions, the agile over the cumbersome. And there is nothing that is less agile, less intelligent, and less willing to delegate power and authority than the United States federal government. Yet Friedman and his ilk would imbue that same broken system with more and more power over every facet of our lives. It’s like arguing that we should take down the Internet and put everyone on Minitel.

If the United States is to be successful in the 21st Century, it can’t emulate the failed policies of the last century. If there’s one side in this equation that is horribly out of step with the times, it’s the one embracing the failed strategies of the past. Perhaps it’s President Obama and his cast of Clinton-era retreads that should simply give up.

I’m a supporter of gay marriage, although a tepid one. I don’t buy the argument that allowing gay marriage does a damn thing to harm the institution of marriage in this country beyond the massive damage done to it by heterosexual couples over the decades. If we really wanted to restore marriage in this country, we’d make divorces much harder to get. But that has no chance of happening any time soon.

At the same time, the term “marriage” isn’t a term that can be changed on a whim. It has a specific meaning. And the state has an interest in healthy families, which means families where there are two parents who pass along the values necessary for a functioning democracy. If you undermine the family, you undermine society, and you undermine democracy. The decline of the American family is at the foundation of the decline of America, and it’s a serious issue that needs to be fixed.

Even with that as a given, how does denying the right for gay couples to get married fix marriage? If anything, it creates the societal expectation that gay couples should be in stable monogamous relationships and should raise healthy and well-adjusted children. That, in my book, is a good thing for society. Rather than marginalizing homosexuality, we’d be better off mainstreaming it.

Why The Ninth Circuit Was Wrong

That being said, I think the Ninth Circuit was dead wrong in overturning Proposition 8. Two unelected federal judges have absolutely no business writing the social policy of a state against the express will of the voters. The same would be true if California voters had recognized gay marriage and a federal appeals court told them that they could not. The federal government, no less the federal judiciary, has no business deciding what is a matter dedicated to the states.

Proposition 8 could have been undone the same way it was enacted: by the voters. That’s the way it should be overturned. The Ninth Circuit got it wrong in saying that the effect of the law was too rash and not a “cautious” approach. By taking the question away from the legislature and the judiciary, Proposition 8 forced the question to become one of popular will: and there’s no reason to suggest that popular will isn’t already changing. It’s not even a matter of rights: gay couples in California had all of the same legal rights as married one, as the Ninth Circuit opinion took pains to point out. But instead of finding that to be in the favor of Proposition 8, the Ninth Circuit found that to be a mark against it.

That is deeply problematic for acceptance in gay marriage in this country. It basically means that once a state recognizes civil unions, it really is a “slippery slope” towards full-on recognition of same-sex marriage. It makes it a binary proposition for most states—either deny all marriage rights to gay couples or redefine marriage entirely. If the issue is forced like that, many states will just deny all marriage rights.

Moreover, this gives a new push for the Federal Marriage Amendment. If states are going to be forced to accept gay marriage against the will of the voters, it’s possible that the voters will take the matter into their own hands.

Why The Supreme Court Will Affirm Anyway

Obviously, this is a question that the Supreme Court will be taking up in this Term. And Judge Reinhardt, who wrote the opinion, did something very smart for someone in his opinion: he wrote the opinion with one particular Justice in mind: Justice Kennedy.

Ultimately, even though I strongly disagree with the Ninth Circuit’s decision, I would bet that it will be affirmed by the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision. Justices Kagan, Sotomayor, Breyer, and Ginsberg will vote to affirm. Justices Alito, Roberts, Thomas, and Scalia are sure votes against (although it’s possible that either Alito or Roberts could vote to affirm). Justice Kennedy will write the opinion. Even though a petition for certiorari hasn’t even been filed yet, the writing is already on the wall.

The reason is because Justice Kennedy wrote the majority opinion in Romer v. Evans, the case that overturned an amendment to the Colorado Constitution that was ostensibly written to prevent special rights being granted on the basis of sexual orientation. Justice Kennedy’s opinion struck down the amendment, holding that it violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Judge Reinhardt’s decision striking down Prop 8 also was based on the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

It would be difficult for the Supreme Court to overturn the Ninth Circuit without scrapping Romer in the process. I don’t see Justice Kennedy undercutting his own decision any time soon. With the four “liberal” justices and Kennedy, Prop 8 is almost certainly to be DOA when it gets to the Supreme Court.

