A few thoughts on the recent hub-bub about contraception and the Obama administration recent ruling including birth control among services insurers are mandated to cover.

1. Because the ruling is blatantly unconstitutional, it’s only time before the Obama administration pulls the ruling once they know they’ve wrung out of the recent controversy all the political benefit possible.

2. Remember that this administration knows only one thing: doing whatever they need to do to shift the debate away from its abysmal record on the economy and the deficit. Today it’s contraception - oops, my apology, “women’s health”, tomorrow it will be something else. This administration could care less about minorities, jobs, women, the border and immigration, gas prices, and foreign policy; all it is, is a bunch of zealots led by a figurehead President who could care less about anything except being in power and staying in power. As a result, they will do and say anything to keep the focus away from the economy and jobs.

3. Was Rush Limbaugh wrong to call women’s rights activist and Georgetown Law School Sandra Fluke “a slut” after her Congressional testimony appealing for the taxpayers to cover, in effect, the cost of her sex life, and those of of others, the full cost of their birth control use? Here are Rush’s own words:

Now, here’s the story that started all this. It’s by a guy name Craig Bannister at Cybercast News Service: “A Georgetown co-ed told Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s hearing that the women in her law school program are having so much sex that they’re going broke, so you and I should pay for their birth control. Speaking at a hearing held by Pelosi to tout President Obama’s mandate that virtually every health insurance plan cover the full cost of contraception and abortion-inducing products, Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke said that it’s too expensive to have sex in law school without mandated insurance coverage. Apparently, four out of every ten co-eds are having so much sex that it’s hard to make ends meet if they have to pay for their own contraception, Fluke’s research shows.”

…

What does it say about the college co-ed Sandra Fluke, who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex, what does that make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid to have sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception. She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex. What does that make us? We’re the pimps. (interruption) The johns? We would be the johns? No! We’re not the johns. (interruption) Yeah, that’s right. Pimp’s not the right word. Okay, so she’s not a slut. She’s “round heeled.” I take it back.

As someone who regularly deplores the increasing coarseness of the discourse in all aspects of our culture, I wouldn’t have used those words, but I can certainly sympathize with the sentiments of Limbaugh’s comments. After all, why on earth are taxpayers covering the cost of women to have sex? I’d say the same thing if I thought taxpayers were covering the cost of condoms, or, for that matter, my Pinot Grigio habit. Why should contraception of any kind be free? To take it to an even greater extent, why should the government subsidize anything, for that matter. It’s not just an economic issue to me - are we rolling so much in dough that we can just hand out services of any kind for free? - but a personal freedom issue. What’s so special about contraception? Why not just forego the cost of contraception and just have the government pay for abortions? Oh, we can’t do that? Why???

4. The bottom line is that life is full of choices: you want something, you should have to pay for it. And (liberals out there hear this loudly) you can’t have everything. And for the Sandra Flukes of the world, if you want to have sex and don’t want to get pregnant, I guess that’s one more thing you have to budget for every month, isn’t it? If you want a true reality check of of Sandra Fluke’s (and the liberal left’s) priorities, check out this audio from the great Mark Levin.

5. I find it beyond incredible (although not surprising) that in a time where gas prices are going through the roof, millions upon millions of people are unemployed, we’re running a deficit that will turn us into Greece in a few short years, entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare (and, at the state level), Medicaid are all hurtling towards insolvency, what are freakin’ talking about? Female contraception. I mean, how patently absurd is that?

6. #5 is especially true given the fact that there is no way the Supreme Court would ever let the Obama administration’s mandate stand. I mean, think about it: if you can force a private-sector industry to do one thing, why not anything? Like force car companies not to sell trucks of any kind? Or force McDonald’s and other fast-food chains not to sell hamburgers? You laugh, but like I said above, you have an administration of left-wing zealots who, finally in power, are attempting to make the most of it while they can. To them, Obama’s “Hope and Change” agenda gives them carte blanche to push every left-wing, socialist agenda item to its fullest extent. And that’s what’s involved here.

Because the last thing in the world the Obama administration wants to talk about is the economy and jobs. I wonder what’s next?

