The Obama administration knows it is in deep trouble.  Contrary to the marginally positive reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the economy is doing poorly and shows no signs of life.  Gas is headed toward $5 per gallon and will set up a rise in inflation that we haven’t seen since the Carter years.  Ultimately, things are so bad that no matter whom the Republicans run, he will look like a much better choice than Obama.

But, the Obama administration has a plan.  It is the same plan used by LBJ in 1964 and used by Bill Clinton when faced with impeachment; attack someone.  There are only a few candidates available.  Syria has some potential, but attacking Libya didn’t do much for Obama, so neither will Syria.  But, wait!  What about Iran?  That’s it!  Let’s attack Iran!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/17/us-officials-iran-sanctions-military-action

According to this report, the administration plans to try diplomacy to solve the problem with Iran and if that doesn’t work, they will take military action.  They are planning on attacking Iran in September or October.  From a military standpoint, this makes no sense.  It gives Iran several more months to harden sites and prepare defenses.  Why continue to try diplomacy that we know will not work?  But from a political standpoint, it is brilliant.  Obama can go on national television and announce that he has launched an air assault on Iran.  There will be immediate calls from the main stream media to rally around the Commander in Chief during a time of war.  We will hear solemn editorials about his courageous decision.  There will be stern warnings about risking a change in leadership during a time of war.  Democrats may even sing “God Bless America” again.  If Republicans refuse to back the President, they will be eviscerated by the main stream media.   The Republican candidate will go down in flames and the “Anointed One” will coast to re-election.  That, I’m thinking, could be the plan.

It’s hardly the first time a Democratic President has used this tactic to get out of hot water.  In 1964, Lyndon Johnson was in trouble in his campaign against Barry Goldwater.  Then the Gulf of Tonkin incident took place and Johnson basically declared war on North Vietnam.  We now know that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a minor event, probably provoked by the U.S., and definitely exaggerated by the Johnson Administration.  The adoring main stream media fell for it hook, line and sinker.  Goldwater had no choice but to support the Tonkin Gulf Resolution.  At the same time Johnson was manufacturing a war, his campaign was trying to demonize Goldwater as a crazed hawk who risked nuclear war.  Goldwater never knew what hit him.  He was slaughtered in the 1964 election.

Over the next four years LBJ grossly mismanaged the war.  But, in spite of himself we were on the verge of defeating North Vietnam.  Personal memoirs from top North Vietnamese Generals showed that they were ready to quit.  Who can blame them?  The U.S. military is a formidable force and it was beating them on every front.  The Viet Cong had been decimated during the blunder of the 1968 Tet Offensive.  But then the anti-war movement took off in the United States along with the “Hey Hey, LBJ, How many kids did you kill today?” chants.  Johnson panicked and gave up on his re-election bid.  Then, just before the election, Johnson pulled the ultimate October surprise.  He unilaterally stopped the bombardment of the North just before the election as a last-minute desperate attempt to get Hubert Humphrey elected.  It didn’t work.  But as soon as Richard Nixon was elected, the Democratic congress voted to cut off all funds for the war if Nixon resumed bombing of the North.  Nixon went along until the North Vietnamese kept balking at the peace talks.  Finally, in frustration, Nixon ordered the B52s to bomb the North and within days the North Vietnamese gave up and signed a cease fire.  Our POWs came home.  Several of them reported rejoicing at the sound of the B52 missions, because they knew this would end the war. 

If Nixon had not been forced to resign, South Vietnam might be free today.  But when Ford became President, Democrats immediately moved to guaranteed defeat.  They not only refused to let Ford prosecute the war, they wouldn’t let him provide desperately needed military equipment or even financial aid to South Vietnam.  North Vietnamese troops invaded the South by driving unopposed on paved highways.  One U.S. Carrier group could have halted the invasion.  Instead, we did nothing and watched the people stupid enough to trust us get slaughtered.

Clinton did it twice.  On December 15, 1999, 11 “moderate” Republicans in the house announced they would vote for impeachment. Clinton had been dithering since February, 1998, with regard to the need to bomb Iraq to slow down Saddam Hussein. Clinton ordered the bombing attacks on Iraq on December 16, 1999, and Democrats immediately moved to postpone the impeachment vote.  We were warned about impeaching a President during a time of war.  There was no emergency; the situation in Iraq had not changed very much during the prior 10 months.  The only emergency was the pending impeachment of Bill Clinton.  Republicans did rally around Clinton, but on December 19, 1999, they impeached him anyway.

