ACU Endorses Romney? (Update: Keene, Not ACU)

Another unusual endorsement has appeared in a cycle full of them, and this time, Mitt Romney hits the sweepstakes. Struggling all year to shed his Massachusetts centrism, Romney won an important conservative endorsement from David Keene of the American Conservative Union. Like Pat Robertson’s endorsement of Rudy Giuliani and the National Right To Life endorsement of Fred Thompson, this one may leave ACU’s constituents scratching their heads:

Less than 24 hours after former Gov. Mitt Romney (Mass.) jousted with his rivals over his conservative credentials at the CNN/YouTube debate in Florida, he is set to receive the endorsement from American Conservative Union President David Keene.
Keene said he became “convinced that Mitt Romney represents our best hope for 2008” and added that in the weeks remaining before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, 2008 he would work to persuade “my fellow conservatives that if we are serious about electing a conservative president in 2008, it’s time to unite behind his candidacy.”
Long courted by Romney, Keene agreed to formalize his endorsement of the former governor during a face to face meeting in Florida on Tuesday, according to knowledgeable sources. Of Keene, Romney said he was “proud” to have the endorsement for his “campaign for conservative change.”
Keene is a longtime member of the conservative movement, having spent the last quarter-century at the American Conservative Union. Prior to that post, Keene held a number of political positions including Southern regional political director for Ronald Reagan in 1976, national political director for George H. W. Bush in 1980 and senior adviser to Bob Dole in 1988 and 1996.

Oddly enough, all of these organizations use the argument that they need to find the most electable candidate — and all of them reach different conclusions. Conservatives who follow the ACU’s lead must be rather confused, as Keene himself wrote this same year that he mistrusted sudden shifts to win conservative support for reasons of electability. He specifically named Romney in that indictment:

McCain, of course, began early in an attempt to patch up his differences with the religious conservatives he tried to demonize back in 2000 by visiting fundamentalist leaders and even hinting that he might support the teaching of creationism in the schools. Whether that worked or not remains to be seen, but now he’s telling folks that he’s rethought his previous apostasy on taxes and decided that the Bush tax cuts he opposed ought to be made permanent just as soon as possible. This year it seems he’s willing to let Democrat John Edwards don the mantle of class warfare while he emerges as a born-again supply-sider.
Meanwhile, America’s Mayor, no doubt heeding the warnings of advisers who are suggesting that GOP conservatives may have a tough time accepting a candidate who is pro-abortion, pro-gay and anti-gun, is hinting that on reflection he believes his position on abortion has been misunderstood and may require clarification even as his New York City backers are bombarding conservatives around the country with the news that Rudy is in fact one of them.
Not to be outdone, Massachusetts’s Mitt Romney, whom many believe could retire the 2008 pandering cup before he’s through, assures conservative audiences wherever he finds them that he’s pro-life, essentially pro-gun and horrified by homosexuality, previous statements or actions notwithstanding. Anything he said or did previous to deciding to run for president, he implies, should be taken as a reflection of what he had to do because of the circumstances in which he found himself rather than of his core beliefs.
It’s certainly or at least barely possible that John McCain has morphed into the second coming of Jack Kemp and that the other two are being honest as they reflect on issues about which they may not previously have given much serious thought, but to the casual observer at least it all seems, well, unseemly.

Part of this appears to be an attempt to make sense of a very fluid and confusing primary. Organizations like the ACU want to get ahead of public opinion and lead it, but don’t want to get caught backing a failing horse. If Romney fails to win conservatives, it will lessen the perceived influence of the ACU, but if the ACU senses conservative support for Romney and gets behind him early, it enhances the appearance of power.
It might behoove these organizations — the ACU is not alone in this — to stay out of the endorsement business altogether, especially when their endorsee doesn’t match with their stated goals. Why not instead note the positions candidates have taken on various critical issues and let the voters decide for themselves? Better yet, why not endorse the candidate who most closely matches the organizational goals in the primary, and leave the horsetrading for the general election? Duncan Hunter seems a much closer match to ACU’s policy goals — and maybe with some real backing in the conservative movement, he could have made a move in Iowa before Mike Huckabee, who also seems like at least as good of a match as Romney based on his governing record and stated policy goals.
UPDATE: This is a personal endorsement, not an organizational endorsement, as Keene explained on today’s Hugh Hewitt show. The ACU will not endorse any candidate.

Why Does Vista Suck? (Update: Yes, I Use Firefox, But ….)

