If there is one thing to be said about this election cycle, it’s that the word ‘change’ has been used entirely too much. The most comical moment came when John Edwards attempted to erect a force field of change around himself and cast any criticisms of his ideas as nothing more than the evil forces of the status quo fighting against the holy warriors of change. Watch this bit of self-serving pandering for a refresher:

John Edwards is a mere tag along, hopping on the bandwagon to score political points in his desperate (and now failed) campaign. It is Barack Obama who has been at the forefront of the change movement and its onslaught against rationality. But an interesting thing has happened: the agent of change, the great black hope himself, is racking up endorsements from the old guard liberal establishment. First it was the Puffster, former Senate leader Tom Daschle. Now the agent of change has managed to find himself caught in the gravitational pull of Ted Kennedy.

The media will never call Obama on running an outsiders campaign while drawing the support of such old, entrenched liberals. Nevertheless, if Obama is getting in bed with Ted Kennedy then I have one piece of advice: bring scuba gear.

Fred is done. The field is now absent any truly principled conservative. May the least bad candidate win.

Sadly, I do not think this will be his last victory.

Judicial Watch has released several explosive documents detailing some of the behind-the-scenes happenings during Hillary’s failed attempt to socialize healthcare. What they reveal is absolutely amazing and offers a look at what we can expect should Shrillary somehow manage to capture her Holy Grail.

A memo from Senator Jay Rockefeller to Hillary provides a number of response strategies to expected criticisms, and also offers some very revealing commentary on the media. Rockefeller scornfully identifies a number of different groups likely to criticism the initiative, including “deficit hawks,” “government bashers,” and “militant single-payers. He also recommends “exposing the lifestyles, tactics and motives of small business lobbyists” who, along with economics, he predicts will dare to point out the expected job losses. He also offers an unflattering portrayal of media, “News directors, planners and editors, and features producers and editors are anxious and willing to receive guidance on how to time and shape their coverage.”

Anxious to await guidance from democrats on how to shape their coverage?

What media bias?

Another internal memo offers a critique of the plan as well as some valuable insight into the mind of liberals.

There is more regulation in this plan that I expected to see, and I worry about the wisdom of much of it. The spirit and some of the substance contradict the idea of flexibility for states and room for variety, innovation, and competition.

…I can think of parallels in wartime, but I have trouble coming up with a precedent in our peacetime history for such broad and centralized control over a sector of the economy. Is the public really ready for this? The polls all show people think we should be spending more money on health care; of course, people don’t see how much health care is costing them.

Not seeing the true costs of health care is exactly why it costs so much in the first place, and something that big government liberals always count on. They want to convince you that their centralized solutions will be cheaper, but it’s a lie; you just won’t easily see how much it really costs.

The Spanish Inquisition may be long gone, but a new intellectual and religious chill, exemplified by the attacks being lodged against Mark Steyn and Macleans magazine by a gaggle of Canadian “human rights commissions”, has descended upon Western civilization. In a paroxysm of multicultural self-flagellation, guilty white busy-bodies are tripping over themselves in a rush to bring Shari’a to Canada. This ongoing kangaroo proceeding, along with a similar inquisition launched against a publisher of the Muhammed cartoons, illustrates just how little the principles once magnanimously articulated by the West’s greatest classical liberal thinkers matter to those who worship at the alter of political correctness.

Following publication of Steyn’s book, America Alone, which warns against the rise of radical Islam and its infiltration of Western societies, a Canadian magazine ran an excerpt of one of the book’s chapters. In the article, entitled “The Future Belongs to Islam,” Steyn quotes a Muslim imam speaking about demographics:

“We’re the ones who will change you,” the Norwegian imam Mullah Krekar told the Oslo newspaper Dagbladet in 2006. “Just look at the development within Europe, where the number of Muslims is expanding like mosquitoes. Every Western woman in the EU is producing an average of 1.4 children. Every Muslim woman in the same countries is producing 3.5 children.” As he summed it up: “Our way of thinking will prove more powerful than yours.”