Clinton did it again in March, 1999.  He had been narrowly acquitted in his impeachment trial, but on March 18, 1999, Deputy Independent Counsel Hickman Ewing testified at the Susan McDougal trial that he had written a “rough draft indictment of first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton” because he doubted the truthfulness of her testimony during a deposition.  The U.S. Senate was willing to ignore perjury, but the courts were not.  Pressure continued to build for Clinton.  He was scheduled for a hearing in front of Judge Susan Webber Wright.  She eventually found him in willful contempt of court on April 12, 1999. 

Clinton desperately needed a distraction.  He found it with the attack on Yugoslavia, which he announced in a Press conference on March 24, 1999.  One of the big arguments for the attack was the allegation that 100,000 civilians had been slaughtered.  Other people made even more wildly exaggerated and inaccurate claims.  But after the war, they only found about 2,108 graves and it is not clear all of these were the result of the alleged ethnic cleansing.  In reality, the U.S. found a lot more evidence of WMDs in Iraq after the war than they did of ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia. 

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/International_War_Crimes/WhereBodiesBuried_NATO.htm

The main stream media, continues to falsely pretend that George W. Bush lied about the WMD in Iraq, even though leading Democrats like John Kerry and Hillary Clinton made even stronger statements prior to the war.  Yet they have been deafly silent about the blatant lies made by the Clinton administration prior to the unnecessary assault on Yugoslavia.  They also ignore the fact that Clinton never sought UN support or even support from the U.S. Congress.  The only real emergency was the self-inflicted political crisis facing Bill and Hillary Clinton.

In view of this, does anyone really think Obama would hesitate to use the situation in Iran for blatant political advantage?  Does anyone really think that the news media will not hail the conquering hero much like they did for Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton?   

There have been many rumors that Israel does not intend to wait until a more politically convenient opportunity to do the necessary.  It should be obvious to everyone that while the Obama administration is unwilling to do anything, at the moment, they appear to be equally determined to stop Israel from taking action.  When you think about it, the worst case scenario for Obama would be for Israel to solve this problem without Obama’s help.

I fervently pray that I have this wrong.  I would like to think that no President of the United States would ever put personal political interests above national security.  I would like to think that, but the timing of the actions taken by Lyndon Johnson and Bill Clinton force me to consider the unthinkable. 

Wag the dog?  Decide for yourself.

TDM

Republicans are trying desperately to lose the most important election in our lifetime.  The only thing worse than listening to liberals dismiss the entire class of Republican candidates for President as weak sniveling fools; is the fact that they have so much ammunition.  So far the primary has consisted primarily of one candidate or another surging to the lead, only to disintegrate into flames from self-inflicted wounds.  It is not so much that they get shot down; it is that they are such easy targets. 

Now we are at the point of choosing between Mitt Romney, who no one really seems to want, and Rick Santorum, who has primarily been the beneficiary of watching far more capable candidates drop all around him.  I would greatly fear the re-election of Barack Obama, except that Democrats continue to be Democrats.

The latest case in point is the idiotic decision to try and force the Catholic Church to pay for contraceptives.  What on earth were they thinking?  This is so bad that Candy Crowley almost laughed at Obama’s new Chief of Staff when he tried to explain this:

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-graham/2012/02/13/cnn-asks-obama-chief-staff-youre-observant-jew-so-no-qualms-presidents-v#

LEW: So you know, I have to say that the solution that we came up with puts no religious institution in the position where it either has to pay for or facilitate the provision of the benefits they find objectionable. If the issue is should women have access to all form of preventive care, including contraception, we believe the answer to that is yes.

CROWLEY: Can you say, though, with a straight face that the insurance company’s going to pick up the cost of this?

This is why Obama will lose.  Democrats just do not get it.  The real issue here isn’t religious freedom, although that is front and center.  The issue is that Democrats just cannot help themselves from trying to solve all problems by spending more money, and they are running out of money.  At a time when we are facing record deficits, Democrats decided it was a good idea to provide free birth control for everyone. 

