The Robotic Candidate Blows a Gasket

Yesterday, the rightwing National Review made what was probably (from their perspective, at least) a bad call. They bought the Romney line that the only reason Team Obama wants more tax returns released is so they can find stuff to make a big deal over. "The Obama people keep on wanting more and more and more," Romney has explained. "More things to pick through, more things for their opposition research to try make a mountain out of and to distort and to be dishonest about."

"Let them go fish," said the editorial board, ignoring the very obvious.

And the very obvious is that the argument's basically Romney admitting that there's stuff in there to make a big deal over. It's not like Mitt's completely in the dark over what's in his tax returns; when Romney says the Obama campaign just wants dirt, he's basically admitting that he's not releasing his tax returns because there's dirt in there.

Which is why Team Romney is desperate to change the subject -- and why they're failing to do just that. The very obvious is just as very obvious to the press as it is to me. Romney's hiding something and they want to know what it is. In fact, they want to know so very badly that they're finally giving the "veepstakes" the attention it deserves -- i.e., not a whole lot. And this while Romney's chumming the waters with running mate rumors. When that shiny bauble can't get the media's attention, your messaging apparatus is spiraling wildly out of control.

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GOP Candidates Unified in Their Love for Failed Economic Policies

A National Review editorial is making some news today, mostly because it pleads with GOP voters to not to support Newt Gingrich. The magazine is still seen as representing the intellectual arm of the Republican Party -- despite the fact that it now features dim bulbs like Jonah Goldberg, Kathryn Jean Lopez, and Rich Lowry -- so there's some news value here. But the same now-undeserved reputation for braininess is why most conservatives won't pay any attention to it. After years of attacking "ivory tower intellectuals," they've managed to get the base to stop listening to them. Nice work, guys. Congrats on your success.

But it's not the anti-endorsement of Newt Gingrich that caught my eye. It was the concise description (in the form of praise) of just about everything that's wrong with the Republican candidates and the party in general.

A hard-fought presidential primary campaign is obscuring the uncharacteristic degree of unity within the Republican party. It has reached a conservative consensus on most of the pressing issues of the day. All of the leading candidates, and almost all of the lagging ones, support the right to life. All of them favor the repeal of Obamacare. Most of them support reforms to restrain the growth of entitlement spending. All of them favor reducing the corporate tax rate to levels that will make the U.S. a competitive location for investment. Almost all of them seem to understand the dangers of a precipitate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, and of a defense policy driven by the need to protect social spending rather than the national interest. Conservatives may disagree among themselves about which candidate most deserves support, but all of us should take heart in this development -- and none of us should exaggerate the programmatic differences within the field.

I especially like the part about "a defense policy driven by the need to protect social spending rather than the national interest," as if social needs aren't in the national interest -- at least, not like the buying super-important fighter jets we never use. Blowing people up on the other side of the world -- that's in the national interest. Making sure kids at home have enough to eat? That's waste.

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Does the Right Even Know What Intolerance Is?

Let me run something by you and see how you feel about it.

Frank Turek is a man whose contract was terminated by a major corporation when human resources found out he had written a book opposing mixed-race marriage. He is on the front lines of an emerging trend we are hearing about: people losing jobs or other economic opportunities because they have written, spoken, donated, or otherwise peacefully exercised their core civil rights on behalf of marriage as a union between two people of the same race.

Frank's day job is leadership seminars for Fortune 500 companies. He also runs a ministry and has written a book against miscegenation titled Correct, Not Politically Correct: How Mixed-Race Marriage Hurts Everyone.

For many years Frank Turek has done seminars for Cisco, among many other companies. A student who attended his class Googled his name, found out he opposed mixed-race marriage and said "I'm going to get Frank fired because he doesn't represent Cisco values." And this student succeeded.

A few weeks later Frank Turek was told by a Bank of America executive that his book opposing mixed-race marriage meant he would not be asked to do a seminar again at Bank of America.

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Wisconsin Supreme Court Race is All About Scott Walker

Gov. Scott Walker and the Wisconsin GOP have lost. I don't mean that they've lost the fight to push their union-busting bill through -- although, to be sure, they're not having a lot of luck on that front. No, they've lost the argument. April 5 is a off-off-year election day in Wisconsin, the first since the anti-worker moves began, and I have yet to see a candidate who embraces Walker wholeheartedly. Instead, I see only quotes and ads from conservatives pretending Walker doesn't exist or from liberals who promise to "stand up to Scott Walker."

The highest profile race in this election cycle is for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, where incumbent conservative David Prosser faces liberal JoAnne Kloppenburg. Prosser won his primary with 55% of the vote. Kloppenburg took a mere 25%. Being a nonpartisan office, the post-primary election is basically a runoff. Those numbers suggested that Prosser would win in a walk. Prosser voters would stick with Prosser, everyone else would go with Kloppenburg -- at least, those who didn't go with Prosser. The incumbent would get his 55% and then some, coasting to an easy reelection.

But since that primary, things have changed. Prosser made the mistake of believing that the new governor's star was rising and his campaign told voters he'd be a "complement" to Scott Walker's governorship as a justice. He's been trying to take that back ever since and enjoying about as much luck as the GOP has been having with their union busting.

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