I’ll admit it. In the aftermath of McCain’s Cheap Shot Florida victory I have lost a little of the enthusiasm with which I have approached this primary election season. While I respect McCain’s service to his country as a Navy pilot, congressman, and Senator, I don’t believe he’s the best man to sit in the Oval Office.

The debate last night proved that to me even more. I am not alone in this assessment. McCain did not admit he fabricated his “Romney wants to withdraw from Iraq” accusation out of whole cloth. In fact, he doubled down several times and ended up looking more and more like the grumpy old man who sits on his porch and screams at the neighbor kids “Get Off My Lawn!!”

The endorsements by Rudy and Aaahhhnooolld mean Mitt faces some serious headwinds in his run for the Oval. This is nothing new. Anybody who has followed this campaign for more than a few months understands that Mitt has been swimming in deep waters for a very long time.

Then I got an email – not a personal one, mind you, I’m not that big of a move or shaker – from Article VI’s John Schroeder. He reminded me that off the candidates on that stage at the Reagan Library last night, Mitt is the one who’s stance most resembles the Gipper. Students of history will remember that Reagan made a habit of swimming against the current and going against the conventional wisdom to accomplish what he knew was right – not necessarily what was popular. Reagan was, among other things, an eternal optimist who exuded confidence to the point that it literally rubbed off on those around him.

I have visited the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley. It is quite the experience and one I would highly recommend. In that library there is an exact replica of Reagan’s Oval Office which includes his desk as it would have looked during his presidency. On his desk is found a red leather plaque with the following gold-lettered inscription:

It CAN Be Done

See for yourself:

There isn’t much I can do to make that picture sharper, but I bought a replica of that plaque which now sits in my office – well, my cubicle.

As you can see, my desk stuff is a bit different from that of the Gipper.

Reagan accomplished many things which most of the pontificating pundits of his day thought impossible and have since tried to attribute to other influences. The bottom line is, he made up his mind about what he wanted to do, and then he went and did it. He didn’t much care about the prognostications of the pontificating pundits or the whining of the liberal dominated Congress he had to deal with.

I see this same attitude of optimism and confidence in Mitt Romney. He’s gearing up for Super Tuesday and preparing to do battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party. He’s not ready to throw in the towel and has decided to both Go Big and Go Long rather than going home.

I’m not ready to throw it in either.

It CAN Be Done!

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In the end, there is something to be said for the candidate who wins a contest simply on the merits of his campaign.

Yes, McCain did win the Florida primaries tonight.

No, he did not win it based on the merits of his campaign.  He learned from the 2000 campaign that cheap shot politics in the closing days of the campaign does work.  This strategy may indeed win him the Republican nomination - in which case he’ll probably get beaten like a bongo drum by either Hillary or Obama.

I still hold hope that Mitt will do well in the Super Tuesday states.  This primary season is far from over.  Having said that, I do have one piece of wisdom for Team McCain.

There is a Proverb which states:

He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind…

McCain has spent the better part of the past decade troubling his own house.  Over the weekend he put that effort into overdrive and now stands in very real danger of “inheriting the wind”.  

There’s a difference between winning, and winning honorably.  All McCain did tonight was win.

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There is a general rule in political races that you save your last, best, most desperate cheap shot for the final moments of the campaign. The object is to unload a vicious accusation on your opponent in such a fashion that he/she won’t have time to respond and/or refute the charge before the voters go to the polls. This strategy is based upon the concept that the cheap shot is the last thing the voters will hear before they enter the booth, and with the slanderous allegation ringing in their ears they will vote against the target of the cheap shot rather and in favor of the guy who threw the cheap shot.

To hear John McCain’s tale of the 2000 election drama, Bush surrogates used just such a strategy in South Carolina. McCain’s presidential aspirations died a quick death after Bush thumped him in that primary, and McCain has never quite gotten over it. What McCain has done, however, is adopt the same strategy in his quest to derail Mitt’s Oval Office run.

The economy is turning out to be more of an issue than McCain is prepared to deal with. Economics isn’t McCain’s strong suit. Mitt owns that space and McCain has yet to make a play for it. McCain’s space is the Iraq War, so in his search to hunt up a hammer to throw at Mitt on this issue, he came up with this.

There’s only one problem with McCain’s accusation. It’s false. Baseless. There’s no other way to describe it other than it’s an outright lie. So much for Straight Talk.

