Rick Santorum’s Eloquent Defense of the Dream Act and a Constitutional Right to Privacy

Rick Santorum had the best debate tonight. He was sharp where needed, smart throughout, and on a number of occasions gave very eloquent statements on his positions. My favorites were his defense of the DREAM Act and a Constitutional Right to Privacy.

Yes, that is right. Santorum’s statements could not be seen as anything but unambiguous arguments in favor of those positions.

On immigration, Santorum said that:

What I’ve said is, from the very beginning, that we have to have a country
that not only do you respect the law when you come here, but respect the law
when you stay here. And people who have come to this country illegally
have broken the law repeatedly. If you are here, unless you are here on a
trust fund, you’ve been working, illegally. You have probably stolen
someone’s social security number, illegally. And so it’s not just one
thing that you’ve done wrong, you’ve done a lot of things wrong. And as a
result of that, I believe that people should not be able to stay here.

This of course begs the question of what a child is supposed to do who was brought to this country without their knowledge or choice, who has followed the law, gone to school, and seeks nothing more than to go to college, raise a family, contribute to society, and have a piece of the American Dream? What would Santorum do with these children who have no ties to any other country, no familiarity with any other culture, and who have not done anything wrong. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to stay?

Given this, why do Rick Santorum and the Republican Party oppose the American DREAM Act?

* * *

Santorum was even better in responding to a question about how faith would affect his decisions if he were President, he gave one of the most eloquent explanations of our republic.. Santorum pointed out that the “foundational documents” of our country are not just the Constitution, but also the Declaration of Independence, which he explained is the “Why” of America, “who we are as a people.”

He then quoted that great declaration:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights.

As Santorum explained: “The Constitution is there to do one thing: protect god given rights. That’s what makes America different than every other country in the world. . . . If . . . rights come to us from the state, everything government gives you, it can take away. The role of the government is to protect rights that cannot be taken away. . . . But understand where those rights come from, who we are as Americans, and the foundational principles by which we have changed the world.”

In all honesty, anybody seeking to understand the American experiment would do well to listen to his answer on this subject. I obviously do not agree with Rick Santorum often—but I fully agree with him on this. The problem is that it begs the question—does Rick Santorum and the Republican Party believe in this?

Just this month, Santorum reiterated the basic concept that has been at the heart of the Republican Party platform for 40 years—that there is no right to privacy. In asking whether a state could ban a person from using birth control, Santorum said: “The state has a right to do that, I have never questioned that the state has a right to do that. It is not a constitutional right, the state has the right to pass whatever statues they have. That is the thing I have said about the activism of the supreme court, they are creating right, and they should be left up to the people to decide.”

This does not make much sense. If rights are a gift of god, then how can they be “left up to the people to decide”? Santorum, and the Republican Party in general, has held fast to the concept that, if a right is not enumerated in the Constitution, it does not exist. That has led Republicans to oppose the right to privacy (Griswold v. Connecticut), and the rights that naturally flow from that—the right of women to choose whether to have an abortion (Roe v. Wade); the rights of gay and lesbian men and women to have sex (Lawrence v. Texas).

Santorum did not finish his reading of the Declaration of Independence tonight. He forgot the next clause, where the Declaration said that “among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The Declaration of Independence does not end its list of rights—rather it begins the list with some basic ones, and indicates that there are (potentially many) more. Indeed, as Sam Seaborn once pointed out, a founder from Mitt Gingrich's home state of Georgia was opposed to the Bill of Rights because “If we list the set of rights, some fools in the future are going to claim that people are entitled only to those rights enumerated and no longer.”

The framers agreed with Rick Santorum’s defense of human rights. They wrote in the Declaration of Independence “[t]hat to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” It is therefore confounding that a man who can so eloquently explain that the Constitution exists to protect rights—including privacy and choice—can spend his political career opposing these rights.

Fear Factor

NBC News tells me that at 9 PM ET tonight, the remaining four candidates for the Republican Presidential nomination will be participating in a debate on a special edition of “Rock Center with Brian Williams.”

