Romney 2016: This Is All Your Fault, Allahpundit

Today on NRO

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: For Western elites, Ahmadinejad is preferable to Hirsi Ali, the Castros to Cuban dissidents. Glorified Bastards.

THE EDITORS: Obama would apply tired K-12 ideas to community colleges. A Community-College Plan Doomed to Fail.

RICH LOWRY: Europe's unassimilated populations — often openly hostile to their host countries — continue to grow. Europe's Immigration Problem.

IAN TUTTLE: Preventing a Paris-style attack is, in part, a numbers game. Americans don't seem to be paying attention. The Troubling Math of Muslim Migration.

SLIDESHOW: Meme Watch: Where's Obama?

Morning Jolt
. . . with Jim Geraghty

January 13, 2015

Romney 2016: This Is All Your Fault, Allahpundit

Here's the good news, Republicans. Mitt Romney is running to save the party from nominating Jeb Bush, and Jeb Bush is running to save the party from nominating Mitt Romney. It's as if O. Henry moved into political coverage.

Mitt Romney 2016 has moved from a funny idea to a serious factor in the race in a very short period of time:

Romney has worked the phones over the past few days, calling an array of key allies to discuss his potential 2016 campaign. Among them was Ryan, whom Romney phoned over the weekend to inform him personally of his plans to probably run. Ryan was encouraging, people with knowledge of the calls said.

Other Republicans with whom Romney spoke recently include Sens. Kelly Ayotte (N.H.) and Rob Portman (Ohio), former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty, Hewlett-Packard chief executive Meg Whitman, former Massachusetts senator Scott Brown, former Missouri senator Jim Talent and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (Utah).

Raise your hand if you foresaw Chaffetz on that list.

I'll be on Hugh Hewitt tonight, around 8:20 Eastern, and Hugh promises the topic of Mitt Romney will come up, and whether Ryan is on board. It's pretty much unthinkable that Ryan would speak ill of Romney. But there's this one other buddy in the potential field . . .

Twelve hours ago, Scott Walker Tweeted…

There's nothing in Ryan's history that suggests he'll make an unnecessary enemy. Expect him to talk up both men and put off any formal endorsement until one or the other is effectively eliminated.

Finally, "It can't be bargained with, it doesn't feel remorse or fear, and it absolutely will not stop, ever."

Obama and Paris: The Real Hornet's Nest

Why didn't Obama go to Paris?

Monday brought a lot of quickly-discarded excuses. (1) The excuse that the United States was adequately represented, as suggested by Kerry's claim that critics were "quibbling" because the U.S. ambassador attended. White House press secretary Josh Earnest eventually retreated on that one. (2) The claim that there were security concerns, which suggested the security measures taken to protect the French President, U.K. Prime Minister, and Israeli Prime Minister were somehow insufficient. Also note that the entire point of the march was to send a message to the world that leaders will not be intimidated by extremists who threaten to kill them. (3) Complete and total staff incompetence: "White House aides were so caught off guard by the march's massive size and attention that they hadn't even asked President Barack Obama if he wanted to go."

The simplest explanation -- and one that doesn't contradict option three -- is that President Barack Obama doesn't really want to put his personal stature and credibility on the line to support something like Charlie Hebdo. Since those awful attacks, we've witnessed a lot of allegedly intellectual leftists offer versions of "the attacks were terrible, but--" and then explaining why Hebdo was offensive, hate speech, an unnecessary provocation, foolish, etc., and imply that the magazine isn't really worth defending and that the world would be a better place if these immature, impudent cartoonists would stop making fun of one of the world's great religions.

There's very little evidence to suggest that Obama disagrees with this progressive intellectual reaction, that while satire of Islam is theoretically legal, the consequences of enraging Muslims is too much trouble and risk to be worthwhile. We saw this in the response to Hebdo before, and the infamous YouTube video that the administration cited as a scapegoat for the Benghazi attacks. To a lot of progressives, while depicting Mohammed or mocking Islam shouldn't be banned, it should be discouraged, and a presidential appearance at that rally and march is too close to an official endorsement.

