A Moment with Mumma

For anyone following the Republican primaries, it’s been a crazy week. Two candidates dropped out (Huntsman, Perry), two debates were held which included several Gingrich rampages, three-way assaults on Romney, open marriages, child labor, and a crowd that booed Ron Paul’s interpretation of the Golden Rule. The end result: A sharp turn toward Gingrich, who ended up winning the South Carolina primary by 12 percent over Mitt Romney.

All of that is documented well across a variety of media channels, but the question obviously becomes “what happens next?” Both Gingrich and Romney have a core group supporting them that is unlikely to vary too much over the coming months. However, the results will vary based on three main factors driving the decisions of the remaining voters: the remaining candidates, state demographics, and momentum. Looking at those three factors we can predict the way the race is going, barring any unforeseen revelations.*

* I understand that in a race with Newt Gingrich, this is highly, highly unlikely. Moneyline odds on Newt’s head actually exploding during a debate are currently at +145

The Remaining Candidates

The race is down to four viable candidates currently.* That doesn’t look to change prior to Florida. Ron Paul targets a separate portion of GOP candidates, and is unlikely to affect the results of the race whether he remains in the race or not.

The bigger question surrounds Rick Santorum’s decisions. As of current, he’s planning on staying in the race through Florida, and with Newt’s ability to say pretty much anything that makes sense. Through February there’s seven primaries spread throughout the month, and unless Santorum builds support throughout it is unlikely to see him continuing through to Super Tuesday on March 3rd.

At that point, we’ll essentially have a two-way race between Mitt and Newt with 3/4ths of the primaries still to go…

* Yes, Buddy Roemer and Gary Johnson are two former Governors still in the race, but unfortunately they seem to have been precluded from all conversations due to a combination of the Party Establishment, the media, and a lack of funding. An unfortunate story for another time.

State Demographics

Not all state primaries are weighted equally. Early states hold a disproportionate amount of power, while later states are almost always irrelevant. As it’s currently laid out, Florida then Nevada are the next two races (with Maine closely following). At present, both states lean toward Romney, however, we can expect close battles in both places.

Assuming two close battles in those primaries, what we can expect to see from there is a trend for Romney to perform better than his national numbers in the North, and Gingrich to perform better in the South. That being said, the race is shaping up to be a long-term race between two contrasting candidates, much like the Clinton-Obama primaries of 2008. In that case, state-to-state differences matter less, and overall national trends will ultimately decide the winner. In that case, it all comes down to:

Momentum

As mentioned, both Romney and Gingrich have a fairly solid base built up. Romney’s contingent has been with him throughout, and Gingrich has essentially tied up the position as the Non-Romney option. After Saturday’s win for Gingrich in SC, both candidates seem to enjoy about 30% support among Republicans nationally according to RealClearPolitics.

Thus, the fight is for the remaining 40%. About 15% of that currently backs Ron Paul, and is unlikely to be captured by either candidate. Of the remaining 25%, we can assign about 15% of that to Santorum, and 10% left undecided or favoring a candidate that has already left the race.

Conventional wisdom would lead most to believe that the Santorum support will shift to Gingrich after Santorum fades from contention, as they are more aligned on their rhetoric.  Yet even with that, many still consider Romney the favorite to win the nomination. But let’s assume that Santorum supporters break 3-to-1 for Gingrich. This isn’t a stretch, as we’ve seen it has been tough for Romney to garner any votes from other candidates. We’ll have a national average of 41% for Gingrich, 34% for Romney, and a solid 15% for Ron Paul.

Overall, these current trends favor Gingrich, and I think he should be considered the favorite to win the nomination at this point. That being said, Romney has two opportunities: first, to convince undecided Republicans that he is the better candidate, and second, to take advantage of races where independents can vote to tip the scales. Will that happen? At this point, that’s unclear.