I have to ask this question, because for the dozenth time in two days, I have to restart Internet Explorer after it locked up, on a brand-new Compaq desktop system. I dutifully have Vista check for a solution before restarting the program, and when it restarts, it locks up again when I try to maximize it for display.
Nor is this the only problem Vista has. Its DNS tables have a weird habit of suddenly getting very stupid. It forgets how to connect to various blogger sites, sometimes for quite a while, then just as suddenly rediscovers them. Occasionally, when I lose my patience, I flush the DNS — a process that involves several steps, including opening a command window in a special manner that requires me to answer a useless Vista prompt as to whether I really want to do this. About half of the time, the DNS flush solves the problem, while the other half, I just have to wait for Vista to get over its bout of Alzheimers.
Bear in mind that my XP system remains connected to all of these sites without fail, running on the same network. And my other Vista system — my spare laptop — has all of these same issues as well.
I’d write more, but unfortunately, IE just locked up for the third time since I started writing this post. I have to reboot the computer in order to correct the problem. Those Apple commercials start to sound like a good description of Microsoft’s competence these days. One would think that a flagship product like Vista might have been subjected to a little more quality testing than obviously went into it.
ADDENDUM: I should also point out that their Outlook 2003 doesn’t work very well with the system, either. I added the Microsoft Exchange Server account in the initial set-up wizard when I installed my copy of Office 2003, and it won’t connect properly to the account. Thanks to that issue, it won’t run at all now, and even de-installing it and re-installing it won’t eliminate the problem. The de-installation doesn’t remove the account information, as it turns out.
Just FYI, I have been using Microsoft systems since CPM DOS on the Apple IIe, and used to build my own computers from scratch until it got so cheap to buy pre-constructed systems about ten years ago. I worked as a net admin for a Fortune 100 company for a few years as a second hat during my call-center days. I’m not exactly a novice at this. I’m figuring that this will be my last Microsoft based system ever. The low price simply isn’t worth the hassle any longer.
UPDATE: I should also mention that I do use Firefox, but Vista won’t easily allow Firefox to become the default browser in the system. When I click links from my Omea or Sharpreader feedreaders, they invariably open an IE window rather than a tab in my Firefox browser, regardless of the settings in my Internet options in Vista. I manage my blog screens and management functions in Firefox and browse in IE as a result. And no, that doesn’t happen on my XP laptop, where I use Firefox exclusively.

Building The Bentley

Robert Novak asks whether one could imagine legendary Mississippi politicians cashing in on their legislative careers in the manner that Trent Lott will attempt when he leaves the Senate. Unfortunately, Novak seems to have forgotten that we have seen members of Congress cashing in while still in office over the last few years — William Jefferson, Allan Mollahan, Robert Ney, and Randy “Duke” Cunningham among them. At least Lott waited until he left to reach for the really big money.
At Heading Right, I applaud Novak’s outrage, but question his naivete. Trent Lott didn’t help build this pork-barrel Bentley without intending to take it for a spin himself. As far as Mississippian displeasure is concerned, I award them the Captain Louis Renault award for their shock, shock! that Lott wants to sell out for big lobbyist money after decades of shoveling pork back to those same Mississipians.

Former Soviet Uranium For Sale In Slovakia

Slovakian authorities arrested three men in connection to a plot to sell radioactive material that could have formed the core of a terrorist weapon. Two Hungarians and a Ukrainian tried to sell almost a pound of uranium powder that would have served as the center of a so-called “dirty bomb”, one that would spread radioactive material to contaminate inhabited areas. So far, the target of the trio’s marketing remains unclear:

Two Hungarians and a Ukrainian arrested in an attempted sale of uranium were peddling material enriched enough to be used in a radiological “dirty bomb,” Slovak authorities said Thursday.
First Slovak Police Vice President Michal Kopcik said the three suspects, who were arrested Wednesday afternoon in eastern Slovakia and Hungary, were peddling just under a pound of uranium in powder form that investigators believe came from somewhere in the former Soviet Union….
It remained unclear to whom the suspects were trying to peddle the material.

Four years ago, the Czechs arrested two Slovaks in a similar attempt to peddle natural depleted uranium. Given the proximity of Slovakia to the former Soviet republics, Eastern Europe clearly has become the focus of illicit nuclear-material trade. While that doesn’t necessarily narrow the list of potential buyers too far, it also doesn’t eliminate the worst of the terrorist groups, either.
How much risk is there in dirty bombs? No one really knows the answer. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission has a fact sheet on the technical hurdles of deploying a radiological dispersal device (RDD), and they seem very significant. Almost all of the damage would come from the explosion, not the radiation, as the explosion would disperse it so far that its effects would be minimal. An RDD would not, as commonly supposed, shut down vast swaths of a city — except through panic, which could kill commerce in an RDD-attacked area.
The biggest problem for nuclear proliferation is the transfer of weapons-grade fissile material, or a complete nuclear weapon. The uranium dust in Slovakia could not form part of either, and as Iran has amply demonstrated, getting the source material does not equate to deriving weapons-grade substances without years of effort and billions in research. In that sense, the Slovakian trade in uranium does not pose a large threat — but it certainly doesn’t make us feel safer, either.

