Week in Review Part IV: Random Musings

Jan. 31 – Florida

Feb. 4 – Nevada and Maine caucuses
Feb. 7 – Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri caucuses
Feb. 28 – Arizona and Michigan
Mar. 6 – Super Tuesday! Georgia, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Vermont, Virginia; Caucuses: Alaska, Idaho, and North Dakota

South Carolina

A week before the South Carolina primary, as I noted last time an NBC/Marist survey had Mitt Romney ahead of Newt Gingrich 34 to 24 percent, with Ron Paul at 16 and Rick Santorum at 14.

That was before the state’s two big debates. The final result:

Gingrich 40
Romney 28
Santorum 17
Paul 13

A stunning turnaround for Gingrich. Exit polls showed 53% of voters made up their mind in the last few days. 70% described themselves as somewhat/very conservative and 43% of these went for Gingrich. Gingrich received 40% of the Tea Party/Evangelical vote.

On to Florida…a few days ago in this incredibly fluid race:

Rasmussen Poll
Gingrich 41
Romney 32

[2 weeks earlier, Romney was up by 22 in the same survey.]

But on Thursday, Rasmussen:

Romney 39
Gingrich 31
Santorum 12

A Monmouth University survey in Florida end of the week:

Romney 39
Gingrich 32
Santorum 11

CNN/Time/ORC poll in Florida:

Romney 36
Gingrich 34
Santorum 11
Paul 9

[On Sunday, the same poll had Gingrich leading Romney 38-32, the bump from South Carolina the day before, but it was 38-29, Romney, among those surveyed on Monday and Tuesday.]

Quinnipiac poll…taken Jan. 24-26:

Romney 38
Gingrich 29

From a Suffolk University poll in Florida among alllikely voters (Rep., Dem., Ind.):

Gingrich holds a 29% favorable rating, 58% unfavorable statewide. Romney’s favorable came in at 44% vs. 37% unfavorable. The split among independents for Romney was 37-36, while Gingrich only received a 19% favorable rating among the same group with 70% unfavorable.

Rasmussen, nationwide:

Gingrich 35
Romney 28
Santorum 16
Paul 10

[A week earlier it was 30-27 Romney.]

Gallup, national:

Jan. 15…37-14 Romney
Jan. 22…29-28 Romney
NBC/Wall Street Journal, national:
Gingrich 37
Romney 28
Santorum 18
Paul 12
Obama over Romney, 49-43
Obama over Gingrich, 55-37
Rich Lowry / New York Post…Sunday, Jan. 22

“If Romney can’t right himself and Gingrich goes on to win Florida, every major elected Republican in the country will panic. Every unlikely scenario to get another candidate in the race will be explored. Because whatever GOP primary voters in South Carolina think about his electability, Gingrich is currently radioactive among the general public.

“Who knows how it will turn out? All we know is that Newt Gingrich will keep talking.”

Bret Stephens / Wall Street Journal

“Let’s just say right now what voters will be saying in November, once Barack Obama has been re-elected: Republicans deserve to lose.

“It doesn’t matter that Mr. Obama can’t get the economy out of second gear. It doesn’t matter that he cynically betrayed his core promise as a candidate to be a unifying president. It doesn’t matter that he keeps blaming Bush. It doesn’t matter that he thinks ATMs are weapons of employment destruction. It doesn’t matter that Tim Geithner remains secretary of Treasury. It doesn’t matter that the result of his ‘reset’ with Russia is Moscow selling fighter jets to Damascus. It doesn’t matter that the Obama name is synonymous with the most unpopular law in memory. It doesn’t matter that his wife thinks America doesn’t deserve him. It doesn’t matter that the Evel Knievel theory of fiscal stimulus isn’t going to make it over the Snake River Canyon of debt.

“Above all, it doesn’t matter that Americans are generally eager to send Mr. Obama packing. All they need is to be reasonably sure that the alternative won’t be another fiasco. But they can’t be reasonably sure, so it’s going to be four more years of the disappointment you already know.

“As for the current GOP field, it’s like confronting a terminal diagnosis. There may be an apparent range of treatments: conventional (Romney), experimental (Gingrich), homeopathic (Paul) or prayerful (Santorum). But none will avail you in the end. Just try to exit laughing….