Today, Obama warned of skyrocketing gas prices and then tried to explain that this was good news as it was proof of recovery.  Not many people are going to buy that nonsense.  If Obama had a clue about anything, he would just let Republicans pass legislation and grudgingly sign it into law.  That is what Clinton did.  If things get better, Obama would get the credit.  If things got worse, congress would get the blame.  But Obama insists on doing things his way, which is always to raise taxes and then waste the additional revenue on gifts to friends who don’t need it.  That has never worked in the past, and it won’t work now.

The best campaigner, for the Republicans, in U.S. History, is Barack Hussein Obama.  He is the gift that keeps on giving.  As long as he continues campaigning for re-election, the Republican candidate will be in good shape.  Our candidates are fully capable of running a lousy campaign.  The main stream media will continue to fawn over Obama.  But, ultimately, it will be nearly impossible to out duel Obama in a mental battle for the title of most incompetent.  

TDM

The recent interview with John F. Kennedy’s old “mistress” is a disturbing story of raw abuse of power.  Those who were paying attention already knew that Jack Kennedy was a notorious womanizer with rampant reports of wild parties in the White House and extensive use of professional call girls.  This most recent revelation is particularly disturbing, because it was with a former White House intern.  I think it comes perilously close to power rape.  He intimidated her into having sex with him purely by the power of his position.  She was hardly a mistress, just another in a long list of people to use and discard.

But the real problem is far more serious than the raw abuse of power.  John Kennedy also had an affair with a woman known as Ellen Rometsch.  Following is her biography from Spartacus Educational:

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKrometsch.htm

I have seen numerous reports about Ellen Rometsch, even though no one in the main stream media has ever touched the story.  They should have, because it involved a serious risk to our national security.  Ellen Rometsch was not the only one; there were also rumors of involvement by Mariella Novotny and Suzy Chang, possibly with both Jack and Robert Kennedy.  These women were allegedly involved in the sex spy ring that brought down British War Minister John Profumo.  At least the British had the decency to take action.

In the United States, this was quickly covered up.  At the time of Kennedy’s assassination, the Senate was actively investigating Bobby Baker.  Baker owned the Qorum club, which was the place used by the women described above to influence politicians.  If any of you do the slightest bit of research on Bobby Baker you will be shocked at the allegations.  The following is a link to an education forum post about this subject:

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=15790

An interesting side note, Carole Tyler was called to testify about Bobby Baker, but she refused based on the 5^th amendment.  She apparently thought Baker would leave his wife and marry her, but in 1965 she became angry when it was obvious that this would never happen.  She died in a “convenient” plane crash on May 10, 1965.  Even more interesting are reports that one of the women who lived in the house with her was Mary Jo Kopechne.  Mary Jo Kopechne died in the famous Teddy Kennedy car crash on Chappaquiddick Island in June, 1969. 

I have no way of knowing how much of the information contained in these links is accurate.  I do know that there are multiple sources reporting the same, or similar, information.  One of the most interesting, and frightening, elements of the story by Mimi Alford is when she said the following:

One such visit occurred during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 13-day-long standoff in October 1962 between the United States and the Soviet Union. According to Alford, Kennedy told her that “I’d rather my children red than dead.”

Following is the link to the Huffington Post article that was the source of that information:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/06/mimi-alford-jfk-affair_n_1257759.html

If this is true, then we are extremely fortunate Kennedy said that to a naïve American girl rather than an alleged East German spy like Ellen Rometsch.  It is frightening to imagine how different our world would be if Nikita Khrushchev knew that Kennedy would fold. 

This story has been covered up from the start.  It appears as though a lot of people in Washington D.C. knew about this, but did not pursue it because it involved two U.S. Presidents, Kennedy and Johnson.  In any event, the Mimi Alford story is a lot more serious than any one admits.  It is a glimpse back in time that reveals some very ugly facts about our past.