At this hour the polls are open in the Sunshine State and they’re all over the map. That RCP average has McCain up by a whopping half percent. In simple terms, it’s a tight race. Mitt and McCain have spent the weekend throwing hammers at each other.

Meanwhile, the LA Times goes to new heights (or depths) of silliness in reporting Mitt’s visit to a KFC. Huck heard about this and parlayed in into yet another piece of unearned media attention.

The New York Times found two Mormons who disagree on Mitt’s impact on the presidential field. The “Paper of Record” keeps finding new ways to flog this dead horse.

Finally today - on a personal and religious note – a comment on the passing of LDS Church President Gordon B. Hinckley.

President Hinckley spent his life in the service of his faith. From the time he was a missionary in England until his death he held a variety of positions in the LDS Church – starting in what would become the Church PR office and ending at the age of 97 as the President.

For me he was the face of the Church for as long as I can remember. To the best of my knowledge he never missed a session of General Conference. He oft times addressed difficult issues in difficult times, but he always managed to do so with well developed sense of humor which cracked even the most hardened journalist – personified by CBS News’ Mike Wallace. President Hinckley did not shy away from those who were conspicuously curious about the Church which he led. He was married to his beloved wife for nearly 70 years. He took the Church to places it had not before been and kept a schedule well into his 90’s that made even the most vigorous younger men tired.

Mitt’s comments on President Hinckely’s passing can be found here and here. As for me, all I can say is he’ll be missed. Godspeed, Gordon. Welcome home.

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It is with great pleasure that I read “Captain Ed” Morrisey’s endorsementof Mitt this afternoon.  Ed is a very respected center-right blogger whose writing dates back to the very beginning of what we now fondly refer to as the Blogosphere.

I’ve read his stuff for years now and though at times I have not always agreed with the good Captain, I have always respected what he has to say.  His reasoning is sound and his arguments are solid.  In short, his endorsement is not one which was come by easily.

Welcome aboard, Captain.  Good to have you on this cruise.

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Where to start?  Thursday’s debate sounds like a good place.  Mitt did exceptionally well - even to the point of impressing The Man From Outer Space.  Other than a technical malfunction which caused more than a few conspiracy therorists to come out of the woodwork, there was very little drama.  The candidates were all very civil to each other which leads me to believe some horse trading for the VP slot is going on behind the scenes.

The civility excercised by the candidates did not rub off on the moderators.  NRO’s Michael Graham nailed it when he opened his debate analysis with this comment:

Did this debate accomplish anything, other than to remind us that Tim Russert is the most overrated journalist in television? (Emphasis Added)

Russert has an agenda, and he doesn’t even try to hide it.  Memo to Tim Russert:  This is a debate, and you are a journalist.  This is not a courtroom, and you are not a Federal Prosecutor.  Quit badgering the candidates until they tell you what you want them to say.  End Memo.

Much has been made about Brian Williams’ final question to Mitt on The Question.  I watched the debate and was personally floored by the fact that Williams even thought it appropriate to ask such a question.  See for yourself:

Quite a brush fire erupted in the Blogosphere when Article VI’s Lowell tried to find the poll data Williams cited and couldn’t.  Turns out MSNBC didn’t release the proper data.  It takes a brave man to admit a mistake and Lowell did.  That said, Lowell’s a damn fine lawyer and if I were ever to find myself on the wrong side of a courtroom, I’d want Lowell to fight my legal battles.The facts remain the same regardless of the outcome.  The Question has no place in a debate centered around a race for a secular office.  Lest you think I’d be silent were the same question posed to Huck, no I would not. Regardless of what the “poll” said, Williams was trying to cheap-shot Mitt.  Mitt would have none of that and hit the ball out of the park.  Williams, not Mitt, looked foolish.

Enough of the debate.

Today McCain tried to insinuate that Mitt wants to withdraw US troops from Iraq.  Unpaid interns must be doing McCains opposition research because Mitt has never held nor does he now hold that position.  Even a cursory glance at Mitt’s record bears out that fact.  Memo to McCain:  There’s a big difference between goals and benchmarks which are made between the Presdient of the United States and the Iraqi Government and a public press conference declaring a retreat date.  Hillary and Obama both have those press releases ready for January 21, 2009.  Mitt supports victory, not retreat.  How’s that for “straight talk”?  End Memo.