As then-White House press secretary Jay Carney put it in 2012 while discussing the French magazine's Muhammad cartoons:

We don't question the right of something like this to be published; we just question the judgment behind the decision to publish it. And I think that that's our view about the video that was produced in this country and has caused so much offense in the Muslim world.

Obama would never support going into a magazine and shooting people. But he's a famously thin-skinned public figure who thinks he has a particularly powerful connection and understanding of the Muslim world because he spent some childhood years in Indonesia. He is so monofocused on "de-escalating" tensions with the Muslim world that he thinks about how he would advise the Islamic State. The last thing President Obama is going to do is take some sort of personal action that indicates a real show of solidarity with cartoonists who offend Muslims.

University of Virginia President Sullivan to Fraternities: Never Mind!

It's nice to see punishment of the wrongfully accused rescinded, but what campuses really need is any university administrator in the United States learning something from the Rolling Stone debacle. Simple little lessons like "an accusation is not sufficient to bring punishment" or "university administrators are not equipped nor authorized to run criminal-justice investigations, and so those important duties should be left to the police."

The Virginia Alpha Chapter of Phi Kappa Psi fraternity at the University of Virginia has been reinstated effective immediately, University and Phi Kappa Psi national officials announced today.

The reinstatement resulted after consultation with Charlottesville Police Department officials, who told the University that their investigation has not revealed any substantive basis to confirm that the allegations raised in the Rolling Stone article occurred at Phi Kappa Psi.

U.Va. President Teresa A. Sullivan informed fraternity officials of the decision to reinstate the chapter's Fraternal Organization Agreement with the University after learning of the update to the police investigation.

"We welcome Phi Kappa Psi, and we look forward to working with all fraternities and sororities in enhancing and promoting a safe environment for all," U.Va. President Teresa A. Sullivan said.

It's difficult to begrudge UVA students their desire to move on . . .

But they are still talking about the Rolling Stone article.

"Knowing that it brought about some really important issues that need to be addressed. And I think UVA is going to bring some really good things from it," said UVA student Libbie Hamner.

Professor Padron agrees, hoping interest and energy for positive change will carry on.

"That people will stay involved, and that the institution will continue towards making this a safer place for everyone, especially for female students," he said.

Fraternity rush is scheduled to start Thursday, and houses have until Friday to sign an agreement saying they'll have three sober brothers at each party, well as security.

"I definitely think having security guards will help, and having sober brothers is going to be really important," Hamner said. "Speaking from experience, if you have somebody you know you want to go to with a problem, with a friend, it's going to be helpful to have a sober brother."

Something rather important and unjust happened here -- not merely collective punishment for the alleged actions of a few, but ultimately collective punishment for a false accusation against an unnamed few. That's about as anti-Enlightenment as you can get, and considering how the University of Virginia was founded by Thomas Jefferson, who was pretty intensely influenced by the philosophies of John Locke and the rest of the Enlightenment thinkers and writers, it's pretty appalling. University president Sullivan's knee-jerk ban of all fraternities because of an article that named no names renounces everything Jefferson stood for and everything he intended to teach and instill in the creation of the institution.

Whether or not Sullivan remains in her job for long, it would be nice to see the student body a bit more mobilized in a desire to stand up against that.

ADDENDA: Jonathan Bernstein writes conspiratorial crap about my column; any editors over there at Bloomberg paying attention? Do you have to prove an allegation in print anymore, or is speculating that I did this based upon some sort of sinister orders from some high-level Republican just standard practice over there?

I realize yesterday's Jolt began with "Start Tuesday with a Big Story You Probably Won't Enjoy Reading". The short version is I thought the Carson story would go up early Monday and wrote a headline directing people to the piece; the article wasn't posted when I finished writing the Jolt, so I rewrote that section for Tuesday. Then the Jolt was delayed because of a technical issue on my end, and by then the Carson story was posted.

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