The Patriot Post® · Chronicle

The Foundation

“The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.” –James Madison

Editorial Exegesis

“Rick Santorum dropped out of the Republican Presidential race Tuesday, having enhanced his political reputation and forced Mitt Romney to become a better candidate. Not bad for someone who few beyond his own family gave much of a chance of getting past Iowa, much less to April. Mr. Santorum outlasted everyone who was thought to be Mr. Romney’s main competition to become the chief conservative alternative. He did so in large part with a forthright appeal to religious conservatives that was both a strength and weakness. … Mr. Santorum nonetheless deserves credit for making Mr. Romney lift his performance and improve his platform. Mr. Santorum’s overarching theme of restoring American freedom had more resonance than Mr. Romney’s recitation of his resume, and the likely GOP nominee has since picked up some of Mr. Santorum’s words if not the music. The Pennsylvanian was also by far the most effective Republican critic of RomneyCare. When he stood on stage in a debate and took apart the Massachusetts health law as a prototype for ObamaCare, Mr. Romney realized he couldn’t coast to the nomination. That’s when the former Massachusetts Governor came out with his own tax cut and tax reform plan to appeal to economic conservatives. … Among the major candidates, Mr. Santorum ran the least negative campaign, and by leaving now he will let Mr. Romney focus his attention and monetary resources on Mr. Obama. Mr. Santorum also departs before the April 24 Pennsylvania primary, where a defeat in his home state would have tarnished his 2012 achievement. There are no consolation prizes in Presidential politics, but if Mr. Romney does win in November, Mr. Santorum’s strong run will be part of the victory story.” –The Wall Street Journal

Share your thoughts on the GOP primary.

Upright

“Santorum’s withdrawal from the campaign was a paradox: He had done too well to stay in any longer. … It is possible that no serious candidate for President ever did more with less – less personality, less money, a more narrow message – than Santorum. … Here’s where I think the campaign between Romney and Obama will be decided: Who has the ability to guide the nation through the next coming worldwide economic downturn. If Americans think that class warfare is the right approach, then Barack Obama will be re-elected. If, on the other hand, Americans believe that expanding opportunities to succeed is the best way forward, then Mitt Romney will be sworn in on January 20, 2013. In mid-April, it’s too close to call.” –columnist Rich Galen

“Romney needs to make the case that current policy … is leading to a crash in which government will fail to keep its promises. He needs to argue that his ‘opportunity society’ means vibrant economic growth that can provide, in ways that can’t be precisely predicted, opportunities in which young people can find work that draws on their special talents and interests. Obama’s policies, in contrast, treat individuals as just one cog in a very large machine, designed by supposed experts who don’t seem to know what they’re doing. … Romney, potentially strong with the affluent, needs to figure out how to get through to the young.” –political analyst Michael Barone

“Sixty-one percent of debt issued by the Treasury is bought by the Federal Reserve – which is to say the left hand of the U.S. Government is lending money to the right hand of the US Government. … Nonetheless, in a land where every mewling babe in the American nursery is born with a debt burden of just under $200,000, the president brags that only his party is ‘compassionate’ to have no plan whatsoever even to attempt to do anything about this, no way, no how, not now, not ever.” –columnist Mark Steyn

“I am instinctively skeptical whenever self-proclaimed environmentalists start pontificating. In part, this is because everyone has an incentive to exaggerate. The business community will always say that a new regulation imposes astronomically high costs, while environmentalists will claim minimal costs and say that thousands of premature deaths will be averted. Since exaggeration is omnipresent in Washington, that’s not what really bothers me. My main problem with environmentalists is that they want to use so-called green issues to give government more power. And if you oppose them, you’re an evil person.” –Cato Institute’s Daniel J. Mitchell

“Last week, President Obama warned that if the Supreme Court stops Congress from forcing Americans to buy government-approved health insurance, it will be imposing restrictions on federal power of a sort not seen since the early 1930s, the late 1920s, 1905 or 1789. … The main point is that Republicans, who want the court to overturn the health insurance mandate, are trying to undo the New Deal. Obama made a similar claim regarding the House Budget Committee’s recently unveiled fiscal plan, which he called ‘thinly veiled social Darwinism,’ ‘an attempt to impose a radical vision on our country’ and ‘antithetical to our entire history.’ In truth, however, neither the constitutional constraints nor the budgetary tinkering advocated by the Republicans would make the federal government any smaller than it is now. I wish they were half as radical as the president portrays them.” –columnist Jacob Sullum

Insight

“One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” –economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006)

“I have no respect for the passion of equality, which seems to me merely idealizing envy – I don’t disparage envy but I don’t accept it as legitimately my master.” –Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (1841-1935)

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The Demo-gogues

The BIG Lies: “So these investments – in things like education and research and health care – they haven’t been made as some grand scheme to redistribute wealth from one group to another. This is not some socialist dream.” –Barack Obama (For the record, here’s what he had to say in 2008: “I think when you spread the wealth around, it’s good for everybody.”)