A Prediction

Romney has an opportunity to win if he can grab a sizable chunk of the above options. However, I don’t see that happening for two reasons:

1. Gingrich is firing on all cylinders right now, and while he may be a loose cannon, he’s also a formidable opponent in any race. When a candidate is building momentum like that, it’s tough for the other guy to build support.

2. Meanwhile, Romney is continuing to be relatively timid. As a front-runner, he can afford to do so, but he is making a mistake by not releasing his tax returns. In doing so, he is turning what should be a non-issue into a budding controversy. Most conservatives do want to see bold propositions, and while Romney’s taxes aren’t an issue by themselves, his timidity on that subject and others is not being perceived positively.

Although I’ve endorsed Mitt Romney in a previous column, predicting the winner is a different matter all together. While a Newt Gingrich foot-in-mouth moment is likely (a modern-day Dean Scream-type event), at present the voting trends favor Newt. If his performances in South Carolina are any indication of how he’ll handle himself, he will be the one debating President Obama this fall.

And if that’s the case, those debates will absolutely be must-see television.

It’s time for you to set the pen down. You need an extended leave of absence, and honestly it is for your own good. I was too young, but I heard that you once produced meaningful economic commentary. Those days are clearly over, and before the entire country considers you a partisan hack of the Glenn Beck variety, you should take a break from published works.

Krugman’s latest piece is a mix of scare tactics, doomsday allusions, and partisan rambling. It is so potent that Glenn Beck is giving a respectful nod from the other side of the partisan abyss. From any objective viewpoint, it’s a pathetic excuse for journalism. Here’s a few reasons why:

Paul is clearly writing from raw emotion as things get started. It’s the only way to explain this sentence (yes, one) that in Paul’s mind shows how the coming deal on the debt ceiling makes takes the U.S. “a long way down the road to banana-republic status.” How does he do that? Well, here are his exact words:

“It will damage an already depressed economy; it will probably make America’s long-run deficit problem worse, not better; and most important, by demonstrating that raw extortion works and carries no political cost, it will take America a long way down the road to banana-republic status.”

The reason for the emotion is simple. In Paul’s and other Keynesian’s minds the sluggish recovery from the ’08 recession is a by product of a lack of government spending. But this is a politically expedient distortion of the premise that increased government spending is needed in the nadir of a depression. Paul and the rest of his motley crew are a few steps behind. They fail to see (or rather, choose to ignore) the things happening in Eurozone countries that show that the crisis faced now is not one of private spending, but rather of public spending.

While Paul has been ideologically consistent with his push for more spending, he has pushed with such zeal that he’s not just accidentally steering the Titanic toward an iceberg; he’s going full throttle toward it while telling everyone “there’s no way this iceberg can handle us.”

The bigger issue though is how Paul treats those who disagree with his plan for aggressive government spending. Let’s get a few samplers:

“But the G.O.P. has just demonstrated its willingness to risk financial collapse unless it gets everything its most extreme members want. Why expect it to be more reasonable in the next round?”

“He has now surrendered on a grand scale to raw extortion over the debt ceiling.”

“…stand up to blackmail on the part of right-wing extremists.”

“Those demanding spending cuts now are like medieval doctors who treated the sick by bleeding them, and thereby made them even sicker.”

While part of an editorial is persuading readers to adopt a certain point-of-view, Paul goes out of his way to dismiss the ideas of those who disagree with him as not only wrong, but delusional. Other liberal have joined in calling the Republican tactics blackmail and extortion, which is a ridiculous claim. Throughout this whole process, Republicans have been the only ones offering deals, and indeed voted for legislation to increase the debt ceiling over a week ago. Their tactics had been aggressive, sure, but you can say the same thing about the Democrats.

Beyond that though, Paul’s work smacks of arrogance. He can’t bring himself to admit that maybe the Republicans outsmarted the Deomcrats in this case. He can’t admit that maybe Republicans aren’t being blamed by the public because the public sees the problems with an ever-increasing debt. Instead, it’s thanks to “raw extortion,” and distortion in the public relations arena.