But TiVo tells me that at 9 PM, NBC will be broadcasting an episode of “Fear Factor” where “[c]ontestants connected to a helicopter via bungee cord are ripped off a cliff’s edge; other stunts include being submerged in a tub full of leeches and navigating through a five-story building engulfed in flames.”

Is it possible that both are right?

The Next 10 Days of the Republican Primary

Newt Gingrich has won the Republican Primary in South Carolina. A week ago, it looked like Mitt Romney was likely to go three for the first three primaries, consolidate the field, and effectively wrap up the GOP nomination. Today, he has now lost two out of three of the early primaries and remains unable to break through the mid-30’s in the polls.

Romney, however, remains the front-runner to win the Republican nomination; he has more money, better organization, and the strong support of the Republican Party establishment. But the race has become very interesting, and here are four things to watch out for over the next 10 days?

The Margin of Victory
Late polls suggested that Newt’s margin of victory was breaking into double-digits. That could be rough for Mitt. Certainly, the bigger the margin is, the bigger the headache for Romney.

Rick Santorum
Santorum has pledged to stay in at least through Florida, and having won the Iowa caucuses, he has earned that right. But Rick Perry had pledged to stay in through South Carolina, and he dropped out and endorsed Gingrich. Moreover, Santorum has been running his campaign on a tight budget, and his method of winning Iowa was to visit all 99 counties over the course of nearly a year. But he still fell to fourth in the even-smaller New Hampshire, and Florida is larger than the first three states combined. So Santorum needs to break through in a big way to keep afloat in Florida. And, if the anti-Mitt forces are trying to coalesce around a single candidate, can Santorum get oxygen in the race. Interestingly, if Santorum were to drop out, the conventional wisdom suggests that his voters would go to Newt—but it is not entirely clear that Santorum would through his endorsement to Gingrich. Perry clearly harbored a degree of personal disdain for Romney, but Santorum is a smart politician who may well get in line.

Marco Rubio
The Tea Bag Party-backed Cuban-American Senator is at play in the Florida Primary. Rubio surprised the establishment by knocking off the popular Florida Governor Charlie Crist in the 2010 Republican Senate Primary, and then stomped his way to the Senate in a three-way race. But since heading to DC, Rubio has kept his head down and quietly tried to work. The 40-year Senator has every reason to stay out of the fray—a young, popular, Hispanic Republican, he has frequently been mentioned as a possible 2012 running mate, or at some point even running for President himself. But Rubio will be emblematic of the two opposing forces that will be at play over the next ten days—the Tea Bag Party wing, trying to push the Republican Party harder to the right, and the DC establishment wing of the Republican Party who wants to end this quick and quietly.

Barack Obama
The President of the United States of America will take center stage of the national debate on Tuesday night, delivering the State of the Union Address. And it will be a big one. Republicans have been bashing him with everything from lies, damn lies, and craziness. But this address will set out the President’s election-year priorities and define how voters look at him. The best communicator in American politics will have a chance to make his case in the most favorable circumstances he has had in years. Three years ago, President Obama took office with the country on the brink of a second great depression, deeply involved in two wars, and teetering on the edge. Today, the employment picture is at its best in more than four years with signs of continuing improvement, the auto industry has been not only saved but re-ignited, America has finally ended its involvement in Iraq, has eliminated Osama bin Laden, and the President can tout a host of legislative and executive achievements from universal health care, consumer financial protection, investments in new energy. And he gets to do it while transposing himself against a Republican-controlled Congress whose approval ratings are lower than Communism.

Mitt Romney remains the favorite to win the Florida Primary, and even if he loses, remains the front-runner to win the nomination. But if Newt can add Florida to his win tonight, he will go a long way to evening those odds.

President Obama Wins Hartsfield's Landing!

The New Hampshire Primary is today, and while people throughout most of the Granite State are voting throughout the day, the good people of Hartsfield’s Landing have already voted.

Of course, in the most technical sense, Hartsfield’s Landing does not exist. It is merely the fictional little New Hampshire burgh that is featured in the third season episode of "The West Wing," where Josh spends all night trying to convince supporters from four years before to stick with President Bartlet's re-election (while the President plays chess with Sam and Toby while diffusing a potential crisis over Chinese military activities in the Taiwan Strait).

