There is a quality to real leaders called a “command presence”. You know the type: they walk into a room and by their force of presence, command of the facts, unshaken confidence and leadership qualities, they capture the narrative and control the agenda. That command presence is a necessary mark of a good leader.

In part, this is what I’ve been looking for in these debates and the most recent debate in New Hampshire helped crystallize for me what is wrong with the Republican candidates: I have yet to see a convincing command performance.

I’ve seen it with Govs. Christie and Palin. I’ve seen it in Lt. Col. and Florida Congressional Representative Allen West. I thought that I saw it in Cain, Bachman and Gingrich. I’ve been especially Gingrich’s ability to control the  moronic chickadees of the MSM.

However, I definitely did not see a command presence when Governor Romney allowed an intellectual lightweight like George Stephanopoulos to control the narrative with his ridiculous obsession with contraception (I sense an inner conflict…care to share, Georgie?). Romney wanted to get along, to find the road to peace and harmony…so, instead, Georgie Stephanopoulos got to drive the agenda instead of getting slapped down and named for the trivial man he is.
So, after that, I was pretty much confirmed in my decision to support Gingrich as the one who best offered a vision and command presence for America. That was. This is now. The fact that Gingrich could not condemn the following ad that was posted by one of his PAC tells me that, when necessary, Gingrich will readily descend into the role of the demagogue, much like those on the Left.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You cannot be a proponent of capitalism while playing upon its worst caricatures for short-term political gain. This ad is vile. Romney was part of a turnaround corporation. Such companies play an important role in supporting the vitality and creative destruction and renewal of  capitalist economies. As history has shown over and over again, the alternative is far worse.

After this ad, I can no longer support Gingrich. We’ve already got a demagogue-in-chief. His name is Obama.

So, with great reluctance, I throw my support to Romney. Anybody but Obama!

Yay, there’s another Sarah Palin in American politics.

Mia B. Love – mayor of Saratoga Springs, Utah.

Those of you that have read my posts and comments (whether you agree or disagree) know that I am a huge Sarah Palin fan. Frankly, there is a certain breed of all-American women that I hugely admire in this country – those descended from the same character stock that stood side by side with their men, gun in hand, ready to fight to the death for their families. This is the type of person that Sarah Palin typifies: strong, confident, articulate with a clear sense of…common sense.

Now, in Utah, we see that Sarah Palin is hardly alone. In fact, she may have paved the way for a new, assertive voice of American women in politics. Here is Mia Love…watch the video, imagine Liberal-Lefty heads exploding, then read the link (h/t Powerline Blog)

Click here to view the embedded video.

http://legalinsurrection.com/2012/01/mia-b-love-a-conservative-political-star-rises-in-utah/

Let a million Palins bloom! We may yet win this country back.

Besides, I think Allen West could use some help.

For the past two days, I’ve been gathering links that I’ve meant to use in stand-alone posts.  That’s clearly not going to happen, though, so let me pass the links onto you, in the hope that you find them as interesting as I did.

Here’s something of a public service announcement:  if you post your phone number in Facebook, your phone number has suddenly become public property.  Please be careful.

Has Sarah Palin acquired a stalker or a legitimate journalist?  Inquiring minds want to know.

Elvis Costello joins the ranks of useful idiots to boycott Israel.  One Israeli politely takes him to task for his ignorance and inhumanity.

Much as the press loves Obama, Obama does not love the press.  They’ll never abandon his ship, though.  Even if they have unexpectedly found themselves traveling in steerage, when they thought they’d booked first class accommodations, he’s still taking them to their socialist port of choice.

Have other presidents blown off Memorial Day?  Even if they have, it still isn’t as tacky as Obama’s having done so, because no other president has ever shown such manifest disdain and disrespect for the American military.  This isn’t a one-off.  It’s a package deal of giving the middle finger to the troops he commands.  [UPDATE:  At American Thinker, they get it.]

Heather MacDonald points to the Emperor’s Nakedness:  all the huffing and puffing about the Arizona law hides the fact that Democrats desperately don’t want to enforce border security.  They will willingly watch terrorists sneak into the country, they will watch drug dealers destroy our cities, they will see masses of immigrants ruin our economy — all before they will give up the possibility of millions of new Democratic party-line voters.

If you live in North Carolina’s Second District, you should find interesting this interview with Republican candidate Renee Ellmers, another woman who found politics through the Tea Parties.