Focus on the Family’s Tom Minnery claims his “interpretation” of Mitt’s “Religion in America” speech is that Mitt has “acknowledged Mormonism is not a Christian faith”.  Memo to Tom:  I don’t know which speech you watched or listened to, but it most definitely wasn’t the one I (or anybody else for that matter) saw.  This is a race for President, not Pastor.  Please don’t try to confuse or comingle the two.  End Memo.

Life Lesson #14,223:  Never mix burglary with beer.

Someday I hope to have enough money to warrant the Wall Street Journal’s Elizabeth Holmes writing a story about the size of my wallet.

It seems to me Mitt’s a lot more comfortable on the campaign trail these days.  The American Spectator’s Philip Klein thinks he might be coming in to his own, and I agree.

Two closing items:  In a speech to the Latin Builders Association in Miami, Mitt made the following statement about his adventures in Private Equity:

Now it takes a degree of chutzpah* to go to someone and say give me your money and I will invest it for you and I’ll give you back 80% of the profit I make and I’m gonna keep 20% of the profit I make, I’m gonna charge you a 2% fee for taking your money and by the way if I lose your money, too bad, I don’t share in the downside, I only share in the upside.

Capitalism and Freedom require chutzpah*.

And finally, even seemingly grown men like to play practical jokes on their fathers.

<

*See also, “Brass Cajones”

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Just some housekeeping items of note.  I’ve added a few new bells and whistles to the site. 

First - to your right you’ll see a compilation of links from around what I like to call the Mitt-O-Sphere.  Thanks to a feed from Planet Romneyyou can now view the latest ten posts from most all the Mitt bloggers.  Check them out often - they’ve got a lot of good stuff out there.

Second, scrolling down from the Mitt-O-Sphere cullings, you’ll see the latest from the MSM.  I put it below the Mitt Bloggers simply because I think what bloggers have to say about this race far outweighs whatever the MSM can put together.  Yes, Glen Johnson, I’m talking about you.

Anyway, enjoy the new information sources and make use of them often.

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Mike Huckabee readily admits most of his foreign policy knowledge comes from having spent several nights at a Holiday Inn Express.  Evidently he must have skipped the Holiday Inn Express that offered overnight MBA classes because he’s now proven he knows less about how businesses are run than he knows about particle physics.

CBS News’ Joy Linmade her own travel arrangements to report on the Huckabee Puzzle and wrote a piece detailing Team Huck’s woes going into the Sunshine State.  Quick summary: Huck is very short on cash - so much so that his teeth kicking campaign manager Ed Rollins has to do without his $25K monthly pay check.

Anybody who pays Ed Rollins $25K per month obviously has no clue about ROI.  But I digress.

In Lin’s piece she found Huck at a “rally” attended by 250 people in an aircraft hanger.  Here Huck rejected the idea that Mitt might be a better candidate for the Oval due to his overwhelming success in private industry.  Huck would have none of this.  Said Huck:

If one looks at [Romney’s] business career, it is largely dealing with a capital company that took companies, often broke them apart, people lost jobs, didn’t gain jobs. A lot of the money that was made within those companies ended up offshore. I’m not sure that that helps the American economy when you take people’s money and you put it in Cayman Island bank accounts…If that’s how we recover the America’s economy, I’m not sure how many Americans benefit out of that.

Actually, if you look at Mitt’s career, its a story of how he rescued several companies from impending financial disaster, made them profitable, and kept them in business.  Yes, there were companies that went bankrupt.  Nobody has a perfect track record.  Having said that, Mitt’s batting average is spectacular and I think it’s fair to say he create, and helped save, far more jobs than he ever did away with.

Business is about making hard decisions.  Sometimes those decisions involve the restructuring of a company or business unit which - though it may make the organization more profitable and indeed save it from the scrap heap - will end up in some people losing their jobs.  That’s life in the capitalistic society in which we live.  Markets change, companies change, products change.  Don’t believe me?  Care to tell me when you bought your last Buggy Whip?

Business is in business to make money.  Period.  If a business is not profitable it dies.  No business equals no jobs which then equals long unemployment lines - the kind of lines which make Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi happy.  Profit is the over arching goal of every single business whether it be large or small.  Without that profit, every other good thing business does for America is history.

Mitt knows how to turn a profit.  Huck knows how to raise taxes.  Huck has never had to make a payroll.  He’s never been responsible to ensure the viability of a for-profit entity.  His knowledge of the inner workings of the American economy is frighteningly thin.