What a loss for conservatism. The founder of Big Government and Big Journalism websites, Andrew Breitbart’s influence will last far beyond his life as an absolute lion of the conservative cause, someone who was not afraid of liberals, liberalism, and their entrenched syncophants and champions in the mainstream dino-media. Along with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Mark Levin, and Michelle Malkin, Breitbart never shied away from confrontation and controversy - in fact, he enjoyed seeking out Democrats and liberals on their own turf to call out their unabashed hypocrisy and the double standards they always held Republicans and conservatives to.

It was Breitbart who funded James O’Keefe’s undercover work to expose the widespread corruption in the government-funded ACORN community activist group. It was Breitbart who countered the charges of the liberal media that black Democratic congressmen were called racial epitaphs on the steps of the Capital, offering anyone $100,000 cash for proof (no one ever came forward). And it was Breitbart who not only broke the Anthony Weiner scandal, but audaciously took the podium at Weiner’s own scheduled press conference to defend the charges levied against him by liberal bloggers at to how he broke the story.

How important was Breitbart to the next-generation conservative cause? This from Byron York of WashingtonExaminer.com:

Breitbart knew instinctively, as people in Washington and most other places did not, that movies, television programs, and popular music send out deeply political messages every hour of every day. They shape the culture, and then the culture shapes politics. Influence those films and TV shows and songs, and you’ll eventually influence politics.

The Left had known that for generations, but on the Right, so many people in politics thought only about politics. To Breitbart, that was folly. “The people who have money, every four years at the last possible second, are told, ‘You need to give millions of dollars, because these four counties in Ohio are going to determine the election,’” Breitbart told the National Policy Council in October 2009. “I am saying, why didn’t we invest 20 years ago in a movie studio in Hollywood, why didn’t we invest in creating television shows, why didn’t we create institutions that would reflect and affirm that which is good about America?”

…

A lot of young conservatives, born into the web world, considered Breitbart not just a role model, or a mentor, but a hero. He returned the affection. “I have spoken at the Leadership Institute, Young America’s Foundation, and College Republicans,” he said in 2009. “I will go for free wherever the kids will listen to me.”

If Limbaugh brought conservatism to the masses, it was Andrew Breitbart who brought conservative activism into the 21st century, influencing bloggers and young conservative activists in organizing through the new media for years to come. To say Andrew Breitbart was a visionary is to discount the many other ways he hit the reset button on showing others how conservatism’s message could be made mainstream. He died so young, and my thoughts and prayers go out to his wife and four young children, and all those friends and associates shocked and saddened at his untimely passing. May he rest in peace and rise in glory! He will be greatly missed.

Funny how this topic appeared just after my return from Vegas. Long story short: last weekend, while a few of the Goodboys were in Las Vegas, the 2012 CPAC Conference (a gathering of conservatives) was held in Washington, D.C. Evidently, in the aftermath of the conference there was a whole lot of commotion about the manner of dress of some of the younger people and bloggers who had attended. At the center of the controversy was Tina Korbe, a blogger from Hot Air, one of my daily go-to blogs. Tina’s not only a good writer with a gift for writing clearly and concisely, but she’s also very easy on the eyes (if you know what I mean).

At any rate, this video of Tina and her fellow Hot Air blogger Ed Morrissey evidently caught the wrath of more than a few conservative bloggers. Erick Erickson of Red State in effect, told her and those of her ilk “to grow up”. Robert Stacy McCain openly asked “Who wants to see Tina Korbe’s thighs?” (a rhetorical question, I’m sure), and Melissa Clouthier bemoaned “the Jersey Shore-ification of our young people”.

Me? I think this is all a bunch of hooey, if you don’t mind me saying. I’m going to side with Datetechguy (Hat tip: Instapundit) on this one and simply say, if you’ve got it, what’s the harm in flaunting it:

It is an invariable truth of CPAC that there is, every year, an inordinate number of incredible looking women dressed in a rather noticeable way.

As a man who is married, but not dead…this is not a fact that goes unnoticed.

…

There are three simple ways to look at this and I’m going to say them:

As a man: If women beautiful women choose to dress in a way that shows off their various assets I will notice them.

As a person trying to carry himself as a gentleman: I will do my best to not allow noticing a beautiful woman to override my dealings with her as a person or a blogger or a subject of an interview.