“I have never been somebody who believes government can or should try to solve every problem.” –Barack Obama

“I’m a firm believer that whether you’re a Democrat or a Republican, that you’re a patriot, you care about this country, you love this country. And so I’m not somebody who, when we’re in a political contest, suggests somehow that one side or the other has a monopoly on love of country. … [M]y vision … the Democratic vision is one that says that free market is the key to economic growth; that we don’t need to build government just for the sake of expanding its reach.” –Barack Obama

Envy-based politics: “You know, some of the people who, I guess, believe that the way to get this economy going is reduce taxes on the wealthiest people make that argument, but there’s no class warfare involved. It’s a question simply of fairness. And the bottom line is most wealthy people I talk to say yes, I shouldn’t pay a lower rate than somebody who’s my secretary. Some … say I don’t want to pay any taxes. But they’re a small group, they have disproportionate influence, obviously, with the Super PACs.” –Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY)

Pitiful attack: “[W]hat’s really bothersome to me … is that it almost seems like my Republican colleagues in Congress and Mitt Romney are rooting for economic failure. I mean, they’ve been hyper-focused on one job, Barack Obama’s, for really the last two years. And we all need to be pulling together to focus on moving the economy forward for the middle class and for working families.” –DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL)

Global warmism: “It’s your money or your life. We are either going to dedicate ourselves to a cleaner, more livable planet and accept the initial investment necessary or we’re going to pay a heavier price in terms of loss of human life, damage and costs associated with it.” –Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) arguing that we should all drive hybrid cars to save the planet in response to the recent tornadoes around Dallas, TX. (Interesting that he used the language of a stick-up to advocate leftist climate policies…)

Dezinformatsia

Race bait: “[L]let’s don’t forget that race will be a factor in this presidential campaign. Yes, the country can feel good about [the fact] we elected a person of color, which I did not expect to see in my lifetime, but race will be a factor in this.” –Dan Rather, who works for some backwater cable channel

“Historically, after a surge in black power there is a retort, a reassertion of white power. … Now in the wake of the rise of Obama, we see the power structure responding by continuing to implement voter ID laws tailored to functionally disenfranchise poor blacks. We see an increase in violent crimes that target blacks but not specific blacks, any black person will do. … The anxiety about Obama’s success has led to many reactions, most of them not physical but still emotionally violent.” –Time magazine contributor Touré

Say what? “[Republicans are] happy to have [Obama] involved in using his labor to build the White House, but for him to win an election and live in the White House? That’s just not acceptable.” –MSNBC’s Martin Bashir

Fairly imbalanced: “Should an MSNBC anchor be moderating a White House event and talking about celebrating what the administration has accomplished?” –CNN’s Howard Kurtz

Sympathy: “President Obama [was] elected to repair the economy, get us out of two wars … repair equality divides in this country and also heal a racial divide. Is it just too much to ask from one president?” –MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts

Newspulper Headlines:

We Blame Global Warming: “Mild Winter May Have Artificially Inflated Jobs Data, Economists Fear” –The Washington Post

We Blame George W. Bush: “Biden Blames Fracking for Earthquakes” –The Washington Times

Biden to Remain on Ticket: “Original ‘Dumb & Dumber’ Duo Signed On for Sequel” –MSNBC.com

Longest Books Ever Written: “The President’s Abysmal Record” –Commentary website

Questions Nobody Is Asking: “Will the Media Be More Fair in ‘12 Election?” –Commentary website

Bottom Story of the Day: “Healthy Polar Bear Count Confounds Doomsayers” –Globe and Mail (Toronto)

(Thanks to The Wall Street Journal’s James Taranto)

Village Idiots

More race bait: “Everything [Obama] does is subject to a different lens and seen through a microscope that really tends to pick him apart. I think it’s indivisible from the broader issue of his race, of his being a black man with a certain kind of authority. These are impolite things we don’t want to talk about. We think that they’re being extraordinary ratcheted up. But I don’t see any other way to explain it but a remarkable resistance to the integrity of this man that has no other explanation.” –Georgetown University professor Michael Eric Dyson

Racial healing: “Time to get booted up and suited up for this race war we’re in, the things that are about to happen to these crackers, these honkeys. … We gotta go do it, we have to cross the Red Sea, not some sea in the Middle East part of the world, we’re talking about some blood – go through some blood, some battles. There are those who wish they could stand in this hour to see the destruction of the devil’s world, not some dude under the ground with a pitchfork, I’m talking about blond-haired, blue-eyed sometimes brown-eyed Caucasian.” –threat from the “New” Black Panthers

Power grab: “As High Commissioner for Human Rights, I call for an immediate investigation [into the shooting involving Trayvon Martin]. Justice must be done for the victim. It’s not just this individual case. It calls into question the delivery of justice in all situations like this.” –UN Human Rights chief Navi Pillay (For the record, the UN Commission on Human Rights includes such paragons of virtue as China, Cuba, Libya and Saudia Arabia.)

Non Compos Mentis: “I love Fidel Castro. I respect Fidel Castro. You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that motherf—-r is still here.” –Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen, who later apologized but was suspended anyway

Left theology: “[W]hy was [Jesus] killed? Because He fought and He occupied the corrupt temple.” –“Reverend” Jesse Jackson attempting to compare Jesus to Occupy Wall Street

Short Cuts

“President Obama just hosted a Passover Seder at the White House. And this year he celebrated Passover as he always does: by Passing over policies that support Israel.” –NewsBusted’s Jodi Miller

“President Obama challenged the Supreme Court’s authority to overturn a law passed by Congress. He decided to backtrack the next day. President Obama’s threat to take over the Supreme Court fizzled when he found out the government already owns it. –comedian Argus Hamilton

"Keith Olbermann is suing his former employer, Current TV, for $70 million. That comes out to $10 million per viewer.” –comedian Jay Leno

“President Obama’s reelection campaign store is now selling 'Obama Baby Bibs.’ Seems appropriate, since he’s always trying to shove stuff down our throats that we won’t swallow.” –Fred Thompson

Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus et Fidelis!
Nate Jackson for The Patriot Post Editorial Team