But Hartsfield’s Landing is based on two real-life New Hampshire towns--Dixville Notch and Hart's Location. Under New Hampshire law, a town can open voting as early as midnight on the day of the primary and can close the polls and count the votes once all the registered voters cast their ballots. So every four years, the folks in these two little towns arrive at a minute past midnight to vote in the first-in-the-nation primary, and the nine registered voters in Dixville Notch and 23 voters in Hart's Location all vote, and within a few minutes the polls are closed and the votes tallied. And for 18 hours, those are the only actual poll results available.

Count both towns as wins for President Obama. His 13 votes in total (3 in Dixville Notch and 10 in Harts Location) nearly doubled Mitt Romney's 7 votes (2 in Dixville, 5 in Hart's Location). If the West Wing is to be believed (and really, why wouldn’t it?) Hartsfield’s Landing has accurately predicted the winner in every presidential election since William Howard Taft, so President Obama has to be feeling pretty good.*

Since only the Republican nomination is being contested this year, independent voters are more likely to vote in their primary this year, and the full results from both locations on the Republican side show Romeny with an expected lead, Ron Paul and Jon Huntsman close, and surprise Iowa (co)winner Rick Santorum without a single vote yet. But, needless to say, it's early.

Candidate - DN - HL - Total
Romney - 2 - 5 - 7
Paul - 1 - 4 - 5
Huntsman - 2 - 2 - 4
Gingrich - 1 - 1 - 2
Perry - 0 - 1 - 1

(*The West Wing is usually a pretty good source of political information, and for most things about Dixville Notch and Hart's Location, it works as well. But I don't think it has any history of predicting the winner, especially in years like 2012 in real life, and 2002 in the West Wing, when the incumbent had already locked up his party's re-nomination. Moreover, it is not clear from the West Wing episode whether or not Bartlet actually won Hartsfield's Landing, but it is strongly implied that he would not because some of his supporters were still coming to terms with him having not disclosed his MS, but as aficionados know, he did go one to win a landslide re-election against a good-haired governor.)

The Winner of the Iowa Caucuses

There are still a lot of votes to be counted tonight, but we already have a projected winner in the Iowa Caucuses.

Barack Obama.

The Republican Caucus vote is still being counted, and it increasingly looks like whoever the eventual “winner” is, they will be in a virtual (and maybe literal) tie, while President Obama has already won the Iowa Caucuses on the Democratic side. And the while all the sound and fury has focused on the Republican race, it is not Romney, or Paul, or Santorum that has the best organized campaign in Iowa. Rather, Barack Obama does—just take a look at this video from the New York Times. And while Republicans tomorrow will head off to New Hampshire or South Carolina, the Obama campaign will be there through November.

Of course, tonight marks the four year anniversary of Barack Obama’s groundbreaking win in the 2008 Iowa Caucuses. Tonight hardly compares to that defining moment in history. Anyone involved in the 2008 campaign surely has a unique memory of that night. But four years later, it is important remembering not just that night, but how it was the beginning of how we began to change America for the better. Just take a look here. We may still have a lot of work to do—change does not come quickly or easily, but it does come.

And while not as historic as four years ago, the President’s win tonight in Iowa, and the fact that he is on his way to winning re-nomination unopposed, is very significant. Since the beginning of the Fifth Party System in American politics (following the realignment after FDR’s landslide election in 1932), there have been fifteen times when an incumbent President has begun the year seeking election to the Presidency. In ten of those years (1936, 1940, 1944, 1948, 1956, 1964, 1972, 1984, 1996, 2004), the incumbent has faced either no or just nominal opposition in seeking his party’s nomination. In all ten of those elections, the incumbent President has been re-elected (at least 7 of those elections would be defined as landslides). In the other five modern elections (1952, 1968, 1976, 1980, 1992), the incumbent President has faced a serious primary challenger. And in each of those elections, the incumbent lost re-election. 1952 and 1968 saw Truman and Johnson, respectively, bow out before the nominating conventions, with the opposition party winning in the fall, while in the other three elections, the incumbent President, while winning the nomination, lost in the general election.