My advice to men is this: If a woman is so attractive as to be a distraction compliment the women on it right way and get it out-of-the-way, that way it won’t be on the back of your mind when doing other things.

My advice to women is this: It’s not for me to tell you how to dress, but if you choose to dress in a way that makes men notice then 1. Don’t be surprised if men notice you. 2. Don’t be offended if they compliment you.

I write this while fondly recalling sitting at Wynn’s Parasol Up bar a week ago Friday night and watching all the pretty people go by. Girls dressed to the nines, the guys accompanying them - amazingly - not quite so much (what a bunch of dopes). Now, Wynn is absolutely the best place for this form of recreation. The Hemingway Daiquiris were cold and the right combination of tart/sweet, the company of my fellow Goodboys both fun and enjoyable, and it was hard not to notice that the girls walking by seemed to have cornered the market on very short mini-skirts and stiletto heels. Most could (and did) pull it off to varying degrees, a couple failed dismally. But who was I to say?

As Datetechguy mentions above, I’m married but I’m not dead. I love my wife, but I appreciate a pretty girl who knows how to dress (I’m always amazed at the number of girls who don’t) as much as anyone. Personally, I think I’d make a great fashion consultant at a local mall store, because I have a good sense of taste, style, and coordination (something handed down to me, I’m sure, from my Mom, who always knew how to dress me right as a kid). And my feeling is this: if you’re young and attractive, by all means go for it. If God gave you a great figure, then who am I to judge how you dress and present yourself? Others of both sexes may not like it, may not respect you, and may even resent you for it, but as a red-blooded American heterosexual (and proud of it), I’m not one of them.

Youth and beauty don’t last forever, but from someone on this side of middle age, it’s always appreciated when it’s done with taste, class, and appreciation. Like Datetechguy, I have to admit I didn’t even notice Tina’s outfit until I heard about the controversy. I just thought she was an attractive, intelligent young woman asking a GOP candidate for President good questions who would also look completely at home at Wynn on a Friday night in Vegas. And what’s so wrong with that?

So to Erick, Robert, Melissa and all the other prudes out there, I can only say: lighten up.

Ever since I got my Republican primary ballot the other day, I’ve been heming and hawing over who I was going to vote for. I knew it wasn’t going to be for Newt Gingrich: for me, his whining and petulant tone ever since his South Carolina primary win has really soured me on him - which is too bad. I do think he has the best ideas of all the candidates still left in the race, but if I want whiny and petulant in the Oval Office, I can simply vote for Back Obama’s re-election.

But what about the other three? Ron Paul, with his stances on the size and role of the federal government and our reckless monetary and fiscal policy has actually started to grow on me, but there’s something about him that makes me very uneasy. Mitt Romney, simply, put has not closed the deal with me. I don’t know if I like him or not, but I sure don’t trust him. Which leaves me with former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum. Because his reasons for choosing Santorum mirror my own, I’ll let Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey do the talking for me:

Before I explain that decision, let’s be clear. I could cast a vote happily for Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich in a general election. Both are massive improvements over the current incumbent, and both have admirable qualities that would reflect well on the GOP once in office — even if those admirable qualities aren’t always on display now. I will enthusiastically support any of those three men should they win the nomination. My focus will be on beating Barack Obama and promoting the conservative agenda, in that order, throughout 2012, and I also believe that any of those three could beat Obama in a general election campaign.

Why Santorum? In my estimation, Santorum is the last consistent conservative standing, and the only one both promoting the conservative agenda and campaigning as a conservative in the race. That doesn’t make Santorum perfect; he lacks the executive experience I’d like to see, and some of his positions in the past and present give me pause. However, compared to the heterodoxies of his competitors in the GOP race, Santorum has a superior record on promoting conservative policies and values.

Even more than that, though, Santorum has demonstrated a level of personal integrity in this race that outshines the rest of the field. Santorum has campaigned with blue-collar Reagan Democrats in mind, pushing for an economic plan that would revitalize manufacturing and small business. He could easily have tipped over into class-warfare populism while Gingrich and Romney bashed each other over their work at Bain and Freddie Mac in order to ingratiate himself with that sector by playing on latent envy. Instead, he defended capitalism and both of his competitors on the campaign trail more effectively than either could defend themselves. In contrast, Romney keeps demonstrating a lack of fluency in conservative politics and philosophy, while Gingrich has conducted a personal, angry campaign that threatens to reinforce every negative stereotype about conservatives, both at times putting themselves and their ambitions above the party they seek to lead.

