Looking ahead to Iowa

Jennifer Rubin says: Romney to win, Gingrich to the discard pile  "In the last week, Iowa Republicans  have gotten serious about their presidential choices, separating the wheat from the chaff. Unfortunately for Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), Newt Gingrich, and Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Iowa voters on Tuesday night will relegate them to the discard pile. Expect Bachmann to finish last, Gingrich to take fifth and Perry to end in fourth, well behind the trio of frontrunners."
Rick Moran: Romney takes slim lead into final day of Iowa campaigning  "It's a slim lead, and if things shake out the way the most of the polls are saying, Romney will eke out a narrow win with Paul and Santorum very close behind."
Beltway Confidential: Santorum's record won't withstand post-IA scrutiny "However, too many times, especially during the Bush era, he wholeheartedly embraced big government conservatism. Among other things, he sponsored an amendment to raise the minimum wage; backed steel tariffs; sponsored a bill for milk subsidies; took earmarks; voted for the Medicare prescription drug legislation and the pork-laden 2005 highway bill; and infamously endorsed liberal Arlen Specter over conservative Pat Toomey in the hotly contested 2004 Senate primary. He has defenses of his positions, but they won't hold up to the scrutiny he'll receive if he wins Iowa."
NRO: Mitt Momentum; His electability appeals to Iowans.  "Romney in the lead at 24 percent. Even though both Ron Paul and Rick Santorum are close in the same poll, it’s conceivable that Romney could win Iowa, despite the fact that he has virtually ignored the state for the bulk of the campaign and has done little retail campaigning there, although he has quietly created a state-wide organization."

This video is from  WAKE UP BLACK AMERICA

Updated: Stay classy, Mr. Colmes.

Alan Colmes Mocks Santorum For Bringing Dead Son Home   "Once they get a hold of the crazy things he's said and done like taking his two-hour old baby who died right after childbirth home and played with it for a couple of hours so his other children would know that the child was real," Democratic commentator Alan Colmes said on FOX News today.
"That's a cheap shot, Alan. To say it's crazy, something that's that personal and hurtful as losing a child and to mock it like that is beyond the pale and beneath you," Colmes' conservative opponent Rich Lowry said after the personal attack.
“I even think some of the dastardly characters we have in the main stream media are not going to go as low as you just have Alan,” National Review editor Rick Lowry said later in the conversation.


Rick Santorum reflects on his son's death

Via Lucianne

UPDATE by Rick Moran:  Alan Colmes is a heartless monster  "Colmes apparently called the Santorums and apologized for his comment - an apology that was graciously accepted (although I don't think too many of us would have been so forgiving). But what kind of person makes a statement like that in the first place?"

Iran and the Straits of Hormuz

Iranian Regime Announces Team of Experts Set to Examine Captured US Drone

"Despite repeated warnings from the Pentagon, Barack Obama rejected three plans to recover or destroy the US drone that was intercepted over Iranian territory.Con Underground was the first to report on this latest national security disaster."

FARS News Agency: Iranian Science, Defense Ministries to Analyze US Stealth Drone Technology

"Iran first announced on December 4 that its defense forces had downed the aircraft through a sophisticated cyber attack. 
"The drone is the first such loss by the US. US officials have described the loss of the aircraft in Iran as a setback and a fatal blow to the stealth drone program." 

The US Just Stands and Watches

Süddeutsche Zeitung, Germany  "The United States supported none of the revolutionaries in the Arab Spring uprisings and today is being fearlessly challenged by them. America has lost its influence in the region because of Obama's policy of wanting both change and the status quo."
....
"A key feature of the Arab Spring is that it is playing out without assistance from the United States and that the defining, decades-old conflict between Israel and its neighbors only plays a subordinate role. This again indicates a massive loss of American influence and importance in the region — both as a classic military and economic power and as a role model for those who love freedom."  Via Watching America

Obama Enters the Twilight Zone

Peter Wehner  in Commentary Magazine   "Moreover, Obama, during the first two years of his presidency, was enormously successful in getting his agenda enacted into law. He got almost everything he wanted, which some of us believe is precisely the problem. And to the extent that we’re facing a “do-nothing” Congress today, the responsibility lies with the Democratically-controlled Senate, not the GOP House. These days the Senate (which has not passed a budget in more than 900 days) is the place legislation goes to die."
....
"We are now reaching the point in which the president is running a truly post-modern campaign, in which there is no objective truth but simply narrative. Obama’s campaign isn’t simply distorting the facts; it is inverting them. This kind of thing isn’t unusual to find in the academy. But to see a president and his campaign so thoroughly deconstruct truth in order to maintain power is quite rare. The sheer audacity of Obama’s cynicism is a wonder of the modern world."

The spectre of 1932: How a loss of faith in politicians and democracy could make 2012 the most frightening year in living memory

Barack Obama cuts a similarly
impotent, indecisive and
isolationist  figure.

UK Daily Mail  " And while Left-wing intellectuals were drawn to the supposedly utopian promise of the Soviet leader Josef Stalin — who turned out to be a brutal tyrant — thousands of ordinary people flocked to the banners of the British Union of Fascists, founded in the autumn of 1932 by the former Labour maverick Sir Oswald Mosley."....


"Today, American voters looking for alternatives are confronted only with a bizarre gaggle of has-beens, inadequates and weirdos, otherwise known as the Republican presidential field. And to anybody who cares about the future of the Western world, the prospect of President Ron Paul or President Newt Gingrich is frankly spine-chilling."....

"The lesson of history is that tough times often reward the desperate and dangerous, from angry demagogues to anarchists and nationalists, from seething mobs to expansionist empires.

Our world is poised on the edge of perhaps the most important 12 months for more than half a century. If our leaders provide the right leadership, then we may, perhaps, muddle through towards slow growth and gradual recovery."

American Thinker: America's Greatness Will Defeat Obama  "The only thing standing between the United States and continued exceptionalism is the dreary delirium of Barack Obama, whose dismal socialist policies have been a spectacular disaster for the nation."....

"Four more years of this President will leave the nation miserable and divided, with high unemployment, a moribund economy and a bloated bureaucracy.  With another term, Barack Obama will continue his transformation of America into a land of perpetual trillion dollar deficits and a national debt measured in the tens of trillions of dollars.  We will be weak militarily, morally and economically.  Lesser nations, like those discussed here, would not survive 8 years of hope and change, but we will not be defeated.   

"The only thing standing between America and continued preeminence is Barack Obama.  The sooner we realize that, and rid the nation of the abomination of his presidency, the better."  "

Somehow I feel more pessimistic than this. I see schools promoting Obama and socialism, history books convicting this nation and its past, TV programs almost universally ridiculing Republicans and conservatives (There are some differences, you know). Add to that the childish adoration of a celebrity president who is inept and naive as a statesman and is an economic ignoramus; a socialistic demagogue who understands little about the virtues of capitalism.

Obama and his policies may be supported by a minority, but this minority is that segment of society which is disposed to burn cities and shut down all rebutting of their ideas. These are the people who disrupt all conservative speakers on campus and ridicule any non-liberal ideas; they are in our faces at every switch of TV channels.

Center-right electorate? I doubt it, but truly hope so, but cannot see how that can still be. TD

US Communist Leader: ‘Progressive Change Is Closer than We Think’  "Tyner draws clear right/left battle lines and the communist’s commitment to Party ‘friend’ President Barack Obama and to the Democratic Party cause"....

"Tyner then goes onto outline the Communist Party’s commitment to Democratic Party victories over several decades...."