Nihilism and, inevitably, anarchy.  Is that the world’s future?  In a post-Judeo-Christian world, Dennis Prager thinks it may well be.  America used to be the single brake against this trend, but Obama’s America has jumped upon the bandwagon.

I have no idea why it’s a surprise to learn that, the more government spends, the more businesses retrench rather than joining the spending party.  Business people understand what liberal policy wonks don’t:  all that spending has to be paid for by taxes; all those taxes suck money out of the economy; and an economy with no money is a perilous business environment.  The fact that it took a scholarly study to figure this one out tells us just how removed from reality the Ivory Tower crowd is.  [UPDATE:  Just wanted to add one more thing.  I'm reading Jaques Barzun's The Culture We Deserve for my (conservative) reading group.  I'm only two essays in, but he's already explained perfectly why I loathed the liberal arts program at UC Berkeley when I was a student there in the very early 1980s.  I've always been a member of the true reality-based community.  I therefore never had the stomach for the artificiality of academia.  People don't live in petri dishes.  They live in the real world, with real problems and, most importantly, real cause and effect.]

Great.  The EPA is planning on managing plants in Texas.  This should go well (see my previous paragraph).

I commented earlier that Focus on the Family handled the whole Tebow ad brilliantly, by letting the Left get hysterical in advance, only to be confronted by a completely innocuous ad in which Pam Tebow talks about times when she worried about Tim’s life.  With its preemptive frothing, the Left managed to show anyone who was paying attention that they care, not about choices (because Pam Tebow made a choice), but about preserving abortion in all forms, at all costs, under all circumstances.  (For my by-no-means doctrinaire views on the subject, see here.)

Showing that they can’t quit when they’re behind, the Lefties, this time in the form of an op-ed at The Nation magazine, continue to opine idiotically on the subject.  I’ve interjected a little common sense:

Folks – the Tim Tebow/Pam Tebow ad has finally aired and it is about as vanilla as an Andy Williams Christmas Special. This is none too surprising. After all, CBS actually co-produced the ad to run seamlessly with the rest of its slick Super Bowl coverage. This has the anti-choice right wing on the blogs mocking the National Organization for Women and Planned Parenthood for “making a big deal over nothing.”

Yes, that would be me being one of the mockers, sort of.  I’m delighted that they made a big deal over nothing, because it helped highlight what matters to those folks rejoicing under the Orwellian name of “pro-choice.”

But the concerns of NOW and Planned Parenthood were absolutely spot on when you saw the final shot of the ad: “This message is brought to you by Focus on the Family.” The idea that Focus on the Family – an organization that believes in reparative therapy for LGBT people, that likens abortion rights to the Nazi holocaust, and that has shadowy connections to open hate groups – gets this kind of a mammoth public forum is an absolute disgrace.

This is where the Left is suffering from a pretty embarrassing logic gap.  The only reason anyone paid any attention to that ad (raising the possibility that people might check out Focus on the Family) is because the Left got so hysterical.  Had they adopted a wait-and-see attitude, and then let the ad sink like a very expensive stone when it was obvious how “vanilla” it was, that would have been the end of the fight.  The Tebows would have had their little say, and everyone would have gone home.

But the whole kerfuffle wasn’t about the ad itself.  It was about pro-life and true pro-choice advocates baiting the Left to show that it’s agenda isn’t the misnomer “pro-choice,” but is instead a eugenic commitment:  the Left finds it heinous that people would go ahead with high risk pregnancies.  The true believers, when it comes to abortion rights, think that high risk pregnancies should narrow down to one choice — abortion.  And if you don’t believe me, look at the splenetic response “pro-choice” people had regarding Sarah Palin’s choice to have a child she knew would be mentally disabled.

As for the ad, Pam Tebow speaks about the choice to ignore her doctor’s advice and risk her own life. She has every right to stand on a soap box with her hunky, Heisman winning son, and tell other women about the benefits of ignoring your doctor. But the idea that CBS would provide the platform for such a message without so much as a medical disclaimer, is simply wrong.

I can see the medical disclaimer now:  “Two out of five doctors believe that, if you’re advised that your baby might be stillborn, you should have an abortion to preclude the possibility that it might be born alive and healthy.”

What kind of verkakte talk is that?  Please keep in mind that Pam Tebow, in both ads, here and here, talked about her worries about Tim’s health, not about her worries about her own health.  In other words, unless viewers, intrigued by the uproar, went to the focus on the family website, they’d never hear Pam say, as The Nation falsely states, that she chose “to ignore her doctor’s advice and risk her own life.”