My vote in the Arizona GOP Primary goes to Rick Santorum.

OK, so Mitt Romney wins Florida. I just don’t know. I’ve tried - really, I have - but I just can’t warm up to the guy. Maybe it’s because I detest politicians who always stay on message about what they’re going to do without saying anything about how they’re going to do it. His “Believe In America” slogan makes me want to vomit, and I just think he’s an empty-suit, the kind of guy who’d leave a message on your answering machine telling you your employment had been terminated. Come November, I’ll vote for anyone but Obama, but I sure wish someone with substance like Wisconsin congressman Paul Ryan or Kentucky Senator Rand Paul were running. But it’s not their time, and I’m willing to wait until 2016 to see that happen.

It’s about time. Now I can go back to tossing a buck or two in the till whenever I see them fund-raising. You gotta love the way the AP paints this story (my boldings):

According to the AP, the move will mean “a cutoff of hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants, mainly for breast exams. Planned Parenthood confirms that Komen is the first, and only, organization to cut off funding since the Congress began debating the issue in earnest last winter.”

Bullshit. The move means less money given to PP for abortions, which is all they really exist for. Hopefully, the next step is Congress cutting off all PP funding. If they want to continue their death factories, let the oh-so-compassionate liberals and feminists so ardently in favor of killing unwanted babies put their money where their fat mouths are.

While I don’t agree with everything the Roman Catholic Church stands for when it comes to political action (my ties are entirely theological and dogmatic), I have to side with them on the recent decision by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “contraception mandate” requiring all employers to offer their employees health insurance that provides FDA-approved contraception, female sterilization, and other “reproductive” services free of charge. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has it exactly right here: this is nothing but an outrageous frontal attack on religious freedom and civil liberty, and they’re right to declare they will not comply with this “Shut Up and Hand Out Abortion Pills” decision. Hopefully, the Obama administration will com eto their senses and back down; otherwise, there is little doubt it will be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court somewhere down the road.

Of course, no one should be surprised at the Obama administration’s blatant attempts to shove it’s far-left ideology down the throats of American citizens. Just wait to see what happens if this banana republic dictator-wannabe gets re-elected.

Hopefully, this will finally seal the fate of Attorney General Eric Holder and his increasingly-implausible defence of his and his Department of Justice’s actions to coverup the illegal gun-running “Fast and Furious” operation that has left the Department with the blood of hundreds of Mexican civilians and one, perhaps two, U.S. border agents on their filthy, corrupt hands. Once again, this is a case of the Obama administration’s far-left ideology to impose their own agenda (in this case, increased gun control legislation) through actions that shred the U.S. Constitution.

Believe me, there have been other Presidents in our nation’s history who have been impeached for less. But I guess talking like that these days makes you a racist, doesn’t it?

R.I.P. Kevin H. White, former mayor of Boston. To me, he was a great mayor who loved his city, wanted to see the city prosper, and was a visionary the likes you just don’t see anymore. I have fond memories of Boston comedian Steve Sweeney going on the late, great Jerry Williams’ afternoon talk show to do his impersonation of “the mayor of the schitty of Borston”. Too bad there’s no audio of those appearances, they were a howl and great political satire. Condolences to his family and loved ones, he was a great man.

Even if you’re a fan of Barack Obama, there is a Mark Steyn article in this week’s National Review Online that should be required reading for everyone concerned about the direction of this country. His idea for how the President could have saved everyone 89 1/2 minutes of their lives during his State Of The Union speech last Tuesday is, sadly, all too true had the President had the courage to lay it all out for the American people in language anyone could understand:

“The State of our Union is broke, heading for bankrupt, and total collapse shortly thereafter. Thank you and goodnight! You’ve been a terrific crowd!”