Getting Civil Rights Wrong

In the end, the problem I have with the Ninth Circuit’s decision isn’t really the outcome: I will shed few tears over Prop 8. The problem is the process. Not every odious law is a violation of the U.S. Constitution. We have a federal government based on limited, enumerated powers. None of those include telling other states how they should or should not define marriage.

The Ninth Circuit has basically said that we no longer have a government “by the People, for the People.” We have a government that’s “by the People unless the judiciary disagrees, in which case the judiciary wins.” That’s a dangerous precedent to set.

This isn’t at all like the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The advocates of same-sex marriage have plenty of recourse at the ballot box and in the court of popular opinion. They’ve won plenty of battles there. The fact that they’ve lost some of those battles doesn’t justify saying that the federal government must step in and take away the right of the voters to choose their own paths. Proposition 8 may be an odious and vile law, but there are plenty of laws that I consider odious and vile. The remedy for those laws is to get the people to overturn them, not to make the whole country less democratic. This isn’t a case where same-sex couples are denied public accommodations. Proposition 8 granted same-sex couples every right of marriage but the name—but that wasn’t enough for the Ninth Circuit. Which indicates that this really isn’t about legal rights, but moral ones.

This decision was ostensibly based on the law, but at the end of the day it was one in which two judges decided that they think that the choices made by California voters were morally wrong and they wanted a different choice. Those two judges may be right, maybe it is morally wrong to deny the moniker of “marriage” on committed same-sex marriages. But it’s not their call to make. That’s what being a nation of laws rather than men implies—and if you don’t like it, then work to get the law changed.

The fact is that full legal recognition of same-sex marriage was probably inevitable anyway. But if the Supreme Court does what it is likely to do, the result could well be a Federal Marriage Amendment that puts the question back into the hands of the people. That would be a major setback for the cause of same-sex marriage, but when you take power away from the people and invest it in unelected judges, you will create popular blowback. The real solution would have been to use the power of our democracy, to speak out, and to get the voters of California to overturn Prop 8 on their own accord. In the end, the Ninth Circuit’s decision may have been a victory for same-sex marriage, but it may also turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory in the end.

• Mitt Romney will be nominated as the GOP’s candidate in 2012. He will defeat President Obama by a small margin, but by a large margin in the Electoral College. Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina, and Florida will all shift to the GOP column on Election Night.
• The GOP will retake the Senate as the Democrats lose seats in North Dakota, Nebraska, Florida, Ohio, Missouri, and Virginia. The GOP will hold their margin in the House.
• Unemployment will remain between 7-8%, and the number of discouraged workers will continue to cause problems. Efforts to spin the economy as recovering by the Obama White House will sound painfully out of touch.
• The Eurozone will collapse in 2012 as Greece is unable to maintain its austerity package. Greece will leave the Euro and redenominate its debts in drachmas. Following that Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland will all threaten to leave the Euro, leaving the future of the currency in doubt.
• Apple will release an iPad 3 with a Retina display as well as an iPhone 5 with a new form factor. They will sell like hotcakes. Apple will not sell a TV, however.
• Iran will continue to threaten to close off the Strait of Hormuz, but will not actually try. Sanctions will serve to weaken Ahmadinejad and internal corruption will cause a new round of riots in Tehran and other major cities.
• Iraq will fall into civil war, with the Shi’ites fighting the Kurds and the Sunnis. President Obama will do nothing to help the Iraqis, but will blame everything on Bush.
• China will face a banking crisis that will spread throughout Asia. Along with the problems in Europe, the global economy will take yet another beating.
• “The Avengers,” “Hunger Games,” and “Prometheus” will do well with both audiences and critics, but amount of total box office receipts will continue to decline as even more people discover that it’s cheaper and easy to stay home and watch Netflix.
• SpaceX’s first resupply mission to the ISS will be a complete success, just as heads start rolling at Russia’s Roscosmos. As Russia’s Soyuz launcher starts having more and more technical issues, NASA will fast-track plans for private companies to lift astronauts to the ISS.
• On December 21, 2012, the universe will end when the Mayan god Kukulkan descends from the heavens and decrees an end to all existence. Unfortunately for Kukulkan, he arrives in the middle of a Lady Gaga concert, where a blood-soaked feathered serpent would attract little notice. Disgusted by everything, he figures that non-existence would actually be better than what we have, so he ascends back up into the heaven and has a few too many glasses of wine with Zeus and Thor as they complain that no one actually believes in them any more.