Mitt: gracious and patriotic in defeat provides our unifying theme.

Mitt through in the towel today, an event that certainly no longer qualifies as breaking news. However, the manner in which that towel was tossed was most gracious and patriotic.

Moreover, Mitt gave the most unifying language of the campaign. Indeed, Mitt provided the simple and most significant argument for supporting our nominee, and it certainly looks like that is John McCain.

I disagree with Senator McCain on a number of issues, as you know. But I agree with him on doing whatever it takes to be successful in Iraq, on finding and executing Osama bin Laden, and on eliminating Al Qaeda and terror. If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.

How very well said. Every single thinking American knows that both Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will essentially surrender to the Islamofacsists and the psychopath terrorists they support. By the way, libs, before you screech about Mitt and I challenging your patriotism you should take a moment to read the military definition of defeat. In fact, you might find a little Clauswitz enlightening.

Mitt has done nothing more than give voice the message that America might not want to hear, but most assuredly must hear. In doing so he has served himself, his party and his country well.

Hillary’s Broke?

The headlines scream REPORT: Some Clinton Senior Staff Working Without Pay, Including Campaign Manager... HILLARY LOANS CAMPAIGN $5M “

Is it true? How could the most prepared and politically brilliant team in American history, Billary, be out of money by Super Tuesday?

The last time the Clintons were in “the political fight of their lives” they looked to the West, far across the vast Pacific for the life saving money (Robert Rubin learned to sell American assets from the best of them, after all). With Norman Tsu already in the bag, so to speak, what next?

Keep your eyes peeled for a sudden and dramatic increase in Buddhist monks in a town near you.

Could the Munchkin choir be preparing to sing the final number?

Diversity?

One of the most perplexing of liberal concepts is diversity. No one, including the liberals who intone the word like the priests of Sennacherib, can precisely define the liberal, PC meaning of “diversity”.

We do know that Iowa is subjected to a constant stream of criticism that our first in the nation Presidential status is unfair because we here in Iowa lack sufficient diversity. In that sense, it is pretty clear that “diversity” is code for “too white” which, in turn, means that the racism that liberals believe universally inheres in all white people, would prevent candidates of “color” from a fair hearing in the states that lack diversity.

Well, the first serious black candidate has now won Iowa, North Dakota, Idaho, Colorado, Minnesota and, of course the very whitest of states, Utah. Several of those very white states were won in landslides by that black candidate.

Another liberal myth collides with reality.

It may be even closer than we think.

If exit polls are accurate, and God knows, they frequently are not, Senator McCain’s victory today may be less overwhelming than it looked even earlier today.

It is possible that the Super Tuesday breakdown may look more like:

McCain-462
Romney-252
Huckabee-225
Paul-22
Uncommitted-26

Is so, tomorrow morning the overall totals would look about like:

McCain-573
Romney-346
Huckabee-254
Paul-28

The foregoing scenario assumes a strong Huckabee southern showing and a strong Romney outing in California. The results are now only a few hours away.

Breaking News-First Blood: Huck wins West Virginia

Just out-Gov. Mike Huckabee wins all 18 delegates at today’s West Virginia Nominating Convention. Congratulations to Huck.

Much more to come.

Super Tuesday-will it be “super” inconclusive?

Super Tuesday is upon us. About 24 states are either picking national delegates or, at least, starting the process today. The principle behind this, the longest primary day, was much like the Longest Day itself: create a decisive victory in a single great 24 hour battle. But how the best laid plans go awry.

TRS has consistently predicted that today will be inconclusive in both parties. Ironically, when we Republicans had four or five candidates within spitting distance of each other the conventional wisdom projected an almost irrelevant Super Tuesday. Like most pundits, TRS thought Super Tuesday’s delegates would splinter among several Republicans. Now it looks like a three way split with Mac finishing the day around 650-750 delegates, hundreds ahead of Mitt and Huck but still hundreds short of the nomination. Such a result puts Johnny Mac in a strong but not yet victorious position. It‘s kind of like Iraq, the process of victory is ongoing but victory not yet achieved. Mac’s lead may be sufficiently large to scare Mitt and Huck into surrender but neither has shown much interest inclination toward surrender.

