Morning Jolt - Don’t Play the ‘Might as Well’ Game

NRO Newsletters . . .

Morning Jolt

. . . with Jim Geraghty

March 23, 2012

In This Issue . . .

1. Don't Play the 'Might as Well' Game

2. Per Se Can You See, by the Dawn's Early Light

3. Prepare Yourself for the Occupy Strike!

4. Addendum

Happy Friday!

Enjoy.

Jim

1. Don't Play the 'Might as Well' Game

Oh, Rick. Rick, Rick, Rick. As they say on ESPN, "Come on, man!"

Our Katrina Trinko spotlights a comment by Rick Santorum to NBC News reporters:

Rick Santorum today suggested it would be better to stick with President Obama over a candidate that might be "the Etch A Sketch candidate of the future" -- a shot at chief rival Mitt Romney.

"You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision for our country, not someone who's just going to be a little different than the person in there," said Santorum. "If you're going to be a little different, we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk with what may be the etch a sketch candidate of the future."

In response, Mitt Romney issued a statement criticizing Santorum.

"I am in this race to defeat Barack Obama and restore America's promise," Romney said. "I was disappointed to hear that Rick Santorum would rather have Barack Obama as president than a Republican. This election is more important than any one person. It is about the future of America.

"Any of the Republicans running would be better than President Obama and his record of failure," he added.

Whom does this statement help? For starters, does Santorum really believe it? Are we really to believe that if, as it appears likely at this point, Mitt Romney is the GOP nominee, Rick Santorum would not vote, leave the ballot blank, or vote for some third-party candidate? (We know he won't be voting Libertarian.) Really? You want to lead the Republican party, but you won't commit to supporting the party's nominee in November if it's not you?

"Take a risk with the Etch A Sketch candidate of the future"? Just how risky does he think a second term of Obama would be?

There's something that's been bugging me about the Etch A Sketch metaphor that allegedly wounds Romney so badly. The central feature of the Etch A Sketch is its impermanence: It displays an image of something, and the image disappears once shaken. But the criticism of impermanence is different from the criticism implied by, say, "a wolf in sheep's clothing." There, the charge is that a candidate appears to be one thing, but is another thing entirely. The candidate cannot be the sheep because his true nature is that of the wolf. But an Etch A Sketch displays whatever you want it to display. Sure, if it displays something you like, you shouldn't grow attached to it, because after a few shakes it will be gone. But that also applies to the images you don't like. Calling Romney an Etch A Sketch is comparing him to the weather in Chicago: If you don't like it, just wait, because it will change quickly. In this metaphor, a President Romney would please conservatives, then displease them, then please them, then displease them, etc. That's not something terribly appealing, but it's also not what we're getting right now from our current president. Right now we're getting a seemingly endless cavalcade of outrages, insults, excuses, sneers, and rounds of golf.

None of this is to say it's really good for a candidate to be compared to an Etch A Sketch. But it feels as if some political observers are reacting as if it's the most devastating comparison ever when it really isn't. I mean, you could say every Etch A Sketch image comes with an expiration date or something. The idea of political figures doing what's expedient is . . . not exactly unprecedented.

(Oh, one other wrinkle in this comparison? Almost everybody loves the Etch A Sketch. Almost everybody remembers it, almost everybody had one, and almost everybody laughs at how hard it was to draw anything with just horizontal and vertical lines. Why do you think the stock jumped? Nostalgia.)

How far out was this statement? Well, exhibit A:

Newt Gingrich: "Rick Santorum is dead wrong. Any GOP nominee will be better than Obama."

Albert Martinez: "Recap: Jeb Bush & DeMint are excited about Romney being the nominee. Rick Santorum is okay [with] Obama being President."

Having said all that, Ace from Ace of Spades yawns:

Big deal?

I don't think so, really. I think people overestimate the precision with which people speak (when it's in their partisan interests to pick over those words).

I thought the same thing with that idiot Eric Felcherson (or whatever his name is) and his "Etch A Sketch" remark, and I don't think Santorum's speaking precisely or rigorously here.

You know, sometimes -- most times -- people are just runnin' their mouths.