Also, the idea that Focus on the Family, an organization which stands unequivocally for the view that other women should be denied Pam Tebow’s choice would get this kind of prime commercial real estate, exposes CBS as a frighteningly fraudulent operation. They should offer free commercial time to Planned Parenthood.

Focus on the Family paid to run what even The Nation admits is a completely innocuous commercial that talks about what even The Nation admits is “Pam Tebow’s choice.”  The pro-choice nature of  the ad so infuriates The Nation’s editors that they proclaim that the only antidote is to give the frequently governmentally-funded Planned Parenthood free airtime?

Again, I like it.  How about this ad:  “Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood because she recognized that sometimes, Mother Nature just doesn’t get things quite right.  Left to her own devices, Mother Nature produces ‘retarded’ people, Negroes, Jews, and other undesirables.   So when the doctor tells you there’s a possibility that you’re going to be bringing another undesirable into the world, Planned Parenthood is there to serve you, and to make sure that Mother Nature gets a helping hand.”

And if Roe vs. Wade is ever deemed unconstitutional, I hope the executives at CBS ponder their role in this process. Maybe it’ll cross their minds when they are taking their daughters on a first class trip to France for legal, safe abortions. Somewhere, Edward R. Murrow weeps.

Roe v. Wade has been unconstitutional from the get-go.  Honest lawyers, even pro-”choice” honest lawyers acknowledge that it creates a right out of whole cloth.

As y’all know, I am not rabidly anti-abortion.  I believe it has a definite place, and I believe that there are gray areas where black-and-white law makes for very bad outcomes.  However, I also believe that the Left’s obsession with fetal deaths, its hysterical assertions that changing the law one iota will throw us back to some 1850 horror show of coat hangers and bloodied rooms, is ridiculous.  Times have changed.  Birth control has changed.  Single parenthood has changed.  Social stigmas have changed.  Maternal mortality has changed.  It’s a cheap and shoddy debate to pretend that, as to abortion alone, time has frozen, and there can be no movement.

My admiration for Focus on the Family, a group that holds views that are much more extreme than any I hold regarding abortion, gays, etc., continues to grow.  Conservatives generally could learn from this technique of allowing the Left to rip back its own curtain, exposing the totalitarianism hiding behind the cooing words of love and compassion.

UPDATE:  Fellow Watcher’s Council member Omri Ceren, at Mere Rhetoric, has a great post explaining that the new meme, attacking the commercial for celebrating violence against women, simply exposes — again — the staggering hypocrisy that animates the Left.  Oh, wait!  I forgot.  They’re not hypocritical at all.  If I remember correctly the Left was saying that the violent imagery in the attacks against Palin was okay, because she wasn’t really a woman.  And what was one of the things that made her not a woman?  Her refusal to abort a Down child.  It always comes full circle, doesn’t it?

The Dems have launched a new attack against Brown, in order to cause voters to react in Pavlovian revulsion when they hear his name:  They’re now contending that (a) Brown thinks Sarah Palin is a decent human being and (b) Brown indicated skepticism about the fact that Barack Obama’s mother was married to his father, back in 1961.  Both charges, of course, are enough, in Democratic eyes, to make one a candidate for a deadly lightening bolt from God:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Insofar as Scott Brown committed the grave sin of defending Sarah Palin, Greyhawk has it nailed:

I see Brown defending those who accept responsibility here. I have no idea how he completed the sentence (re: Obama’s mother) “But more importantly, the fact that she had him when she was 18 years old…” but obviously it would reveal whatever Brown thought was more important. Based on context (and the fact that a Coakley support site cut the video off right there) I’d have to suspect it might be something Coakley supporters don’t want to hear.

The second point, of course, re Palin, is that the gross sexism leveled at her was entirely unrelated to her myriad virtues as a business woman, politician and mother, who teamed with her whole family to make things happen.

As for the “unconscionable” slur of bastardy against Obama, a couple of things.  First of all, nowadays, out-of-wedlock births are practically normative, so it’s no insult.  Second, Scott Brown was merely agreeing with . . . Michelle Obama who was speaking back in mid-2008 (emphasis mine):

Obama used the roundtable audience, as she did yesterday, to describe her husband’s understanding of women’s issues through the prism of the strong — but sometimes struggling — women in his life.