With California now really in play our race has the potential to get closer than the conventional wisdom expressed above. The latest changes in the voters’ mood makes the Democrat race much closer, closer than Sunday’s Super Bowl to be sure. If Obama wins California going away the Wednesday morning delegate count could see the Drama of Obama and Evita separated by no more than a few dozen to maybe 100 committed delegates. Since the Democrats don’t use winner take all, close finishes in large states make a decisive day unlikely.

The Democrats, now only a two candidate race now openly expect an inconclusive result. .With big states like Texas and Ohio yet to vote the ultimate Democrat nominee won’t be known until, at the earliest, next month. Good for us, bad for them it seems.

Share your thoughts over this long night tonight.

The bottle tax-why?

As many recall, Gov. Culver has called for a doubling of the deposit on existing containers and a dramatic increase in the types of containers to which the doubled deposit applies as a means of increasing tax revenue. This deposit is, at least in part, a tax.

The particular tax will, of course, be extremely regressive and will impact the very poorest in society. Of course, the increased cost of handling will necessarily result in higher retail prices for bottled products. The higher prices will, of course, hit the poorest hard as well.

Again, this isn’t the worst or most expensive of the Democrats’ unwarranted penetration of the body politic but it is just another example of the corners in which they will look to fund their bureaucratic, corrupt and inefficient nanny state.

So ask yourself why Democrats need an ever increasing share of Iowans hard earned money and when will they have enough?

Trail of tears………Hillary’s road to the White House

Yes, when she’s in trouble that strong, independent woman Hillary Clinton weeps. Just as she did in the days leading up to her narrow win in New Hampshire, Hillary is again showing her “softer” side by weeping.

Such emotion seems entirely at odds with the woman who ordered the Clinton private thugs to trash the Travel Office employees or the woman or ordered the IRS audits intimidate Bill’s girl friends.

Yet here it is, Hillary at her best. Just like Hillary’s popularity soared during Bill’s most outlandish of behavior, just as she wept (for herself, of course) before New Hampshire she is again using her gender, and in a most unflattering way.

Should the President be best known for having been a victim of some shrewder, stronger person?

The Democrats-a new poll.

If, as now appears almost inevitable, John McCain is our nominee then the next popular question is the weaker Democrat opponent for John McCain to face.

So, we have a new poll today. So which Dem gives us the best chance to win. Let us know.

Mac & Huck & the friendly ghost of Rudy-the team becomes more apparent.

TRS watched and compared John McCain’s “Face the Nation” appearance this morning with Mike Huckabee’s on the Canis Lupus’ “Late Edition”. It certainly appears that we are watching the birth of the 2008 ticket.

As expected, both candidates subjected the suggestion that Huck drop out of the race to complete derision. Both Huck and Mac delivered hard and rather personal attacks on Mitt; both Huck and Mac emphasized the inconsistency in Mitt’s positions. In a very powerful attack, Huck built off Mitt’s Peterine denial of the Reagan/Bush legacy back in Mitt’s ’94 Senate Campaign against Edward Kennedy, and said that both he and Mac were in the “church long before” Mitt joined and started signing louder than everyone else.

Mac sounded highly conciliatory toward the social and fiscal wings of the party that don’t entirely trust the author of McCain Feingold or the Gang of 14’ Coach and General Manager. To a certain extent Johnny Mac’s very personal rivalry with George W might have caused an aberration from Mac’s previously more conservative behavior. Mac’s brief references, both direct and oblique, were quite respectful, providing a sharp contrast to outright assaults on Mitt.