(Note—if you want to remember the 2008 Iowa Caucus, it is worth remembering his tremendous victory speech from that night four years ago tonight.)

Why Can’t Ron Paul Win the Republican Nomination?

Seriously, why not?

With the Iowa caucuses tomorrow, Ron Paul has become somewhere between the 5th and 11th front-runner or quasi-front-runner in Iowa.* Each of his predecessors in that position, whether the hoped-for-but-never-did candidates of Mitch Daniels, Haley Barbour, and Chris Christie who it seemed would have at least had a moment in the sun; the shadow candidacies of Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, who polls suggest were actually leading or close-to leading at some point before declaring they would not run (though neither have actually ruled it out); or the real candidates (if by “real” you mean candidates who have participated in the Republican debates) of Bachman, Perry, Cain, and Gingrich), were all considered by the conventional wisdom as people who could ultimately win the Republican nomination. Indeed, Rick Perry was given a prime slot on the Today Show this morning, and yet if his current fifth place polling in Iowa holds up tomorrow, convention would hold that he would have a press conference in Austin on Wednesday announcing the suspension of his campaign. Similarly, Michele Bachman got prime interviews on all the morning shows just before Christmas, and she is now running barely ahead of Jon Huntsman, Gary Johnson, and me in Iowa.

And yet, when asked if Ron Paul could win the nomination, the answer comes back with an unequivocal “no.” Why? I frankly do not see why Paul is any less likely to win the nomination than any other Republican who might outpoll Mitt Romney tomorrow.

To be sure, the Republican primary race is basically in the same position that it was a year ago. Mitt Romney remains the establishment favorite. Given the Republicans post-war tendency to choose their nominee by primogeniture, as the next in line, Mitt is the person to beat. And while he would certainly lose if the party’s right-wing could coalesce around a decent candidate, they are unlikely to do so (and this seems more and more true a year later). This basic factor (combined with the amazing failure opponents to jump on his obvious problems) means that a flawed Mitt is likely to beat out a field of much more deeply flawed candidates.

But throughout the campaign, each of these contenders has been given their due by the national media and the conventional wisdom. Until Ron Paul. Several answers have been proffered, but none are really satisfying.

Some argue that Ron Paul is “crazy.” Perhaps. Crazier than Michelle Bachmann? After her response to the State of the Union, appearance on the cover of Newsweek, and a string of SNL appearances by Kristen Wiig that rival Tina Fey’s Sarah Palin send-ups, it is hard to imagine that she is viewed more favorably than Ron Paul. Or Newt Gingrich, who at the very least has far more self-important chutzpah. And even if you think Ron Paul is crazy, you cannot argue that it does not play—his son Rand Paul ran on the same basic platform, upsetting the Republican establishment to get the GOP Senate nomination (and then the seat) in Kentucky a year ago.

Some say that he does not have the organizational strength to parlay a win in Iowa. Perhaps this is true. But conventional wisdom has suggested only that Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich can compete with Romney in terms of organizational strength. But neither Perry nor Gingrich were able to put enough organization together to appear on the Virginia ballot, despite both being southerners, and Gingrich having permanently moved to Virginia after leaving Congress. But Ron Paul will be the only alternative to Mitt Romney on the Virginia Primary ballot. And Paul has demonstrated the ability to raise a lot of money (often online) from his cadre of followers.

On the issues, Paul seems vulnerable, particularly with his opposition to Republican orthodoxy on Iraq, Iran, and other Republican tendency to take on a, shall we say, “muscular” foreign policy attitude. But other Republicans suffer similar issue problems. Mitt Romney was effectively pro-choice when he was elected Governor nine years ago, something that is anathema to the Republican platform. Rick Perry has openly opposed deporting illegal immigrants who came to the US as children, a position which, in one of his non-gaffes, he called “heartless.” And Newt Gingrich basically followed that line. If each of these candidates can be considered serious, in spite of their positions that contradict the party line, why not Ron Paul. Indeed, Paul has found a way to find common ground with the evangelical right.

And of course, whether it is experience, organization, fundraising, sanity, issues, or any other criteria, Paul’s campaign is, was, and always has been more serious than Herman Cain’s, and yet during his brief shining moment, Cain was viewed as a real threat not just in Iowa, but to win the nomination.