His own mother, she said at the beginning of her remarks, was “very young and very single when she had him.” And, Obama added, he has observed his wife’s attempts to reconcile motherhood with her career aspirations.

(Hat tip:  Kim Priestap)

Every first year law student knows, truth is the best defense to a libel charge.

As for me, I don’t care whether Obama was born in or out of wedlock about 50 years ago.  I do care very much about his current political ideology.  I also care a great deal that a politician who spoke the truth is not slandered with the accusation that he voiced a lie.

Last week, I recommended that you read Carl Cannon’s Sarah “Barracuda” Palin and the Piranhas of the Press.  Cannon, who holds no brief for Palin, nevertheless thinks that the press’s behavior once she was on the national scene demonstrates that the American media is in freefall.

Cannon begins by pointing out that, after offering their opinions (“Sarah is an idiot”) as fact, the media moved on to relaying rumors as actual news stories.  These rumors included (but certainly are not limited to) the claims that Trig was in fact Bristol’s son, that she advocated book burning, and that she was a Patrick Buchanan supporter.  Minimal investigation, of the type the MSM was unwilling to make, would instantly have disproven each of these scurrilous charges.

What particularly incensed Cannon, though, was the media’s handling of the Vice Presidential debate.  While Palin’s showing was unpolished and she made errors, Biden went off the deep end with lies, lies, and idiocies.  A fair media would have reported on both side’s errors.  Our media, however, attacked Cannon and gave Biden a free pass.

This is old history for you, although Cannon sews it together so well.  What’s new is the reaction I got from one of my very liberal friends when I posted a link to Cannon’s article on facebook, along with my comment that it’s time for the American media to become like the British media, and simply announce its political orientation up front.

My liberal friend was incensed by the article.  What was so funny was his justification for thinking it was a bad article.  I won’t quote my friend here, but the bottom line was his belief that Cannon’s essay should not be taken seriously because Palin was such an unserious figure.  In other words, the press was under no obligation to report honestly about her (or about Biden), because she didn’t deserve to be elected.

Think about that:  my friend believes that it is the media’s responsibility to weed out bad candidates by whatever means possible, including lying to and withholding information from the American people.  I’ve heard of monarchies, oligarchies, theocracies, democracies, but my friend is now proposing a media-ocracy (a concept that sounds remarkably close to mediocrity).  I don’t know about you, but that’s one of the scariest damn things I’ve ever heard.

You all know by now that Palin is abruptly quitting her job as Alaska’s governor.  Speculation is rife as to her motives.  Many see her as planning for her next political office.  I don’t believe that.  Nobody’s going to want a quitter in the White House.  There’s got to be something more going on here.

I hope it’s not ill health on anyone’s part.  It may just be that the attacks on her family have gotten too vicious.  While I suspect she can take it, maybe they can’t.  Or maybe she can’t take it either.  I don’t believe I’ve ever seen such vicious personal attack in my entire life.  It would be sad, though, if the politics of personal destruction — a tactic that’s entirely unrelated to her politics or competence — proved so spectacularly successful.

If you’re over thirty, you remember the shampoo commercials that had the tag line “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.”  If you’ve forgotten, let me refresh your memory:

Click here to view the embedded video.

That slogan started repeating itself in my head with the attacks on Sarah Palin. I won’t repeat here (or link to) the startling savagery of the hatred heaped upon her, but I’ll remind you that it included denying that she was a woman at all, asserting that she was manifestly stupid, and calling her a traitor to her sex.

The same slogan has now moved to the forefront of my brain with the savage attacks on Carrie Prejean.  Believe me, if a less attractive woman had said precisely the same thing that brought Prejean such notoriety, the Left would have sneered and moved on.  It’s the fact that a beautiful woman had the temerity politely to state that she believes marriage should be between a man and a woman that drives the Left into a frenzy of abuse.

The flip side of this deep hatred the Left has for beautiful women with whom it disagrees is it’s fanatic desire to convince Americans (nay, the world) that its female political icons are beautiful.  Bloggers are starting to take notice of the fact that those on the Left, not satisfied with saturating the media with pictures of Mrs. Obama, are now trying to elevate her to the pantheon of Goddesses, a woman not merely beautiful, but one whose beauty makes her an amalgam of Mother Earth and Venus.  The latest to advance this notion is the always reliably silly Sally Quinn, who waxes lyrical about Michelle’s arms:

Michelle Obama’s arms, we determined, were transformational. Her arms are representative of a new kind of woman: young, strong, vigorous, intelligent, accomplished, sexual, powerful, embracing and, most of all, loving.