Even today the main stream media continues to praise Jack Kennedy and has been quick to discount the significant of this story.  Barbara Walters bragged about her shameless affair with Senator Edward Brooke, but heaped scorn on Mimi Alford for daring to tell her story.    It is hard to tell if those who continue to heap lavish praise on John F. Kennedy are ill informed, or they simply do not care.  In either case, the truth has been papered over with the illusion of Camelot. 

TDM

Most of us are less than stellar at predicting future events.  However some things, usually bad, are easy to predict.  The reason is that similar events have happened in the past and scientists know they will happen again.  For example; at some point in the relative near future, California is going to have another major earthquake.  It may not be the “big one,” but it will be a major earthquake and it will do an incredible amount of damage. 

Greece is reminding us of the evitable consequences of spending money you do not have.  This too, is inevitable.  If you spend more than you make, at some point, no one will lend you more money.  This is as true for governments as it is people.  When that happens, you have to cut spending, even if the cuts are unacceptable.

This is hardly a new problem.  Our Government has been running up deficits for decades.  It is important to understand that the “Clinton Surplus” was a temporary situation resulting from a peak in the Social Security Cash Flow.  The following chart, from George Mason University, shows what happened:

It is really simple.  We either cut spending now, or we cut spending later.  The longer we wait, the more it will hurt. 

 TDM

On June 25, 1876, General George Armstrong Custer decided to attack the Lakota Sioux, Northern Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, instead of waiting for reinforcements.  He was killed, along with 265 troops in about an hour.  The next day, when General Terry arrived with reinforcements, the Indians took one look and decided to leave.  Custer had accomplished nothing.  It was a stark reminder that suicidal attacks seldom win wars, but they almost always destroy the attackers.

The Republican campaign has disintegrated into a poorly written soap opera.  In an act of absolute desperation, Newt Gingrich is now comparing Romney, unfavorably, with just about every despicable person on earth.  He would have us believe that Romney is an anti-religion, left-wing, pro-abortion, anti-gun, pro-tax liberal.  Now Romney is not my candidate of choice, but this is ridiculous.  Keep in mind that just four years ago, Romney was the conservative alternative to McCain.  He has flip-flopped more than his share, but he is a far cry from a hard core liberal.

The real problem is that Romney had a ton of money available to assault Gingrich, and he had even more ammunition, most of which is at least somewhat true.  Gingrich has now gone over the edge blaming all his problems on the “Republican establishment.”  That is nonsense.  The vast majority of Gingrich’s problems were self-inflicted.  There is no conspiracy against Gingrich; there just are a lot of Republicans who are very concerned with regard to his qualifications to be President.  Frankly, his performance lately lends credibility to their concerns.

Gingrich is acting like a spoiled child.  I understand why he is angry.  He has been running for President, and failing, since the mid 90’s, Gingrich believes he was gifted by God to be President of the United States, and he is angry that his destiny has been thwarted by mere mortals.  The man with a life-long, well-earned reputation for skewering opponents also has the thinnest skin in politics.  The problem is that we simply cannot have a President who is so self-centered and who has such lack of control over his emotions.

In my opinion the Tea Party is going to take a big hit on this.  Some of the Tea Party organizations jumped on the Gingrich bandwagon only to watch him head for the rocks at full speed.  This failed to save Gingrich, but it managed to alienate Romney.  Now we are at serious risk of nominating a candidate that the Tea Party openly tried to torpedo.  That is hardly the way to win friends and influence people.

If the polls are right, Gingrich is going to get walloped in Florida today.  This reminds me of Custer’s last stand.  Custer went down in history as a hero, but in reality he just killed everyone around him.

TDM

The court case in Georgia regarding Obama’s birth certificate is interesting. However, it is neither as great as his detractors hope, nor as harmless as his supporters pretend.

Based on everything I have seen, the odds of Obama being born in Kenya approach zero.  Regardless of the birth certificate issue, there is no evidence that his parents ever lived together as husband and wife.  Barack Obama, Sr. already had a wife in Kenya.  It is very unlikely that he would have taken Obama’s mother to Kenya or anywhere else.  The last thing he would have wanted to do is bring and American wife over to Kenya.

I strongly suspect that the birth certificate is a reproduction based on legitimate imaged records and that Obama will have little problem proving he was born in Hawaii. I think he wants people to challenge his birth certificate, because it is the only document that does support his personal history.  It is, in my opinion, a red herring.