“Finally, there are the men not in the field: Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Chris Christie, Jeb Bush, Haley Barbour. This was the GOP A-Team, the guys who should have showed up to the first debate but didn’t because running for president is hard and the spouses were reluctant. Nothing commends them for it. If this election is as important as they all say it is, they had a duty to step up. Abraham Lincoln did not shy from the contest of 1860 because of Mary Todd. If Mr. Obama wins in November – or, rather, when he does – the failure will lie as heavily on their shoulders as it will with the nominee.”

Hear hear!

Michael Gerson / Washington Post

“Gingrich is more than a performer. He is the GOP’s chief diagnostician, specializing in the vivid explanation of public challenges. Other candidates struggle to recall three points on a 3-by-5 card. Gingrich struggles to suppress the dissertation that might emerge at any moment. The ability to think in public is a rare political gift – more common in Britain than in America. Bill Clinton would shine during prime minister’s question time. So would Gingrich.

“But Gingrich regularly gets into trouble when moving from analysis to prescription. Nearly every problem that crosses the threshold of his attention becomes historically urgent, requiring a fundamental solution. This is the reason for his most revealing verbal habit. Systems are ‘fundamentally broken’ and require ‘fundamental change.’ Opposing views are ‘fundamentally a lie’ and ‘fundamentally alien to American tradition.’ Only the biggest ideas are sufficient to his self-regard….

“Currently many conservatives are exercising not just their franchise but their imaginations. They picture a debate between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama, and they yawn. They envision Gingrich going after the president, the media and the fundamental failures of liberalism – and their pulses race.

“But Republicans need to imagine just a little further – electing a president with no history of prudence.”

I wrote the following 5/28/11:

“Well, let’s see. I think it was last fall that I first listed my three personal favorites in the race for the Republican presidential nomination; Mitch Daniels, John Thune and Haley Barbour. Doh! I was bummed to see Gov. Daniels make it 3 for 3 on the losing end when he dropped out last weekend, saying:

“ ‘In the end, I was able to resolve every competing consideration but one, but that, the interests and wishes of my family, is the most important consideration of all. If I have disappointed you, I will always be sorry.’

“Damn right you disappointed me, Governor. You’ve left us elephants with a pathetic lineup. You should have abandoned your family for the duration of the race and let them fend for themselves.

“Just kidding, folks!”

I wish I hadn’t added that last line. As Bret Stephens alludes to above, Daniels should have told his wife to, you know…stick it. After all, she left him at first, for another man in California… and stuck him with the kids. He’d be a terrific candidate, as many of you saw on Tuesday night.

[Daniels issued a statement after he announced he wasn’t running for president last May that what I just wrote isn’t the truth. As best I know, however, it is. He’s a good guy. He’s trying to protect his wife from the press. But the country needs him. She can get over it.]

Robert Schlesinger / U.S. News Weekly

“The Cook Political Report lists 10 states, with 142 electoral votes, as toss-ups. In that group, with 73 total electoral votes, are four states…where first-term Republican governors are foundering in the polls after their excessive policies spurred the kind of grass-roots movements that can be a huge boon to a presidential campaign.”

Schlesinger’s piece is titled “The Four Governors of the GOP Apocalypse”:

Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, facing a recall; Michigan’s Rick Snyder; Ohio’s John Kasich; and Florida’s Rick Scott. All have abysmal approval ratings.

Charles Krauthammer / Washington Post

“Once upon a time, small ball was not Barack Obama’s game. Tuesday, it was the essence of his State of the Union address. The visionary of 2008 – purveyor of hope and change, healer of the earth, tamer of the rising seas – offered an hour of little things: tax-code tweaks to encourage this or that kind of behavior (manufacturing being the flavor of the day), little watchdog agencies to round up Wall Street miscreants and Chinese DVD pirates, even a presidential demand ‘that all students stay in high school until they graduate or turn 18.’ Under penalty of what? Jail? The self-proclaimed transformer of America is now playing truant officer?

“It sounded like the Clinton years with their presidentially proclaimed initiatives on midnight basketball and school uniforms. These are the marks of a shrunken presidency, thoroughly flummoxed by high unemployment, economic stagnation, crushing debt – and a glaring absence of ideas.