When I speak I know the general point I'm making and I know the next three or four words that will be tumblin' out of my word-hole. Beyond three or four words, no idea. It's all improvised, baby.

2. Per Se Can You See, by the Dawn's Early Light

Per se what?

"Obviously, we wish Solyndra hadn't gone bankrupt," Obama said. "But understand: This was not our program per se."

"Congress -- Democrats and Republicans -- put together a loan guarantee program because they understood historically that when you get new industries, it's easy to raise money for start-ups, but if you want to take them to scale, oftentimes there's a lot of risk involved, and what the loan guarantee program was designed to do was to help start up companies get to scale," he said.

Guy Benson goes to town on the latest round of excuses:

It is true that "Republicans and Democrats" approved a green energy loan guarantee program. But "Republicans and Democrats" did not approve this loan guarantee program. As FactCheck.org reminds us, the program under which Solyndra was handed $500 million in taxpayer money was authorized in the Obama/Reid/Pelosi partisan "stimulus" bill of 2009. Zero House Republicans voted for that law. Also, a previous Solyndra loan application was explicitly rejected by Bush-era actuaries because of its inherent soundness problems. Some of Obama's bookkeepers continued to warn against its approval, but they were overruled by the White House political team because the president's allies were determined to make the company the "poster child" of his green vision. That's also why Obama ignored internal worries and held a big presidential photo-op at Solyndra's (now-defunct) factory. The list goes on: Obama DOE officials sat in on Solyndra board meetings. One of Solyndra's top investors, George Kaiser -- who just happened to be a major Obama campaign donor -- also just happened to make a flurry of White House visits right before the doomed loan was given the thumbs-up. Kaiser and the White House claimed they didn't discuss Solyndra during those meetings. They lied. We also know that even after Solyndra defaulted on its initial loan, Obama's Energy Department conveniently restructured the loan terms, assuring that investors like George Kaiser would be first in line to get paid if (when) the company went belly-up. Obama owns this mess, and he knows it. But he's obfuscating and dissembling to save his own skin.

Obama 2012: Because nothing is ever his fault.

Through much of 2004, we saw reporters repeatedly asking President Bush what mistakes he had made as president. We know what those reporters wanted or expected to hear: some variation of "I shouldn't have invaded Iraq" or "I should have done something differently before 9/11" -- perfect fodder for John Kerry's attack ads. It's a no-win situation, because every president makes mistakes -- almost all of them make big ones at some point -- and an honest answer invites the opposition to make hay. Shortly before departing office, Bush felt comfortable discussing decisions he regretted and areas of disappointment.

Will we see reporters asking President Obama for his biggest mistake of his first term? Will Obama tap-dance around that? Because right now, he comes across as a man who doesn't really believe he's made any mistakes in this first term. And you thought Steven Chu was an easy grader.

3. Prepare Yourself for the Occupy Strike!

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha:

Occupy Wall Street, largely forgotten over the last few months, aims to make a comeback from this winter's hibernation with an ambitious plan: a crippling May Day "general strike" in the tradition of 1930s radicalism.

The grand promise is what one occupier, Brendan Burke, described to BuzzFeed as "a day without the 99%." But in the city where the movement was born, it's already suffering from what has emerged as one of Occupy's signal weaknesses, the lack of ability or interest to make alliances with liberal institutions. Despite public solidarity, there's little relationship between the Occupy movement and organized labor. And as a result, even the most progressive New York labor leaders say their members will not participate in the May 1 strike."

Jim Treacher:

Whoa, what's with the down-twinkles, you guys? Let not an iota of doubt enter your minds or facsimile thereof. This general strike is gonna be awesome! This time, your methods of getting what you want are really going to produce results. This time, those 99% fatcats won't know what hit 'em. This time, you're really gonna show Mom and Dad.

Especially Dad.

"Occupy, the people who have no jobs, have announced they're going to take a break from not working and go on strike from not working, which, logically speaking, should mean they'll in fact start working. But it doesn't, and it won't," summarizes Ace.

Think of how many fewer rapes there will be on May 1!

4. Addendum

Political Math warns us, "Someday Wikipedia will be sentient, take over Army computers and bomb people who don't link to source material."