Demonstrating their understanding that modern Western society, unlike liberal societies of old, places higher value on lawsuits and grievance-mongering than such quaint concepts as freedom of speech and press, four young Muslim law students, in conjunction with the Canadian Islamic Congress (CIC), ran to three separate “human rights commissions” and registered complaints against both Steyn and Macleans, the magazine that ran the article. Included in their litany of woe was a complaint that, no joke, Muslims were compared to mosquitoes. Never mind that the comparison under question came from a Muslim imam. Pointing this absurdity out, however, should not be taken as a legitimization of the idea that the ideas and thoughts of free citizens have to meet certain government standards. Rather, I point out the silliness of the merits of their complaint, as well as the fact that any such government mechanism exists in the first place, to highlight how far these groups will go to abuse our government to achieve their ends.

Another victim of the Canadian Inquisition has turned the tables on his inquisitors. Ezra Levant aroused the angry of the dhimmi’s by exercising his right to freedom of the press when he chose to publish the now-infamous Muhammed cartoons. In his opening statement, Mr. Levant lambastes the misnamed “human rights commission” for its role in subverting the rights recognized by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (watch the video below). The Charter clearly states:

Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.

The prosecution of Mark Steyn, Macleans, and Ezra Levant for what can only be described as thought-crime proves just how willing the multiculturalists are to toss aside the freedoms our societies were founded on, all in a misguided attempt to placate radical Islamists who take offense at any slight, real or imagined. We must not pretend that this can only happen in Canada. The ideological brethren of the Canadian “human rights commissions” are hard at work right here in America as well.

(More videos of the interrogation can be seen at Ezra Levant’s website)

Fred has said that South Carolina is his state to shine. In the South Carolina debate he showed he was serious. When the moderators asked numerous candidates to speak on the Reagan Revolution, Fred saw his opening and pounced. Demonstrating his leadership ability, he didn’t allow the moderator to move on without coming to Fred, and he insisted on full, rather than rebuttal time. Candidates with strong leadership shouldn’t be over-matched by a debate moderator.

In answering the question, Fred unloaded on Mike Huckabee’s populist record.

Debate transcript

…This is a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party and its future. On the one hand, you have the Reagan revolution. You have the Reagan coalition of limited government and strong national security. On the other hand, you have the direction that Governor Huckabee would take us in.

…He said he would sign a bill that would ban smoking nationwide. So much for federalism. So much for states’ rights. So much for individual rights.

That’s not the model of the Reagan coalition, that’s the model of the Democratic Party.

It’s about time somebody said it. The media is reluctantly catching on to the fact that Fred is still in the race. I laid out “Why Fred Ain’t Dead” on the 6th (if I might toot my own horn a bit), and now after the debate suddenly that’s the cool thing to say, with media and bloggers abuzz with Fred’s performance.

Meanwhile, Human Events has endorsed Fred.

Fred still has his work cut out for him. He needs to leverage this debate and his bus tour into a South Carolina win if he is to have any shot. If he does that, I think there’s a lot of conservative groundswell out there just waiting to burst forth. But they, sadly, remain unconvinced of his viability. South Carolina is where he can, and must, convince them. There are good indications so far.

The democrat race is quite easy to summarize: It’s a toss-up.

The Republican race is a bit more complicated. First things first, ignore the media. They’ll tell you Mitt is out. They’re wrong. They’ll tell you Rudy is out. They’re wrong. They’ll tell you Fred is out. They’re wrong.

Why is the media so wrong? Simply put, they have an overstated opinion of themselves and what they mean to the race. They buy into the idea of massive coverage generating overwhelming momentum for whoever they anoint as the front-runners. Their ego’s prevent them from questioning this assumption even as the present election represents a completely new phenomenon and is unprecedented in it’s compactness.

Here’s the real truth. Yes, momentum matters. But no one has enough to have eliminated anyone else. Rudy is still sitting on some big delegate states and, despite being written off by the media, can easily take the delegate lead on super tuesday. Amazingly enough, Mitt Romney is being declared dead even as he has the most delegates! He’s very competitive in Michigan and, with a win there, would probably be the *real* front-runner. Fred is hurt, but still not out. While McCain, Romney and Huckabee are duking it out in Michigan, he’s in South Carolina all by himself. A win there could give him a crucial second look, though another else is the end of the road.