“Of course, this being Obama, there was a reach for grandeur. Hope and change are long gone. It’s now equality and fairness….

“Which is why Obama introduced a shiny new twist – the Buffett Rule, a minimum 30 percent rate for millionaires. Sounds novel. But it’s a tired replay of the alternative minimum tax, originally created in 1969 to bring to heel all of 155 underpaying fat cats. Following the fate of other such do-goodism, the AMT then metastasized into a $40 billion monster that today entraps millions of middle-class taxpayers….

“This is redistribution for its own sake – the cost be damned. It took Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels about 30 seconds of his State of the Union rebuttal to demolish that idea….

“Tax reform and entitlement reform are the really big ideas. The first produces social equity plus economic efficiency; the second produces social equity plus debt reduction. And yet these are precisely what Obama has for three years steadfastly refused to address. He prefers the easy demagoguery of ‘tax the rich.’”

John Podhoretz / New York Post

“(President Obama concluded the State of the Union) with a deserved salute to the extraordinary work of SEAL Team Six in killing Osama bin Laden. His description of how they did it was gripping – until he decided to claim that it had something to teach us about America:

“ ‘No one built this country on their own. This nation is great because we built it together. This nation is great because we worked as a team. This nation is great because we get each other’s backs.’

“It is a tragedy for this nation that its president believes this. America is great not because it’s a team. America is great because it is a nation whose founding documents elevated the rights of the individual.

“Aside from his poor record, this misunderstanding of the U.S. is Obama’s gravest weakness as a general-election candidate, and the Republicans running for president should take heed and go at it.”

It is truly pathetic that the State of the Union address, Jan. 24, marked 1,000 days since Senate Democrats last approved a federal budget.

Sen. Mark Kirk (R-IL) suffered a stroke and prospects for a full recovery are uncertain. Kirk is only 52. Democrats control the Senate 53-47, including independents Joe Lieberman and Bernie Sanders, who almost always vote with the Democrats.

Arizona Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords decided to resign from her seat and focus on her recovery from last year’s tragic shooting in Tucson. It was a courageous step on her part to do the right thing for her state and district and we all should hope that in 2014 or 2016, she is able to run for elected office again.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced almost 100,000 troops will be cut as part of the Pentagon’s plans for a “smaller, leaner” military. In five years, the Army will drop from a peak of 570,000 to 490,000, and the Marines will be cut from about 200,000 to 182,000. Special forces would receive a greater share of the funding, while Panetta assures us the U.S. will retain the ability to defeat “any enemy on land.”

From Army Times: “The Army reported 278 suicides in the active force, National Guard and Reserve in 2011, a nearly 10 percent decrease from the previous year and the first time those numbers have declined in four years.

“However, within that total, the number of active-duty soldier suicides reached an all-time high of 164, five more than 2010 and two more than 2009….

“Almost 70 percent of the Army’s most seriously wounded soldiers have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress or traumatic brain injury, (Gen. Peter) Chiarelli said.
“In total, more than 126,000 soldiers have been diagnosed with TBI since the beginning of the war – 54 percent of those diagnoses were made in the last four years.
“Since 2003, more than 70,000 soldiers have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress.”

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told State Dept. employees that she will not stay on in the job if Obama wins re-election, saying that after two decades, she is ready to step off “the high wire of American politics.”

Editorial / New York Post

“New Jersey Democrats thought they’d painted Gov. Chris Christie into a corner by demanding that his next two state Supreme Court picks be minorities – after he refused in 2010 to reappoint the court’s lone black justice, John Wallace.

“Surprise, surprise.

“Monday, Christie named Bruce Harris, an openly gay African-American, and Philip Kwon, a Korean immigrant, to the court….

“Along with the historic ethnic and sexual-orientation milestones is another key diversity element: ideological diversity.

“ ‘My expectation is [that] I’ve nominated two justices who understand the appropriate role of the courts in our system of government,’ said the governor.”

Thinking of taking a cruise, even after the Costa Concordia disaster? Eve Conant in Newsweek had a piece on how unprepared the crew might be.