Also contained in Lin’s report was this Huck gem:

If you’re extremely wealthy, you can write checks of tens of millions of dollars to your campaign and be credible – not because your ideas are resonating with people but because your checkbook is taken seriously at radio and television stations…But the fact is if you’re a campaign like ours, you’re limited to people who can only give you up to $2,300 per person.

Here Huck fails yet again in spectacular fashion.  Memo to Huck:  How exactly do you explain the nearly $50 million in contributions made to Team Mitt to date?  All of those contributions, by the way, were made by people giving under the $2,300 limit.  The only person suffering from a lack of credibility here is you.  End Memo.

The fact of the matter is very simple.  Huck resents the fact that Mitt has more money in his couch cushions than Huck has in his bank account.  Huck’s campaign is out of gas and money because his base is extremely narrow.  He hasn’t won a contest since Iowa and doesn’t seem likely to win another anytime soon. 

Huck can’t buy any media, so the only way he’s going to keep himself in the spotlight is to throw baseless accusations at the preferred candidate.  That’s not going to work on this outing.

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Political Derby’s Power Rankings are up. Memo to Jason: Thanks for the mental image of a Roseanne Barr/Rosie O’Donnell offspring. Now please excuse me while I go rinse my eyes out with Drano. End Memo.

Blogfather Hugh has two posts of interest: First his take on McCain’s Tin Cup Trip to New York. Second is a link-o-rama piece on the Fredhead’s Mitt migration. Both well worth reading.

While on the subject of Fred, Mike Laub has an excellent post on style (Huck) versus substance (Fred).
Article VI’s John Schroeder calls into question Huck’s campaign strategy, to which Lowell interjects:

My guess: He just wants power and influence, and he resents Romney’s wealth, success, good looks, intelligence, and beautiful family. I don’t think he’s enough of a zealot to want to stop a Mormon candidacy.

Ouch! That’s gonna leave a mark! Seriously, Lowell. Tell us what you really think.

As long as I’m talking about Huck, check out John Fund’s analysis of his campaign.

Why is Mitt loathed by his opponents? American Thinker’s Amy Goldstein has the Top 8 reasons. I’m sure she could have found another two reasons to round the list out, but then the Writer’s Guild and David Letterman would’ve started picketing her desk.

Mitt knows markets.

Mitt does the Tonight Show.

This girl didn’t make the Tonight Show, or American Idol, but has a good Mitt song.

Mitt took a tour of Cape Canaveral yesterday. A Lockheed Martin representative told him about the upcoming funding gap for space exploration. Space Exploration is important to Florida – and to those of us who still think rockets are amazing pieces of disposable technology – and had Mitt wanted to pander to the crowd, he could have made a possibly empty campaign promise. Here’s what he said:

I’m prepared to study it thoroughly. I do not have a budget for you on the
gap. I’m not making promises, because I shouldn’t make promises until I’ve
studied something.

That, dear reader, is a tried and true work ethic which has made Mitt a wildly rich and successful man. We need that in Washington.

Mitt does pop-culture.

I don’t like unsigned editorials, even if they do come from the Washington Times. The Times Editorial Board is just plain greenly envious of the fact Mitt has more money in the cushions of his couch than they will collectively earn in their professional careers. The Editorial Board demands that Mitt be “forthcoming about how much of his personal fortune he is donating to his campaign.” Memo to the Washington Times Editorial Board: Mitt will be extremely forthcoming about how much he’s donated to his campaign. He’ll do it on January 31, just like everybody else. I call upon you to be forthcoming about your collective personal bias toward whichever candidate you’re supporting – which obviously isn’t Mitt. Being rich in this country isn’t a crime – yet. Elect any one of the current crop of Democratic candidates and it just might become a felony. End Memo.

And finally, add this to the Glen Johnson Hall of Shame. Glen has the scoop on the shocking revelation that Mitt Patronizes Mormon Businesses! Which businesses are these? Marriott and [gasp] Jet Blue Airlines. I’ll give you a minute to recover from your shock. Memo to Glen Johnson: Did you not get my memo suggesting a vacation? I’m sure you could find a Marriott resort in a deep blue state someplace. You could probably even fly there on Jet Blue. End Memo.

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Fare thee well, Fred.  The debates won’t be nearly as entertaining without you.

Update: Welcome Fredheads!  I’ll admit that posting has been a bit sparse here lately, but plans are in the works to take Blogs for Mitt “to the next level”.

Make yourselves at home.  We’ve been waiting for you!

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Check out the latest polling data from Rasmussen!  This race might get interesting after all.