So that’s where it stands. Don’t listen to the media. No one is out and everyone still has a path to the nomination.

As we conservatives in the coming weeks scour over the candidates’ records, read the pundits’ analysis and strain to keep our eyes open during debate after debate after debate after debate trying to decide which candidate most deserves our support, we should take a moment to remind ourselves of why it is we associate with republicans to begin with. It’s important not to get caught up in the sort of tribal mentality that often sweeps over people when dealing with politics. Us versus them, because we’re us and they’re them. No. Your party affiliation should be a fully deliberate decision based on a hard look at what’s important to you in comparison to what the various parties have demonstrated is important to them. No party should ever be able to consider your vote a given regardless of their performance. With that said, the Democrats have just reaffirmed why they won’t be getting my party affiliation anytime before the next ice age if they keep up the way they are.

The dems are down to four in their race to the bottom, and they’re clawing each others’ eyes out to be the one who hits first. During ABCs New Hampshire debate Saturday, and this is to Charlie gibson’s credit, they were asked if the surge has worked, and further whether the progress we’re seeing now in Iraq would have happened had they gotten their way on pulling troops out last year. In responding, each and every one of them proved that they can’t handle the truth. Obama was the worst offender.

Obama claimed the decision by Sunnis in Iraq to embrace American forces was a response to the Democratic capture of Congress in the 2006 election. Sunnis in Anbar province “started to see, after the Democrats were elected in 2006, you know what?” They saw the likelihood of a withdrawal of U.S. troops and feared they “would be left very vulnerable to the Shias,” Obama said. So they joined the Americans.

This is a figment of Obama’s imagination. There’s no evidence for this explanation–quite the contrary. Even before the 2006 election, Sunnis had begun to turn against al Qaeda, their one-time ally
in the insurgency, and its brutal tactics. Their rebellion against al Qaeda even has a name, the Sunni Awakening. Desperate for help against al Qaeda terrorists that they turned to Americans.

Depends on the meaning of the word “was” I guess.

Bill Richardson was worse than Obama. Calling Iraq “a massive failure,” he made a string of inaccurate claims. He said there had been no reconciliation. Wrong. He said there had been no sharing of oil revenues. Wrong. He said the Iraq government had made no effort to train more security forces. Wrong. He said there was only a political solution in Iraq but not a military solution. The truth is, both are required.

This is willful ignorance.

John Edwards provided a whopper of his own. He said the withdrawal of British troops from southern Iraq caused “a significant reduction in violence.” In fact, it was the British presence–not the withdrawal–for so many months that had pacified that region.

By the way, the Iraqis are now administering that region on their own. Is that not exactly what success in this effort should look like? They could admit they were wrong and salvage some of their credibility. But no, they’d rather lie and hope no one checks them on it.

Hillary Clinton also refused to acknowledge any success in Iraq. She reaffirmed what she told General David Petraeus, the American commander in Iraq, last September during a Senate hearing. Then, she said she had to “suspend disbelief” to accept Petraeus’s testimony that the surge was working.

Don’t let the facts get in the way of your politically convenient skepticism and hatred of the military.

Support these bastards I will not. Let the primaries commence! And let’s take back our country.

Find a transcript of the debate here if you missed it.

Here I’ll rank how the candidates did on each issue. The topics came back and forth a little bit so it’s not strictly arranged by subject. But I’ve tried to kept it in the sections Wallace used.