The last phase of Paul’s work is the scare tactic and doomsday phase. Most commonly seen in the case of ‘live’ punditry of TV and radio, this form of speech normally occurs when the author doesn’t have a chance to think about what they are saying. Assumedly, Paul had a chance to think before he wrote this piece. Based on the last few passages, Paul either didn’t think before writing, or has actually slipped into a severe case of depression. Let’s see why:

“Make no mistake about it, what we’re witnessing here is a catastrophe on multiple levels.”

“What Republicans have just gotten away with calls our whole system of government into question. After all, how can American democracy work if whichever party is most prepared to be ruthless, to threaten the nation’s economic security, gets to dictate policy? And the answer is, maybe it can’t.”

Catastrophe. Threat to economic security. End of democracy in America. Paul has clearly been watching the Glenn Beck show a bit too much. To be fair, there is a nugget of truth in what Krugman says. The problem with this exchange is that it highlighted how far the erosion of trust between the two sides has gone. This does present issues going forward that need to be addressed. The two sides will need to work better together, sure. But a catastrophic event that signals the end of democracy in America? Come on, Paul!

Well, it has been a while since I’ve posted on here. To those who have visited here in the past and missed me, I apologize. The whole process of moving and starting up a career is rather draining, but nonetheless, I hope to get things up and running again, even if it is in a pithier format due to time constraints.

That being said, one of my favorite subjects has popped up again: anthropogenic climate change! I detailed what I saw as a pretty clear rebuttal of what we can vaguely call ‘climate alarmism’ about a 18 months ago, and for those who have consumed too much “green” media and marketing, it is certainly worth reading here.

Sure, Greenland was green before we had any industrial emissions. But it's WHITE HOT now!

The case for climate alarmists was weak then. It was further weakened by the “Climategate” scandal and subsequent displays of academic dishonesty, detailed here.

The latest nail in the coffin of climate alarmism is critical because it not only showcases the flaws in catastrophic climate models, it provides direct evidence (gathered by NASA) that proves that climate models are based on completely incorrect assumptions. You can read the story here.

For those not looking to read through the family of links started here, I’ll give a succinct summary that should suffice:

1. Climate models assume that small increases in CO2 output lead to an increase in humidity and cloud cover, exacerbating the initial warming effect. This is called ‘positive feedback.’

2. This theory has been disputed in the past, by reputable sources such as Dr. William Happer, a Princeton physicist. You can read his Senate testimony from early 2009 here. As he discusses over two years ago, neither theoretical science nor the empirical evidence available at the time supports this claim.

3. In simple terms, ‘positive feedback’ doesn’t exist. The feedback is neutral, possibly even negative. How? The same cloud cover that would keep heat in also reflects the sun’s energy away from the planet.

4. Thanks to the most recent NASA data set, this theory is supported by data. The NASA data shows empirically that ‘positive feedback’ is simply not true. I’ll turn to author of the article, James Taylor to wrap things up:

“Together, the NASA ERBS and Terra satellite data show that for 25 years and counting, carbon dioxide emissions have directly and indirectly trapped far less heat than alarmist computer models have predicted.

In short, the central premise of alarmist global warming theory is that carbon dioxide emissions should be directly and indirectly trapping a certain amount of heat in the earth’s atmosphere and preventing it from escaping into space. Real-world measurements, however, show far less heat is being trapped in the earth’s atmosphere than the alarmist computer models predict, and far more heat is escaping into space than the alarmist computer models predict.”

In the end, climate science is still necessary. Human activities still do have some effect on the climate, and we need to understand what that is. We need to become better at predicting what the climate will do naturally. Unfortunately our resources have been horrendously misallocated.

There is a clear path that leads toward economic growth and a stronger environment at the same time. But this won’t happen until the silent majority can speak with a unified voice against the environmentalist lobbies and special interest groups that have permeated the highest levels of many national governments. These groups have become a religious fringe – protesting things as unambiguously good as nuclear power, and they have a disproportional amount of say in policy decisions. We need a unified voice to politely override their misguided views.