Of course, he didn’t, and even the most ardent liberal Democrat who stuck around for the whole thing could not have helped but come away with some sense of an incredible shrinking Presidency where the great ideas behind “Hope and Change” have dissolved into a simple and cynical class warfare against “billionaires” and their need to pay higher taxes in the name of “fairness” - as if simply by doing so it would poof our economic problems away, thus eliminating the need by the President and our elected officials in Washington to have to actually face this country’s desperate economic situation head on:

The president certainly had facts and figures at his disposal. He boasted that his regulatory reforms “will save business and citizens more than $10 billion over the next five years.” Wow. Ten billion smackeroos! That’s some savings — and in a mere half a decade! Why, it’s equivalent to what the government of the United States borrows every 53 hours. So by midnight on Thursday Obama had already re-borrowed all those hard-fought savings from 2017. “In the last 22 months,” said the president, “businesses have created more than three million jobs.” Impressive. But 125,000 new foreign workers arrive every month (officially). So we would have to have created 2,750,000 jobs in that period just to stand still.

…

An honest leader would feel he owed it to the citizenry to impress upon them one central truth — that we can’t have any new programs because we’ve spent all the money. It’s gone. The cupboard is bare. What’s Obama’s plan to restock it? “Right now, Warren Buffett pays a lower tax rate than his secretary,” the president told us. “Asking a billionaire to pay at least as much as his secretary in taxes? Most Americans would call that common sense.”

…

The so-called “Buffett Rule” is indicative not so much of “common sense” as of the ever widening gap between the Brobdingnagian problem and the Lilliputian solutions proposed by our leaders. Obama can sacrifice the virgin daughters of every American millionaire on the altar of government spending and the debt gods will barely notice so much as to give a perfunctory belch of acknowledgement. The president’s first term has added $5 trillion to the debt — a degree of catastrophe unique to us. In an Obama budget, the entire cost of the Greek government would barely rate a line-item. Debt-to-GDP and other comparative measures are less relevant than the hard-dollar numbers: It’s not just that American government has outspent America’s ability to fund it, but that it’s outspending the planet’s.

Read the whole thing - it’s truth-talking few, if any of our electeds are talking about. And it should be - every day.

The final GOP debate before the Florida primary was as entertaining and combative as was expected, with lots of fireworks and sharp contrasts being painted by each candidate against the others. At the outset it looked like it was going to be a tiring tit-for-tat between Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, but that ended pretty quickly after Rick Santorum (displaying a far more combative and colorful persona than he has to date) brought everyone back to earth and refused to let moderator Wolf Blitzer play willing antagonist. While the debate was far better than Monday night’s snoozefest - primarily because the audience’s questions were excellent, putting old Wolf to shame - there’s just no point in expecting any debate hosted by the main TV networks or cable channels to be anything than “gotcha” questions asked for the purposes of a cheap sound bite.

Still, any good gundown has winners and losers, and there were some tonight. Given the theme of this post, let’s rate them with bullets:

1. Mitt Romney (4 bullets). Not because he had a better debate than all the others (that goes to Rick Santorum, for which I’ll explain below), but because Santorum did so well compared to Newt Gingrich. If the sense was that Newt hit his ceiling after winning the South Carolina, partly because of the Romney’s attacks at the Monday debate, partly because Newt once again drifted off message and back into dream-weaving, Romney’s performance was enough to keep that going. Last night showed a more forceful Romney while displaying the same annoying weaknesses that Republicans and conservatives tear their hair out over: he got caught not knowing one of his ads criticized Gingrich out of context, and he got absolutely pistol-whipped by Santorum on RomneyCare. Still, he had good answers on his private sector experience, and he showed a more human side to him on the (stupid) Blitzer question on how his wife would make a good First Lady. His answer on why he was the most qualified to beat Barack Obama was solid, if not totally convincing. Because Newt didn’t win, Romney wins on points.

2. Rick Santorum (3 bullets). Santorum was much more animated, more substantial, and thus better able to separate himself from Gingrich and Romney last night than he had been able to do previously. Most will think he came out ahead in terms of style and substance, but one can’t help feel that this is all too little, too late for him. Unless GOP voters suddenly (and overwhelmingly) decide that both Romney and Gingrich are so flawed as candidates they can’t trust or take a chance on either of them, I don’t see Santorum as a major player in the primaries going forward. Lacking the money and the organization, a good debate alone is just not going to propel him anywhere at this juncture.

3. Ron Paul (2 bullets). Same Ron Paul. If you love him, nothing he can do will change your mind. To me he looked more pale and tired than usual. Got in his usual effective one-liners and quips that endear him to his following, but he’s not going to win the nomination.