Taxes & Social Security

Rudy: Rudy laid out his tax cutting record, then went on to talk about cutting corporate taxes. He correctly pointed out that the U.S. has the second highest corporate tax rate. 4 points

McCain: Despite being criticized for voting against the Bush tax cut, McCain actually came out alright on taxes because of his focus on spending and explanation that he wanted the tax cuts to include spending cuts. This also just so happens to be what most conservatives wanted as well. He didn’t make the argument for his vote against the Bush tax cuts as clear as he could have, and that kept him from the top spot in my ranking on this issue. McCain’s additional comment on social security was also a solid boost. 3 points

Romney: Romney’s tiff with Huckabee on this issue got things off to a heated start. Mitt got a little flustered when he fell back and meekly repeated his “facts are stubborn things” line. Still, he gave a good low tax answer and came out the better against Huckabee. 2 points

Thompson: Wallace dragged Fred into a discussion of Social Security and didn’t let him answer the taxes question. I think I understand his explanation of why reducing future promises of increases isn’t a cut, but it was probably all too confusing for most. 1 point

Huckabee: Huckabee dodged Mitt’s question and came off rather weak here. Zero points

Populism & “Change”

Romney: You’re not going to help the wage-earner in America attack the wager-payer in America. Romney leveraged his private sector experience well here. In his battle with McCain he came out on top. “Washington is fundamentally broken” was succinct and to the point. He managed to successfully hit all the issues in this section. 4 points

Thompson: Thompson, as usual, gave an honest answer on the Fair Tax. A constitutional amendment to ensure that an income tax won’t return in addition to a consumption tax makes this an unlikely solution. Otherwise he likes the idea. “Change has been a part of every election since the dawn of elections, if you weren’t an incumbent.” More important than change is leadership and being honest with the people about the problems we face. That’s the change we need. 3 points

Rudy: Rudy took Wallace’s question on the Fair Tax and completely disregarded it, instead choosing to reach into his New York grab-bag to pull out welfare reform. Not a bad issue in it’s own right. He made a strong case in explaining how important it is to take the case to all people that conservative solutions work better than liberal pandering. But so blatantly not answer questions doesn’t impress voters. Rudy recovered well when he was able to speak on “change”. It can be for good or bad, what matters is the direct. “Change is a slogan.” Essentially he is saying Democrats are for bad change. 2 points

Huckabee & McCain: Huckabee gave a decent answer and avoided the demagogic populism that he uses on the campaign trail. But the video played of his prior statements was enough to hurt him here. Romney twisted that knife further. McCain sounds like he was in the Democratic debate, trying to out “change” the changeofiliacs. His new “agent of change” persona sounds too much like what Hillary to adopedt after Obama’s Iowa victory, and no more sincere. Such platitudes don’t belong in serious discussion and is unbecoming a Republican. He recovered a bit when he was able to bring up his leadership experience in the Navy. 1 point each

National Security & Leadership

McCain & Romney: Romney and McCain highlighted the historically lopsided battle between Senators and Governors. Both won because they were able to dominate the discussion and left the other three candidates all but forgotten on this issue. They were both able to highlight their own experiences and both did so impressively. McCain gets the slight edge because he got the last word and said it wasn’t just his Senate experience, but also his life experience that he brings (which reminds us all he is a war hero). 3 points each

Thompson: “These are different” times that require more foreign relations experience. Fred made fun of the other candidates listing off all the countries they’ve visited and then went on to lay out his solid credentials. He got in a hit on Huckabee’s positions on Gitmo, Cuba and his “bunker mentality” statements. 2 points

Rudy: Trying to compare managing New York to dealing with foreign threats was a stretch. Romney made a much better case for translating domestic executive leadership to the Commander-in-Chief role. Rudy wasn’t bad, but wasn’t strong either. 1 points

Huckabee: Wallace’s litany of Huckabee’s gaffe’s on knowledge of foreign issues was a huge blow. He was obviously flustered by the question and never recovered on this issue. That he had to fall back on leadership of domestic issues only highlighted his weakness. Fred also got the best of him. He scored some points saying Gitmo is too hospitable, but flopped when he said it doesn’t matter where we keep them. Zero points

Immigration & Amnesty

Romney: Pointing out McCain’s statement saying amnesty must be part of the solution was a blow. Pointing out the incentives that amnesty gives to encourage others to enter illegally was an excellent answer. He took a hit when McCain struck back and threw out his quote stating McCain’s plan was reasonable and not amnesty. 4 points