About That Economy ….

As the presidential election continues to draw nearer, we keep hearing about our collapsing economy from the usual media hysterics. The housing market is near collapse! The credit crunch! The subprime markets are melting, melting, I say!
Well, what about the actual economy?

Real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States — increased at an annual rate of 4.9 percent in the third quarter of 2007, according to preliminary estimates released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
In the second quarter, real GDP increased 3.8 percent. The GDP estimates released today are based on more complete source data than were available for the advance estimates issued last month. In the advance estimates, the increase in real GDP was 3.9 percent …
The increase in real GDP in the third quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from
exports, personal consumption expenditures (PCE), private inventory investment, equipment and
software, federal government spending, nonresidential structures, and state and local government spending that were partly offset by a negative contribution from residential fixed investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

It appears that we’re growing our way into a panic on the economy. It may be the first recession in history initiated by a 5% annual GDP growth rate. It won’t be the first attempted by scare tactics in the run-up to an election.
Not only has growth continued, it increased in Q3 in multiple areas. PCEs rallied to a 2.7% increase, almost double from Q2. Export growth almost tripled from Q2, from 7% to nearly 19%, thanks to the weak dollar. Private inventories grew almost 1%, up from 0.22% in Q2. Real sales increases ticked up slightly, from 3.6% in Q2 to 3.9% in Q3. Gross domestic purchases increased 3.4%, compared to 2.4% in Q2.
In fact, the last two quarters show strong growth, after the soft Q1 number of 0.6%. There may well be weak points in the American economy, but it hardly looks like a moment for panic. The growth seen over the last two quarters gives every indication that the Bush-era expansion continues apace, and that our economy remains resilient and strong.

Hugh And Mansoor, And A Media Alert

Hugh Hewitt took on Mansoor Ijaz over the supposed Muslim bigotry of Mitt Romney on last night’s show, just before the presidential debate. Hugh challenged Ijaz to find independent corroboration on the record for his account of the question and answer, and Ijaz reacted by calling Romney a liar:

HH: I’ve been doing this for twenty years, and on the record means your name is on it. Now I’m not saying it didn’t happen. I’m just saying no one has yet corroborated on the record your account. You’ve had people…
MI: I just completely disagree with what you’ve said, but go ahead. What’s the point?
HH: Okay, the point is that Romney says he understood you to ask a different thing, and answered a different way. You disagree strongly with that.
MI: No, I’m telling you what Romney said is a lie.

Why is corroboration important in this case? Ijaz is the only source for this quote. Jim Geraghty found someone who would only confirm the quotes anonymously, while two other people say they heard Romney say something similar at another time. In the article where Ijaz reported this exchange, he never disclosed his work as a major fundraiser for the Clintons in 1996, where Ijaz himself says he put almost a million dollars into Bill’s re-election.
Under those circumstances, independent corroboration should have been made before publishing the article. As Jim told me on Heading Right Radio on Tuesday, the Christian Science Monitor had a duty to disclose that information — much as CNN did with General Kerr on last night’s YouTube debate. Jim went a step further by saying that the CSM should not have run Ijaz’s piece but assigned a reporter to the story instead, who could have asked the Romney camp about the question and answer and spoken to some of the attendees to get an idea whether Ijaz had the quotes correct. Afterwards, the CSM could have run the Ijaz piece.
If Romney responded to Ijaz as depicted in the column, it was a poor response. However, the question was just as bad, and despite Ijaz’ insistence that he emphasized “consider”, he clearly implied at the time that the religious affiliation should get precedence in that “consideration” rather than real qualifications and experience. Ijaz makes this even more clear when he suggests Newsweek columnist Fareed Zakaria for a Cabinet position in the next administration during his interview with Hugh.
I’ll be on Hugh’s show tonight at 7:30 pm to talk more about this story.