Huck also pointed to several differences between he and John McCain but refused to call Mac a liberal. Huck sounded respectful and conciliatory without pandering or surrendering his own positions to the “front runner”. Back in 1980, Poppy Bush followed the same road to the Naval Observatory Mansion once Dutch pulled out to a big lead. I’m sure the ideological irony isn’t lost on the reader.

Rudy’s sudden disappearance has made a huge difference in the Republican dynamic. Mac’s huge lead in the big Northeastern winner take all states is probably insurmountable. Huck’s strength in the Southern states, also with large delegations, is less significant because so many such states are not winter take all. Mitt and Mac will both get delegates in Arkansas, both Huck and Mac will have delegates in Massachusetts but Mac gets all 53 of Arizona’s winner-take-all primary.
Without Rudy to split the security vote Mac gains a huge advantage in the Super Tuesday delegate count. While Rudy could have hung on to broker a convention deal, it appears that such a deal has probably already been made. Rudy’s support should significantly widen Mac’s delegate lead and, in the end, that’s the only count that really matters. The delegate lead, however, might not be sufficient to ensure the nomination.

In the meantime, both Huck and Mitt can pick up to a couple hundred delegates on Super Tuesday. Each of areas of strength, and Mitt is very solid in some big delegation states. Huck has a large share of the Southern vote and most of the Southern states produce proportional delegations.

Since Super Tuesday stands to settle nothing in the Democrat fold, Mac has a strong incentive to cut a deal to secure the nomination early so that we can focus on the liberal recipe for disaster. Nothing in the personal dynamic between Mitt and Mac suggest any possible close alliance. Mike Huckabee seems to be the logical choice.

A campaign team of McCain and Huckabee looks pretty formidable going into Super Tuesday. That ticket may look like reality by around midnight February 6.

Downs Syndrome and al Qaeda-this is what victory looks like.

Whenever you listen to Democrats and their liberal press allies blather about negotiating with the terrorists and the totalitarian Islamic states like Iran and Syria that support them you should remember the following story.

The most recent major bombing in Iraq, and thank God that we didn’t listen to the defeatists and appeasers last year so that such mass casualty bombings are now indeed rare in Iraq, was perpetrated by al Qaeda through the employment of severely disabled Downs Syndrome afflicted young women.

The significance of the use of such utterly vile methods of warfare by the terror enemy in Iraq proves a couple of very important points, points that have been lost in the run up to the Super Bowl and Super Tuesday.

The bombings show that we are well down the road to victory in Iraq. Rather than the United States facing certain battlefield defeat our enemy has so few forces that the enemies’ most dangerous weapon, the suicide bomber, is becoming increasingly unavailable to them. Where hundreds used to volunteer, there are now almost none. No longer able to recruit, or dupe, persons of normal IQ for self immolation, al Qaeda has now resorted to the use of the mentally disabled for suicide duty. Compare this to the hundreds of thousands of Japanese soldiers, sailors and airmen for Kamikaze duty right up to the closing days of WW2 and you will obtain some perspective as to al Qaeda’s weakness.

Moreover, the Jihadists’ use of the mentally disabled further highlights it’s lack of true lack of popular support across the larger Islamic world. Where are the thousands of Jihadist taking the streets across the Islamic world to express solidarity with the suicide bombers and restoration of purely sacred 7th Century Sharia law? The Arab street did not rise, as the American liberals predicted, upon the invasion of either Afghanistan or Iraq. The Jihad has failed to gain a level of popular support to gain control of any legitimate government through anything like legitimate means. Now the flow of Jihadists into Iraq and Afghanistan has slowed to a trickle.

Finally, by violating every norm regarding noncombatants the Islamic terrorists have again provided insight into the savagery that is in store for us if they ever get to the United States. So as unpleasant as is war itself, is it more unpleasant than Downs Syndrome children being used as the bearers of remotely detonated suicide bombs?

Just something to ponder the next time Barack or Hillary describe their plans to surrender Iraq and “resolve” Afghanistan.