Rudy: Rudy hit all the solid points. Nothing flashy but he got in the “secure the borders” and everything that comes with it lines. 3 points

Thompson: Rudy and Huckabee had polices that “if you made it in, you were home free.” Our policies are encouraging the next generation of people to try and cross the border. Finally someone criticized the President of Mexico for thinking he can tell us not to enforce our borders. He didn’t give any specific for what he would do though. 2 points

Huckabee: Huckabee gave an alright answer. People in the U.S. should live in the shadows, he says. In order to live with dignity they should go home and come back legally. I don’t think his taking umbrage at Mitt’s question came off too well. He didn’t answer Wallace’s question well on when exactly it’s punishing the children and when it’s not, as Huckabee said in the past children should not be punished for the parents crimes. 1 point

McCain: McCain struggled and seemed defensive. He says fixing borders first is his priority, but no one believes him at this point and I don’t see he did anything to change that fact. Zero points

Bonus Round

*I’m not going to rank the question on negative ads and the various questions that went with it because the candidates got different questions. Rather, I’ll give plus or minus one point depending on how each did, or zero if I think they came out about even.

Romney: +1. Romney got in a good point about the difference between an attack ad and an ad on people’s records. Contrasting records has an important role in the campaign process. Once again providing both the setup and punch line to the joke about hair was lame, though. He answered the flip-flopping charge very well.

Huckabee: -1. Mitt got the best of him yet again.

Rudy: 0. Did a good job of dispatching the Kerik debacle, but didn’t gain anything

McCain: +1. Dealt with the age issue with good humor and dispelled it well

Thomspon: -1. Fred loses through no fault of his own. Not included in this discussion, the viewer probably forgot he was even in the debate.

Closing Arguments

Romney: Romney wins basically just on presentation. With a question in which all candidates are saying basically the same things, presentation matters a lot. He came across as the most inspiring. 3 points

McCain: McCain was as positive and upbeat as he is capable of, but still couldn’t match Romney. Having the last word also helped. 2 points

Rudy, Thompson & Huckabee: Rudy is the man for big ideas, he says. Good answer, but yet again nothing stood out. Fred got in the only reference to appointing judges that aren’t activists. Cited his 100% pro-life record. Made reference to being on the short-end of some 99-1 votes, but didn’t explain how that was an example of his strong federalist principles. His tone was rather lackluster and uninspiring. Huckabee starting with a religious reference got him off on the wrong foot. He went into a stronger answer after that but it didn’t stand out. 1 point each

So here’s how my tally came out:

Romney: 17
Rudy: 11
McCain: 10
Thompson: 8
Huckabee: 2

Disappointed by Fred’s Iowa showing, my initial analysis following the Hawkeye cauci about his chances to win the nomination was rather pessimistic. Well, that’s an understatement. I gave him no chance. I still am pessimistic about his odds, but after watching the ABC New Hampshire debate I now see a path for him back to competitiveness.

It’s not yet clear whether Romney or McCain will come out ahead in New Hampshire, but it is all but certain that Huckabee will not have a strong showing. With a split in the early primary winners, no candidate will have control of the race heading into the next big momentum shifting state: South Carolina. The Thomspon campaign has made it clear they are targeting South Carolina and hope ride a “southern strategy” to the nomination.

In the ABC New Hampshire debate, Thompson dogged Guiliani on the issue of immigration (see video), asserting that if illegals receive any reward for their law-breaking is amnesty. Thompson’s lawyerly background is on evidence here as he first lays out a clear definition of amnesty for all to understand, and then proceeds to hold Rudy’s feet to the fire by repeatedly questioning if his plan would allow illegals to remain in the U.S.

Every single major candidate but Thompson has a weak record on immigration. South Carolinians rank immigration has their number one issue. If I’m Fred Thompson I’m saying one thing between now and January 19th: Immigration, immigration, immigration. If his campaign is on the ball they’ll continue to lay the groundwork on that issue in tonight’s Fox debate.