4. Newt Gingrich (1 bullet). Newt needed a big performance tonight and came up short. Started off going negative on Romney before turning on Wolf Blitzer with another blame-the-moderator response that seemed forced and awkward (ultimately leading to a Romney counterpunch that left Newt ducking for cover), then spent the rest of the debate again emphasizing his Washington experiences in the ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s. When Newt concentrates on substance and problem-solving, he’s the best up there, but lately this continous walk through the Reagan and Clinton administrations just makes him seem like a well-connected Washington insider living out past gun battles. I’ve counted out Newt before, so I’m hesitant to do it again, but his star seems to be fading, and fast.

So there you have it. Thankfully, there are no more debates for a month! My prediction is that Romney wins Florida by 7-8 points, which will send conservatives into a panic. In the unlikely event Newt arises again, it will only be because of a GOP repudiation of Mitt Romney and the thought of nominating yet another weak-kneed, spineless moderate as the nominee.

Make no mistake about it: the fear and trembling in conservative quarters is palpable and could turn into full-blown panic if Romney wins Florida. Santorum’s campaign is on fumes, and while Paul will continue to rack up enough delegates to make him a player at the August convention, no one seriously considers him a viable nominee. There’s a huge schism forming in the Republican Party - a lot of conservatives (count me among them) very worried about Romney in a head-to-head match against Barack Obama, and it’s not out of the question that someone like Indiana governor Mitch Daniels (who gave a boffo GOP response to Obama’s State Of The Union address the other night) could be prodded to enter late with the goal of gathering momentum into the convention and being a brokered choice everyone could get behind. I’d love to see that happen…

Tonight’s GOP debate hosted by NBCPolitics.com was, in a long list of poorly-conceived and moderated debates, the worst of them all. Brian Williams ought to be ashamed of himself for committing the one cardinal offense you can make in the television/entertainment industry: being boring. Let me ask you something: how on God’s green earth can you moderate a GOP presidential debate without asking any questions - not one - about the current Commander-in-Chief? Nothing about the federal debt. Nothing about the “Fast and Furious” scandal and a senior Department of Justice official announcing on Friday he was taking the 5th at the next Congressional hearing. Nothing about the President’s State of the Union address tomorrow evening. Nothing about the Keystone pipeline decision.

What did we get instead? Questions about sugar subsidies (!), the Terri Schiavo controversy of a few years back, a bizarre question about what if China and Cuba switched places - bizarre questions that offered no sense of the issues facing this country or how the candidates might differ from Barack Obama. It was boring, unsubstantial, and a waste of time. Everyone knows Brian Williams is an avowed leftist and his network the #1 Barack Obama ass-kisser, but if you want to host a GOP debate to begin with, shouldn’t you at least give what little journalism chops you might have left have some self-respect?

Conservative commentator David Limbaugh, I think, summed up the night’s proceedings best when he tweeted at the debate’s close: “No one won the debate because there wasn’t a debate. To say someone did win is to accept the false premise that there was one.” Indeed. Shame on Brian Williams, shame on NBC, and, most of all, shame on the GOP candidates for allowing such a snoozefest to take place.

Given all of the above, there were winners and losers to tonight’s debate:

1. Mitt Romney. If Romney ends up winning the GOP nomination and beating Barack Obama in the general election, he’ll have one person to thank - Newt Gingrich. Gingrich’s ascension in the polls, culminating in Romney’s crushing defeat in South Carolina, was the best thing that could have happened to him. While he missed some obvious chances to blast Brian Williams for his inane questions, he nevertheless was sharp, to the point, and pointed in his criticism of Gingrich when he had his chance at the opening of the debate. Was the first candidate to mention our nation’s debt crisis. Took my advice and wiped that stupid grin off his face, replacing it with a slighter smirk, and was forceful in his defense of his own private sector success. His last answer about the seven things he’s do to get the economy moving were crisp and to the point. The bad news is that few, if any, actually watched this debate, the good news is that the commentary on his performance will likely stop his campaign’s bleeding and even turn it back around a bit.