Obama’s father was definitely not a U.S. citizen.  This has never been disputed.  While this makes for an interesting legal argument, I think even Republicans would probably support a finding that he is a natural born citizen, if this is the only issue.  His mother clearly was a natural born citizen and that would probably carry the day.

A much bigger problem is the possibility that he was adopted by an Indonesian man who may have registered Obama as an Indonesian citizen.  This is a very complex subject, so I included a link to an excellent article that describes this in detail:

http://www.visaus.com/citizen.html

The main point is that this is far from automatic.  I suspect that Obama did nothing to regain his citizenship, probably because no one thought it was important at the time.  However, he is extremely unlikely to be removed from office because of his dual citizenship.

His selective service records have inconsistencies, but odds are that Obama did register for the draft in late July of 1980.  The draft was suspended completely in 1975, under President Ford, primarily because of widespread opposition by Democrats in congress.  In 1980 Carter was President and he wanted to put this issue to rest.  In 1977 Carter had pardoned all the draft dodging cowards who fled to Canada to avoid fighting in Vietnam.  In July of 1980, he reinstated registering for selective service, with a promise to never draft anyone.  Proclamation 4771 was issued by Carter on July 2, 1980.  If you want to read the proclamation, here is the link:

http://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/proclamations/04771.html

Since Obama was born on August 4, 1961, he was required to register within six days of July 28, 1980.  He apparently signed the registration on July 29, 1980 and it was processed effective September 4, 1980.  The timing is consistent with the political reality of the time.

As mentioned above, there are some inconsistencies with Obama’s Selective Service records, as there are with virtually all of his documents.  For example he signed it July 30, 1980, but it is date stamped July 29, 1980. There are other potential problems that have caused some people to consider this document a forgery.  But it seems likely that Obama would have been well aware of what was going on and the vast majority of college students his age took advantage of Carter’s get out of jail free card.

A more serious problem for Obama is the allegation that he has used multiple social security numbers.  There are even reports that he used potentially fraudulent social security numbers.  In the Georgia case, for the first time, this issue came up.  That makes this the first court that has actually demanded Obama produce any documents.  There are so many questions about Obama’s personal history that the production of any documents at all has the potential to create serious problems for him. 

I wouldn’t hold my breath expecting Obama to be declared ineligible for the Presidency any time soon.  For one thing, there simply is not enough time for this to wind its way through the legal process before the 2012 election.  I also would counsel any Republican who cares about their country to serious consider the consequences if Obama was removed from office for any reason.  Joe Biden would become President of the United, which in and of itself should be a concern.  But more important, it would immediately insert Hillary Clinton as the nominee of the Democratic Party for the 2012 election and she is a far more dangerous candidate than Obama.  Quite bluntly, ten more months of Obama will do less damage to the country than the risk of electing Hillary Clinton to a full four year term.

In any event, this is a significant event that is being ignored by the main stream media.  It could, like most other stories about Obama’s birth certificate, die a quick death.  But it is at least a major departure from previous court hearings where Obama was able to obtain dismissals without producing any documents at all.

 TDM

On various occasions I have had the duty to interview people suspected of doing something wrong.  I quickly learned something:  when you run into someone who responds with rage at being asked a reasonable question, watch out.  People who have done nothing wrong will seldom respond that way.  They just answer the question.   But, quite frequently the people, who complain the loudest about the unfairness of the question, are the people with the most to hide.  They are trying to intimidate others into not doing their job. 

Barack Obama managed to avoid scrutiny by placing the race card whenever anyone dared ask him about anything.  This was also Bill and Hillary Clinton’s principle method of avoiding scrutiny. Remember Hillary talking about the vast right-wing conspiracy?  Bill Clinton would refuse to answer legitimate questions on the basis that he was focused on doing his job for the American people.  This approach was perfected when the man, obviously guilty of perjury, managed to pin the blame on Republicans for daring to impeach him merely because he was guilty of a felony.  His reasoning was that this was only about sex, so it didn’t matter.  Perjury always matters.