Largest Sunni Volunteer Mobilization Launches

The US surge strategy has pushed al-Qaeda to the outer edges of western Iraq and convinced native insurgents to switch sides and fight against the foreign terrorists. AQI has attempted to find a toehold on the perimeter to keep from getting swept out of Iraq entirely, and they have relied on their usual methods of terrorism to gain the acquiescence of the locals. As a result, the US has accepted 6,000 Iraqi Sunnis in a volunteer force to man checkpoints and fight AQI — the largest volunteer mobilization in Iraq:

Nearly 6,000 Sunni Arab residents joined a security pact with American forces Wednesday in what U.S. officers described as a critical step in plugging the remaining escape routes for extremists flushed from former strongholds.
The new alliance — called the single largest volunteer mobilization since the war began — covers the “last gateway” for groups such as al-Qaida in Iraq seeking new havens in northern Iraq, U.S. military officials said.
U.S. commanders have tried to build a ring around insurgents who fled military offensives launched earlier this year in the western Anbar province and later into Baghdad and surrounding areas. In many places, the U.S.-led battles were given key help from tribal militias — mainly Sunnis — that had turned against al-Qaida and other groups.

The 200 checkpoints manned by these Iraqi volunteers will identify potential problems much more quickly than American checkpoints. These people know the area and their neighbors; strangers will stand out immediately. Foreigners sent to Iraq to kill and maim Iraqis will stick out like sore thumbs to the native security forces.
At the same time, the new program will help employ young Sunnis in gainful efforts. The security forces will receive almost the same salary as local police officers. That allows them to make a living and keep busy, not falling into the trap of boredom and frustration that led many of the young men towards the insurgencies. It also gives them an opportunity to serve their tribes and reinforce the sense of community that AQI attacks when seizing villages and imposing their brutal control.
Sheikh Khalaf Ali Issa understands this better than most. In his capacity as mayor of Zaab, he has seen what AQI does to Iraqis when they arrive. They have already killed 476 of his citizens, and he has seen for himself the AQI strategy of frightening locals into submission through murder and mayhem. AQI has made itself into America’s best advertisement in Iraq.
This latest mobilization shows that Issa is not alone. The Iraqis have had enough of terrorism, and want the US as a partner for their own protection. AQI has failed utterly in its mission to create a blood-drenched Caliphate on the basis of human sacrifice in Iraq.

The Plant Life Of Anderson Cooper And CNN

CNN and YouTube had weeks to select the questions for last night’s debate, poring over 5,000 submissions to select the handful that made it to the candidates. They even flew a few of them to the debate in order to allow them a response to the answers provided by the Republican presidential hopefuls. Yet within minutes of the debate, bloggers discovered what CNN missed — that one prominent questioner flown to Florida by CNN worked on the campaign of a Democratic rival, and that at least three other questioners have declared support for Democratic candidates. Michelle Malkin rounds it up:

The best thing about Republicans agreeing to do the CNN/YouTube debate is that it created yet another invaluable opportunity to expose CNN’s abject incompetence.
Retired Brig. Gen./gays in the military lobbyist/Hillary-Kerry supporter Keith H. Kerr wasn’t the only plant at the CNN/YouTube debate. The plant uncovering is in full-swing over at Free Republic.
Example: “Journey,” a.k.a. “Paperserenade,” the girl who asked an abortion question, is a declared John Edwards supporter. … Brian McMurphy at SixMeatBuffet (hat tip See-Dubya) notes that David Cercone, the Pompano Beach, Florida, man who asked the question about Log Cabin Republicans, is a declared Obama supporter. … The lead toy questioner, LeeAnn Anderson, who appears to be an ordinary mom concerned about her two children, whom she includes in her video, is a prominent Pittsburgh union activist–and aide to Leo Gerard, President of the American Steel Workers Union/John Edwards supporter.