Today is Mother’s Day. Today we should celebrate Michelle Obama’s arms as the arms of a mother.

This is a woman who has the courage to say “I am mom in chief” and make her children and her family — unapologetically — her No. 1 priority. She is able to do this because she is so intelligent and accomplished that she doesn’t have to prove anything to anyone. She is healthy enough to be able to say, this is who I am, these are my values and my priorities.

Reading stuff like that (and it goes on and on and on, far beyond what I just quoted), I’m beginning to think there is some virtue to the Roman idea of a vomitorium.  I could use one right now.

Just so we’re clear here: The Left verbally brutalized a truly beautiful woman who had reached one of the highest echelons of American politics by denying her any claim even to being female.  Now, it engages in hagiography by taking an ordinary woman who abandoned her career to support her husband and celebrating her old-fashioned role as mom.  As you know, I have no problem with the old-fashioned role of Mom, but the Left certainly has had that problem — except when it came to Mrs. Clinton and Mrs. Obama.

As for me, when I see Michelle Obama, I think two things:  nice enough and, when her face is in repose, angry.  It’s the latter that makes her the perfect poster child for the Left, but they can’t admit that.  It would be impossible for them to elevate her to their pantheon as some sort of vengeful warrior goddess.  Instead, she must be objectified as the personification of all female virtues.  They don’t have to worry that you’ll hate Michelle because she’s beautiful — she isn’t.  But they’re going to force you to love her because she’s a Leftist female without hair in her pits.

(By the way, check out Ann Coulter talking about attacks on Prejean.)

An email friend of mine advanced the notion of General Petraeus running in 2012.  The man has shown himself to be incredibly competent, but I don’t know much more about him.  He certainly has executive experience.  My friend, who knows (or knows of him) quite well says that he has many of the virtues that would make both a good candidate and a good president.  I have no knowledge of whether he wants to run, but it’s an interesting concept.

Since 2012 is coming upon us quickly (thank goodness), I was interested in your preferences and created a poll. Since I’m new to poll creating, the “none of the above” option is unanchored, and drifts, but I trust you’ll figure it out. Also, if you don’t see a potential candidate you like in my poll, leave a comment with the person’s name.

Yesterday, Mr. Bookworm and I found ourselves in a car heading south.  As we passed the Marriott at which Sarah Palin spoke (a speech I got to hear in person), this dialog ensued:

Me:  That’s where Sarah Palin spoke.

Mr. Bookworm:  Really?  Are you still going to tell me that she wouldn’t have been a disaster as Vice President?

Me:  I think she would have made a fine Vice President.  She certainly would have been better than Joe Biden.  Say, did you hear what he said the other day?  He said he was the best Vice President since, well, anybody.  [I mangled the quote a little bit.  This is what he actually said:  “I’m the most experienced vice president since anybody.”]

Mr. Bookworm:  That’s so not true.  He never said that.  You live in right wing fantasy world.  I defy you to find that for me.  Anyway, Palin would have been a laughingstock.

Me:  Come on.  She has more executive experience than Obama and you voted for him.

Mr. Bookworm:  That is a totally specious argument.  This is not about executive experience.

Me:  Yes, it is.  The president is the executive office.

Mr. Bookworm:  That is total B.S.  The presidency has nothing to do with being an executive.

Me:  Babe, it’s in the Constitution.  The President is the “executive.”

Mr. Bookworm:  That doesn’t mean anything anymore.  Presidents aren’t really executives.  The office is inspirational.  All the best Presidents haven’t been executives; they’ve been inspirational leaders.

This interesting conversation ended abruptly at this point when one of the kids started throwing up in the back seat, but I certainly would have liked to have pursued it.

UPDATED:  Just got off the phone from a call with another relative, a very liberal gal who lives in a liberal enclave back East.  After listening to her soundly berating Sarah Palin for being an idiot because she doesn’t speak well and lauding Obama because he does, I asked her my standard question:  “What has Obama accomplished?”  Her answer:  “He’s an inspirational symbol.  He doesn’t need to have accomplished anything.”

Are they all reading from the same playbook or have they all independently arrived at the conclusion that this is the only possible answer to cover Obama’s abysmal lack of concrete accomplishments?