When I saw the way Newt Gingrich responded to John King, my heart sank.  I immediately recognized the “angry, how-dare-you-question-me routine.”  No one does scorn better than Newt Gingrich.  At first glance, Newt Gingrich’s tirade against John King was brilliant.  It certainly got the crowd excited and won him the election in South Carolina.  But, it is pretty obvious that Gingrich was lying.  The following article from the Daily Beast documents the problem.  Now, the Daily Beast is no friend of conservatives, but unfortunately, in this case, it has its facts down:

 from http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/01/23/in-newt-gingrich-s-world-rules-do-not-apply-to-him-ex-wife-s-lawyer-says.html

Newt Gingrich is the only Speaker of the House in our nation’s history that was fined by the ethics committee.  The fine was a whopping $300,000.  The Speaker of the House makes an annual salary of $223,500 per year.  It was even less when Gingrich was Speaker.  That means he was fined far in excess of his entire annual salary.  That size of fine says a lot about his real net worth and even more about the seriousness with which House members viewed his actions.  Remember, this was a Republican controlled House at the time.

Newt Gingrich was forced to resign as Speaker after House Republicans staged a mutiny.  He was the man who developed the “Contract with America” and helped Republicans regain the House after more than 40 years in the Wilderness.  This was an accomplishment on a par with the biblical Moses.   The Republicans in the House would have tolerated almost anything from the man who did this, but they could not tolerate Newt Gingrich.  Recently, more and more of them have been speaking out and warning us about serious problems with Newt Gingrich’s leadership.  Perhaps we should start to listen.

The President of the United States is the most powerful person on earth.  This person literally has the power to unleash a nuclear weapon.  In the hands of the wrong person, who responds because of rage rather than reason, this is extremely dangerous.  That is why during the last days of the Nixon administration there were reports that senior administration officials secretly agreed to ignore an illegal order from Nixon, if it came to that.  Fortunately, Nixon never tried issuing such an order.

There is no room for error on this topic.  Republicans need to be absolutely sure they can trust Newt Gingrich’s character, or they dare not nominate him.  This does not mean that he has to be perfect.  It does mean that he has to be someone who has proven himself to be worthy of trust.  With regard to convicting someone for criminal behavior, they are innocent until proven guilty.  With regard to running for President, it is the duty of the candidate to prove he has the right character for the job.  Newt needs to tone down the rhetoric and start being a lot more truthful, if he wants to meet that standard.

 TDM

We must never forget to give due credit when someone displays courage and character.  Today that was done by a Democrat, Gabrielle Giffords.  She didn’t show great courage by getting shot; she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Today, she put her country and her constituency first.  She could have stayed in congress and pretended she was up to the job.  No one would have dared challenge her.  She even could have run for the United States Senate and possibly won that as well.  No matter what she said or did, the main stream media would have deified her.  But she resigned because she knew she could not do the job and she did what was right for Arizona and the country. 

It is a shame that she suffered this horrific injury.  No one should have their career ended by a mad man in a senseless shooting.  But it did happen and the sad reality is that she suffered a serious and permanent brain injury.  I wish her the best possible recovery and a happy and long life.  I also applaud her for doing the right thing.  It must have been very tempting to just stay in office and coast to re-election.  I am absolutely certain that DNC officials were urging her to do just that.  No one in either party would have ever dared hint that she couldn’t do the job.  Only one person could do the right thing, and that person was Gabrielle Giffords.  It is a moment of tremendous character and courage.  I wonder if anyone in the main stream media will notice.

 TDM

A few days ago, everyone was predicting that Mitt Romney would have the nomination sewed up by the time of the Florida primary.  The theory was that he would have won Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and would be the inevitable nominee.  The problem is that he didn’t actually win in Iowa, although he came extremely close.  Now Newt Gingrich has won South Carolina.

I don’t expect Gingrich to run away with this..  The Romney campaign is about to take the gloves off and those boys have a well-deserved reputation for playing political hardball.  So far, whenever anyone looks like a winner, someone else surges past.  It looks like a majority of Republicans don’t want Romney and a majority don’t want Gingrich.  Ron Paul and Rick Santorum are just clogging up the middle going nowhere. 