2. Ron Paul. Not a winner, not a loser. He was just there. Typical answers to typical questions. He’s not even campaigning in Florida, and seems to have hit his ceiling in terms of support, so tonight he was just taking up space.

3. Newt Gingrich. Had numerous opportunities to question the inanity of some of Williams’ questions but for whatever reason chose to do not. Romney hammered him hard at the outset about being a Washington insider, lobbyist, and influence peddler, and that seemed to knock Newt off his stride. While he had some decent answers to questions as the “debate” went on, his performance and persona seemed subdued throughout, making him to appear like just another old and tired career politician. Wouldn’t be surprised if today’s polls out of Florida following his SC win are his campaign’s high-water mark.

4. Rick Santorum. Had the most to gain tonight by being forceful and attacking the almost-embarassingly liberal slant of Williams’ questions but instead just repeated the same old positions in the same old way. I’ve come to realize his strengths are as a legislator proposing legislation and debating the same by opponents. He simply can’t let go of policy and talk to people’s concerns and pocketbooks. Time to say goodnight, Rick.

What a difference a week makes.

Hard to believe just a week ago the Beltway pundits were all ready to coronate Mitt Romney as the de facto GOP nominee. Now, after getting crushed in South Carolina by a resurgent Newt Gingrich, all the pressure is on Romney to sell himself anew to Republican primary voters. He ought to know by now that the cool, business-savvy persona isn’t going to play this year: conservatives and Republican voters have had enough of a “Massachusetts moderate” schmoozer who plays get-along with a mainstream dino-media that openly shows its disdain for Republicans and conservatives. This year, GOP primary voters want a fighter who isn’t afraid to call out Barack Obama, his mainstream media ass-kissers, and the milquetoast Republican establishment in Washington out for what they are. As Hugh Hewitt writes:

The South Carolina electorate didn’t vote for a person or a platform; they voted for a personality — the fiery, combative, [mainstream media]-hating Newt. They want the GOP nominee to charge at the president, throw around the term Alinksyite, push back at John King and Juan Williams, and shout out the absurdity of Barack Obama as president and the destructiveness of his combination of epic incompetence and awful ideology.

I suspect that the GOP as a whole has a lot of this pent-up anger at the Manhattan-Beltway media elites, and they too have been cool to cool hand Mitt as a result.

As National Review Online’s Terence Jeffrey adds:

Conservatives not only resent the liberal media for trying to pick the Republican nominee (n.b. the media prefer Romney) but they also resent Republican politicians who, once elected, spend their careers appeasing the media while abandoning conservative principles (n.b. the supine leadership of the Republican party in the House of Representatives). Conservatives want a president whose attitude toward the media matches the attitude Gingrich has shown in recent debates. A president with that kind of attitude, they hope, might actually govern as a conservative.

As I alluded to on last Friday’s post after the Thursday night debate, if Romney wants to win the GOP nomination, he’s going to need some significant re-tooling of his message. As an amateur political consultant, here is what I would recommend:

1. Let Newt be Newt. Rather than go after Gingrich hard and negative, I would use my business experience to highlight the differences between you and he when it comes to getting this country’s fiscal house in order. Pound away at the deficit by personalizing to individual Americans what it would mean if this country continues down the reckless spending and borrowing road it is traveling. Comnpare this nation’s debt to something people can relate to - like the iceberg in front of the Titanic. Talk about the danger to people’s stock market investments and 401K plans if Obama is re-elected President. But more than anything, make it personal. You’ll never be one of “the people”, but you can use language that the “regular folks” understand to contrast your “disciplined approach” to Newt’s “grandiose ideas”.

2. Get rid of that weird, smug, used-car dealer half-smile you have while people are asking you questions. Project the kind of serious businessman demeanor you might have used at Bain Capital when reviewing a failing company’s ledgers. You’ve spent the better part of eight months acting as if the nomination was yours for the keeping, you now have to project a more serious and fighting demeanor without being seen as shrill, negative, and panicky.

3. Go after Barack Obama with specifics - people don’t understand “European-style socialism”, and it’s not as if there isn’t plenty to talk about: the blood on his administration’s hands as a result of the “Fast and Furious” gun-running scandal, the loss of billions of dollars in betting on “green energy” companies like Solyndra and others; the Keystone pipeline decision; Obamacare and its impact on Medicare; the administration’s undelared war on South Carolina, Alabama, Texas, and Arizona over voting laws and immigration, just to name a few. Get specific - that’s why Gingrich’s “food stamp President” line resonated so well with SC voters.