Abject incompetence, yes. If these bloggers could discover this information — mostly from their YouTube profiles, not exactly heavy lifting — then CNN should have vetted the questioners better. With the possible exception of General Kerr, it doesn’t appear that the questioners made any attempt to hide their affiliation; they simply posted their questions, and CNN blithely selected them at face value.
Bad journalistic practices? Definitely yes. But does that negate the questions themselves? I don’t think so. The CNN/YouTube format closely parallels that of the traditional town-hall forum. For the most part, attendees do not get vetted at these events either, nor should they. After all, while a primary usually involves voters of one party, the entire nation has a stake in the selection of the nominees. If Hillary Clinton held a town hall in my community, I should have an opportunity to question her about her positions on issues without pledging a loyalty oath to do so.
The questions asked don’t seem particularly outrageous. Kerr asked about gays in the military and Cercone about Log Cabin Republicans. Gays in the military have been a major policy issue for almost twenty years; gay issues relate to a major Republican strategy in the past two elections. The GOP encouraged ballot initiatives opposing same-sex marriage in 2004 and 2006 to help push evangelicals to the polls. Republicans make opposition to the “gay agenda” a big fundraising point on a regular basis. Those questions seemed reasonable, and reasonably asked. Although I disagree with the candidates on their positions on Kerr’s point, they all gave reasonable and consistent answers.
The question on abortion — would opposition to abortion mean jailing the women who seek them — was hardly unusual. Fred Thompson actually gave the best answer on this, unflappable as always, which is that it doesn’t happen that way now with clearly illegal abortions. Everyone on that stage has attacked Rudy Giuliani for his pro-choice view (with good reason, in my opinion); the Republicans have clearly made abortion a big issue in this primary. Shouldn’t they expect to get precisely this question when talking about criminalizing abortion?
LeeAnn Anderson’s question about toys, and by extension trade with China, may have come from left field, pun intended, but it touched on Duncan Hunter’s biggest issue. He has been railing against free-trade agreements with China all during his presidential run. Also, it hardly needs to be said, but both Republican and Democratic parents and grandparents have concerns this Christmas about the next toy recall, and hoping their children and grandchildren don’t find it the hard way. It’s a rational question, made by someone with undisclosed interests in the answer, but the question itself is precisely the kind made in town-hall forums.
CNN deserves the brickbats it will receive for its atrocious research skills. However, Republicans should be prepared to answer the questions the candidates received in this debate. At some point, this will cease being an intramural fight and we will have to convince all of America to vote for our nominee. That won’t happen if we can’t handle fastballs, with a couple of curveballs in the mix.

CNN/YouTube Debate — CNN Wins (Update: A Major Error Mars Their Night)

So the Republicans finally braved the CNN/YouTube format, and the most apparent result was that CNN and YouTube did their homework. For the most part — with a few glaring exceptions — the network eliminated the silliness and stuck to substance. The questions hit hot topics and sparked some fierce debate. With a couple of exceptions, Republican fears of crypto-Democratic hit questions failed to materialize, and the candidates responded substantively to the rest.
I expected the debate to descend into silliness and gotcha moments. The only gotchas came from the candidates. Truthfully, this may have been one of the least “gotcha” and most substantive debates we’ve had this year.
Now, who won among the candidates? I’d have to lean towards Mike Huckabee. He steered clear of personal attacks, allowed his natural personality to emerge, and used his sense of humor to great effect. If people wonder why Huckabee has made a major move in Iowa, they saw why.
Mitt Romney and John McCain both did well. They tangled on torture, and both tangled with others on immigration and the war. They showed toughness and poise, and both looked presidential in their own ways. Romney gets the edge here, especially for beating Rudy Giuliani like a bongo drum on immigration.
Rudy was a puzzlement. I understand his desire to fire back at Romney, but he chose a poor battlefield on which to fight. He used the “sanctuary mansion” personal attack, expecting Romney to know the immigration status of other people’s employees who did work at his house. Rudy did better later in the debate, but for at least the first half, he seemed off his game.
Fred Thompson did well enough to get a wash, but he needs to start doing something impressive. While his answers were fine and supportable, none of them were particularly memorable. He’s the kind of man people want to support if he’d give them something to work with, but thus far, he’s more analyst than candidate.
Huckabee did himself the most good, as I see it. He took almost no hits and showed great poise and thoughtfulness. What say CapQ’s community?
UPDATE: CNN committed a major error by allowing Brig. General Kerr to stage a question without disclosing that he serves on Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Instapundit posted that Anderson Cooper and CNN have apologized for it, admitting that they never checked Kerr out. That’s the risk in using this open format, and CNN should have put more resources on checking for political operatives running undercover. Take two steps back, CNN.

CNN/YouTube Live Blog Tonight!

Tonight at Heading Right, the BlogTalkRadio conservative show hosts will live-blog the CNN/YouTube debate, starting at 7 PM CT. Just as we do with every Republican debate, we will provide a blizzard of instant reaction, pointing out the victories and the stumbles of the candidates and the questioners. It’s a great fast-paced companion to the debate itself.
At 9:30 PM CT, we will hold our traditional debate recap at Debate Central, talking about the winners and losers of the debate. Did CNN do a better job in question selection than the previous YouTube debate? Which candidates rolled with the format, and which got rolled by it? Join us at BlogTalkRadio to find out!
Listen to Debate Central on internet talk radio
UPDATE & BUMP: Tonight we’ll have some great bloggers at Heading Right, including a new member, Jazz Shaw from Middle Earth Journal and Midstream Radio. In fact, I think he’s already started. Joining us for the Debate Central wrapup will be Rick Moran, Jim Lynch, and Frank from Political Vindication. Live bloggers include:
Fausta Wertz
Pamela Geller
JASmius
Jenn
Macranger
Kit Jarrell