Ultimately, I think that the national media and the beltway establishment has spent so much time over the last five years (and, in some ways much longer) investing in the idea that Paul cannot seriously be the Republican nominee that they are unwilling to be swayed from the position. Evidence, comparisons, and actual voters be damned—the conventional wisdom holds in spite of objective analysis. This reminds me of the conventional wisdom’s reaction to Barry Goldwater in 1964—surely he could not be nominated, and if so, he would have to moderate his views. And after his convention speech, after he made clear he would not back down an inch from his strident conservative politics, one reporter expressed the shock of the conventional media: “My God, he's going to run as Barry Goldwater.”

It is true that the most likely scenario is that Mitt Romney will emerge as the Republican nominee. Indeed, Paul’s surge seems to be fading in favor of a late Rick Santorum surge,* and today’s polls might suggest that a likely Ron Paul win just a few days ago might be a third-place finish tomorrow. But if Ron Paul is celebrating a victory after tomorrow’s Iowa Caucuses, don’t count out the possibility that he might be celebrating next summer in Tampa, too.

(*Note—Rick Santorum now seems to be riding yet another surge, giving every Republican that has competed in Iowa their moment. But while not as obviously as Paul, he has also been given short-shrift by the CW about his chances for winning the nomination.)

The Payroll Tax Holiday Has No Effect on the Social Security Trust Fund: And Yet Another Reason Michelle Bachman is Not Qualified to Run for President

In what can only be described as a Festivus Miracle, the House and Senate quickly adopted a two-month extension of the Payroll Tax Cut (along with several other important extenders like the Medicare “Doc Fix” and Emergency Unemployment Insurance) by unanimous consent. After weeks of acrimony, the bill passed both chambers in minutes (in fact, in an impressive feat of parliamentary procedure, the Senate acted first, and managed adopt the agreement to pass the bill before it even received it from the House).

The Payroll Tax funds Social Security benefits and the Social Security Trust Fund. Congress, of course, recognized this when it cut the Payroll Tax at President Obama’s urging last year. It therefore backfilled the Social Security Trust Fund by transferring money from the general fund to the Social Security Trust Fund. This assured that the solvency of the Social Security system was unaffected (positive or negative) by the Payroll Tax Holiday. In extending the tax cut for the next two months, Congress did the same thing, again backfilling the Social Security Trust Fund from the general fund. And so while nearly 160 million Americans will get a tax cut, seniors who rely on Social Security will not see the system compromised at all.

Unfortunately, some people continue to lie about this basic fact.

In Iowa today, Michelle Bachmann denounced Congress’s action. Bachmann claimed that “senior citizens are very upset, if you talk to them, because they recognize that they’re the ones who could end up at the short end of the stick” and that they are asking “why in the world would the politicians take money out of the Social Security trust fund?” Bachmann’s claims that the Payroll Tax Cut takes money out of the Social Security Trust Fund is not new—she has been making these false claims for weeks.

Of course, the fact that Michelle Bachmann should not be President is so self-evident that it might as well be included in the Declaration of Independence, but her statements suggest that she really is not even qualified to run. In the first place, Bachmann seems to view herself as an observer of the process, but she is in fact a central player. Because most Members had long since left town, the legislation had to pass by Unanimous Consent. As a Member of the House of Representatives, she could have come to the House Floor to object to the bill, and thus prevent its passage. Indeed, at least a couple of Republicans considered doing just this. Bachmann instead decided to stay on the campaign trail of her quixotic race for the Republican nomination for President, an election which she has absolutely no chance of winning. So for those Iowans looking for someone to stand up for their principles, they know not to vote for her.

Worse, however, is her continuing outright lie on the subject of the Social Security Trust Fund. While Bachmann’s statements could be chalked up to the absurd ravings of a fringe candidate, she is still treated by the press as a serious competitor—allowed to participate in debates, and as recently as Thursday appearing as a guest during the prime hours of the morning shows on NBC, CBS, and CNN. And no one is calling her out for what is either the worst case of policy incompetence or the biggest lie in presidential campaign history.