How can we possibly predict this?  Most of us thought Gingrich was dead and buried last summer.  Romney looked more and more like the best of a bad lot.  All we know right now is that Pawlenty, Cain, Bachmann, Huntsman and Perry are gone.  But there are a lot of signs that “none of the above is the candidate of choice.”  That is why so many people were speculating about a “late entry” candidate.  That isn’t going to happen.  There just isn’t enough time for anyone to enter the race now and mount a real challenge to either Romney or Gingrich.

But, what if nobody won?  What if the primaries are over in early June and no one has enough delegates to win the nomination.  That is exactly what happened in 1976, a little over 35 years ago.  Gerald Ford had more delegates than Ronald Reagan, but not enough to win.  Reagan might even have pulled off getting the nomination, but he foolishly selected Richard Schweiker as his potential VP.  Schweiker was a liberal, and rather than gaining moderate support, Reagan lost conservative support.  Ford was nominated on the first balled.  But, for all practical purposes, it was still a brokered convention.

Sarah Palin has the best political instincts in the Republican Party.  She did not endorse Newt Gingrich.  What she actually said was the following:

 If I were a South Carolinian — and each one of these primaries and caucuses are different, Sean — I want to see this thing continue because iron sharpens iron. Steel sharpens steel. These guys are getting better in their debates. … If I had to vote in South Carolina, in order to keep this thing going, I’d vote for Newt. And I would want things to continue. More debates, more vetting of candidates. Because we know the mistake made in our country four years ago, with having a candidate that was not vetted to the degree he should have been

Read carefully.  She would vote for Newt, not because she necessarily wanted him to win, but rather because she wanted to prolong the process.  Perhaps Sarah has figured out that if no one wins, she wins.  At a minimum, she is going to be a major king maker. 

There is no shortage of “draftable” candidates like Rudy Giuliani, Mitch Daniels, Sarah Palin, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, Paul Ryan and even Jeb Bush.  None of them are currently running, but none of them have said they wouldn’t take the job. We started out with Tim Pawlenty, Herman Cain, Michelle Bachmann, Jon Huntsman, Rick Perry, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich.  All of them spent millions campaigning in Iowa and New Hampshire.  Wouldn’t it be a stitch if after all that time, money and effort the result was a loud:  “none of the above” decision?

I am not predicting this, but it looks a lot more possible today than it did yesterday.

TDM

Rick Perry can turn his campaign around if he just follows the lead of John Kerry.  In 2004, Howard Dean was leading the Democratic pact.  Kerry, as we all know, is a lousy debater.  He was far behind.  But he turned it around when during a debate he reminded people that they were there to choose a President.

 Here is what Rick Perry needs to say:

 We are not here to elect the Quipster in Chief, but rather the Commander in Chief.  There is more to the Presidency than giving cute 30 second responses to questions on complex and difficult issues.  The real question is which candidate has the experience necessary to handle the job of President of the United States.  This is an executive job which requires executive experience.  That is the reason so many of our most effective Presidents have been Governors of large states.  We have already paid a bitter price for electing someone with no executive experience to be our President.  We can’t afford to repeat that mistake. 

 I have been the Governor of a large state for over 11 years.  My state has prospered during my term in office.  I have governed consistently as a conservative.   If you want to know how I will govern as President, you need only look at my record as Governor of Texas.  My question is:  Are we here to elect a President, or a Chairman of the Debate club?  This election will not be decided by who does the best job in a debate with Barack Obama.  It will be decided by which candidate the American people believe can turn this country around and restore hope in the American dream.  I believe I am that candidate and I ask for your support.

I fear we are on the verge of making a huge mistake because no one is asking the right questions.  Are we really going to let the main stream media, including Fox News, choose our candidate based on this bizarre unending series of meaningless American Idol style debates.  I have never heard one moderator ask the candidates what executive experience they have, yet this is the most powerful executive position in the world.

This is the most important election of our lives.  Shouldn’t we be looking at the best person for the job first?  The American people deserve better than this.  No Fortune 500 Company would ever consider someone as CEO who did not have significant prior executive experience.  Two of our candidates, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have zero executive experience.  It is time to decide if we are choosing a President or a cheerleader?  If the race ends up between Romney and Gingrich or Santorum, we won’t actually have any choice at all, because only one of the three has the type of executive experience necessary to do the job.

TDM