4. More than anything else, release your damned taxes and use it to tell your personal story. You’re a successful businessman, for God’s sake. Use your tax return as a way to tell your story about success. Make it a story that individual people can relate to. Show some humility and make the case that your story shows what any American can do if they work hard enough and educate themselves enough. Forget about the Occupy Wall Street losers; the fact is, American love to make money so they can buy things. Frame your success as a story that others can identify with, make it something like this: “Look, if I can do it, you can do it too, but if you don’t elect someone like me who will change the direction this country is going, no one, not me, not you - will be able to make it in America”.

Fortunately for you, Mitt, the odds are still with you and Gingrich remains a flawed candidate capable of self-destructing at any moment. But another debate where you’re hemming and hawing about your tax returns and not getting into specifics about where the problems are and what you’ll do to fix them if elected, and I’m afraid you’re in for more than a bloody nose.

Another debate, another debate without any question about the biggest issue facing the United States of America today: the fact that we’re awash in debt to the tune of $15 trillion - that’s $15,033,607,255,920.32 as of two months ago. I myself don’t understand it, but evidently the mainstream dino-media elites think that money grows on trees, or that it’s not really a problem. Of course, when you spend all your waking moments inside the Beltway or in New York City, it’s easy to think the federal government can just go on and on and on printing money and the Federal Reserve and China buying up our debt as we kick the can further and further down the road to total economic collapse.

Certainly, Newt Gingrich’s prior marital problems trump anything like that when it comes to presidential politics!

But I digress.

While tonight’s debate was just as entertaining as Fox News’ Monday night affair, it continues to amaze how, nearly eight months after the first GOP debate (has it been that long?) the same questions are still being asked over and over: immigration, abortion, Obamacare. Not that these aren’t important in and of themselves, but this is all well-trampled ground by now. There were no questions about the federal deficit, no questions about the candidates’ plans to cut the size of the federal government, no questions about trade, no questions about energy independence (how Obama’s rejection of the Keystone pipeline wasn’t brought up as an issues astounds, but then again we are talking about the Clinton News Network).

Still, as good as all the candidates were - and I believe, by and large, they were all pretty good tonight - there were winners and losers.

1. Ron Paul - I can’t believe I’m wring this, but Paul won the debate by constantly focusing every one his responses, no matter what the question, to the fiscal mess were in and the misguided priorities and policies of this country. I liked his theme that the very cause of personal freedom is something that can bring people of various political and philosophical stripes together. Because of his continued focus on the gravity of our fiscal house, he’s a winner in my eyes.

2. Mitt Romney - Not as much of a winner, more of a draw, perhaps, but Romney I think did next best. Why he has such problems answering questions about his taxes is beyond me: you’d think he’s have a ready stock answer that was definitive and forceful by now. Still, he kept the focus of most of his answers on Barack Obama, so he’s more a winner than a loser.

3. Newt Gingrich - Unlike (I’m guessing) most conservatives, I didn’t think Newt was as good tonight as he was on Monday. While he was his usual glib self and had some good answers (especially regarding Obamacare and immigration), he looked and sounded old to me. Too many answers about what he did in the ’70s and ’80s, too much “inside baseball” political talk, and he never responded to Rick Santorum’s comments about why he was tossed out as Speaker only five years after being elected to that position. He might indeed win South Carolina, but he’s going to have a lot of trouble relating to young people and independent voters if he’s the nominee.

4. Rick Santorum - Newly crowned winner of the Iowa caucuses, again, too much talk about his positions and what he did when and where. Hard to tell what his actual positions are. Spent all his ammo on the other candidates (Mitt and Newt in particular) and very little on Barack Obama. Obviously bright and very intense, but it’s always about him and not about who he would be running against in a general election. I know he’s trying to appeal to the conservative base, but I think he’s running out of time and out of votes.

Final analysis: No one really harmed themselves tonight except Santorum. I expect Romney and Newt to virtually tie in South Carolina, with Paul a distant third and Santorum coming in last. Santorum will last until Florida, perhaps Nevada, and then there will be three.