“Former crew of numerous other lines say workers were often too exhausted to pay attention during safety-training sessions, and many didn’t speak enough English to even understand what was being said. Reshma Harilal says that during her eight years as a stateroom attendant with Carnival Cruise Lines, parent company of the ill-fated Concordia, boat-safety drills varied in regularity, and she never once had a native English speaker conduct training. ‘We all got safety training, but even I had difficulty understanding the English of the officers who trained us, who were always Italian with strong accents.’

“Crew members also work 12-to-14-hour days, seven days a week, with minimal time off. ‘Half the ship is working in a state of fatigue,’ says James Walker, a former cruise-industry lawyer who now represents aggrieved crew. ‘All types of safety studies have shown if you’re really exhausted you can be impaired to the point of intoxication.’”

Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York / Wall Street Journal

“Religious freedom is the lifeblood of the American people, the cornerstone of American government. When the Founding Fathers determined that the innate rights of men and women should be enshrined in our Constitution, they so esteemed religious liberty that they made it the first freedom in the Bill of Rights.

“In particular, the Founding Fathers fiercely defended the right of conscience. George Washington himself declared: ‘the conscientious scruples of all men should be treated with great delicacy and tenderness; and it is my wish and desire, that the laws may always be extensively accommodated to them.’ James Madison, a key defender of religious freedom and author of the First Amendment, said: ‘Conscience is the most sacred of all property.’

“Scarcely two weeks ago, in its Hosanna-Tabor decision upholding the right of churches to make ministerial hiring decisions, the Supreme Court unanimously and enthusiastically reaffirmed these longstanding and foundational principles of religious freedom. The court made clear that they include the right of religious institutions to control their internal affairs.

“Yet the Obama administration has veered in the opposite direction. It has refused to exempt religious institutions that serve the common good – including Catholic schools, charities and hospitals – from its sweeping new health-care mandate that requires employers to purchase contraception, including abortion-producing drugs, and sterilization coverage for their employees….

“Coercing religious ministries and citizens to pay directly for actions that violate their teaching is an unprecedented incursion into freedom of conscience.

Organizations fear that this unjust rule will force them to take one horn or the other of an unacceptable dilemma: Stop serving people of all faiths in their ministries – so that they will fall under the narrow exemption – or stop providing health-care coverage to their own employees.

“The Catholic Church defends religious liberty, including freedom of conscience, for everyone. The Amish do not carry health insurance. The government respects their principles. Christian Scientists want to heal by prayer alone, and the new health-care reform law respects that. Quakers and others object to killing even in wartime, and the government respects that principle for conscientious objectors. By its decision, the Obama administration has failed to show the same respect for the consciences of Catholics and others who object to treating pregnancy as a disease.

“This latest erosion of our first freedom should make all Americans pause. When the government tampers with a freedom so fundamental to the life of our nation, one shudders to think what lies ahead.”

Archbishop Dolan will become Cardinal Dolan in February. He is beloved in New York City and his diocese. Just the other day, I was exchanging notes with a reporter for a New York television station and Dolan came up in the course of conversation. In discussing a recent death in the reporter’s family, it was confirmed to me just what a special person the archbishop is.

I’m not the best Catholic in the world these days, and do not agree with my church on many matters, but President Obama has met his match. On the above issue, I’d love to see Dolan take Obama down.

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Pray for the men and women of our armed forces…and all the fallen.

We offer a prayer of thanks for SEAL Team Six, who once again made us so proud this week, this time in Somalia.

God bless America.
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Gold closed at $1740…highest in 8 weeks
Oil, $99.73

Returns for the week 1/23-1/27
Dow Jones -0.5%
S&P 500 +0.1%
S&P MidCap +1.2%
Russell 2000 +1.8%
Nasdaq +1.1%

Returns for the period 1/1/12-1/27/12

Dow Jones +3.6%
S&P 500 +4.7%
S&P MidCap +7.2%
Russell 2000 +7.8%
Nasdaq +8.1%

Bulls 50.0*
Bears 28.7 [Source: Chartcraft / Investors Intelligence]

*In keeping with the recent lack of volatility, the last five bull readings are 50.5, 49.5, 51.1, 50.0, 50.0…I haven’t seen this kind of narrow band in quite a while, if ever.