The Patriot Post Chronicle 3-14-2012

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The Patriot Post Chronicle 3-14-2012
From The Federalist Patriot
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The Foundation

"If we move in mass, be it ever so circuitously, we shall attain our object; but if we break into squads, everyone pursuing the path he thinks most direct, we become an easy conquest to those who can now barely hold us in check." --Thomas Jefferson

Upright

Editor's Note: The Patriot Post has not endorsed any GOP candidate in the primary.

"If this was match play golf, Rick Santorum would be seven shots down with six holes to play. He has indeed played the last three holes wonderfully well, winning in Kansas, Mississippi, and Alabama, but Romney's sweeps in the far flung islands of Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands, his wins in Hawaii and American Samoa, plus the former Massachusetts governor's relatively strong showing in the southern brace of states means that over the past week the delegate math didn't change and neither did the inevitable result of the GOP nominating contest. Indeed, when all the sums are added, Romney won more delegates in the days since Super Tuesday than did Santorum. ... President Obama can be beaten. The next few weeks can be part of a very deliberate and useful turning of attention to his woeful tenure and the awful prospect of another four years under his ruinous fecklessness. No towels have to be thrown in, but each candidate has to consider the party as a whole and not just his own standing within it." --columnist Hugh Hewitt

"To be clear, Romney is still the overwhelming favorite to win the Republican nomination given his lead in delegates, but [Tuesday] he lost another chance to put the final nail in the coffin of his opponents by proving he could win on unfriendly turf. Santorum's twin victories in the deep south, which was supposed to be Newt Gingrich's territory, strengthens his argument that it's a two man race between himself and Romney, with him playing the role of the first choice of conservatives. ... The bottom line is that [Tuesday's] results reinforce the fact that it's going to be a long slog toward the nomination for Romney and this race isn't going to be over anytime soon." --columnist Philip Klein

"When it was being debated, Democrats told you [Obamacare] would cost $940 billion over ten years, because they think you're stupid. But now, with more years of fully-bloomed Obamacare inside the ten-year budget window, the CBO is out with new cost estimates. They ain't pretty: ... 'The ten-year cost of the law's core provisions to expand health insurance coverage has now ballooned to $1.76 trillion. That's because we now have estimates for Obamacare's first nine years of full implementation, rather than the mere six when it was signed into law.' ... The true ten-year cost is going to be still higher. To me, the question has never been whether Obamacare will fail (by failing to bend the cost curve, by incurring massive per-person costs for its coverage expansion, and by foisting things like IPAB on the public). Rather, the question has been whether it will fail quickly and spectacularly enough that the political will is toward repeal, and not expansion. If it fails slowly, we're likely to see more of it, not less." --columnist Daniel Foster

"The latest mass killing by an American soldier follows a three-year downward spiral.... After ten years, we have forgotten why we went into Afghanistan in the first place.... Now, even before the latest disaster, there is no public support for staying in Afghanistan. And yet to leave is to envision choppers on the embassy roof, Vietnam-style, as the Taliban lets loose on women, liberals, and the American supporters in the larger cities. ... The president should either put Afghanistan on the front burner, quit apologizing, seek diplomatic and military continuity, spell out to the people exactly what our aims and methods are, assume the role of commander-in-chief, cease all talk of withdrawal, and define, as it could be defined, 'victory' -- or simply get out, declare a teleprompted hope-and-change-style victory, and not put Americans in harm's way in a war that was more a 2008 campaign trope than a serious conflict to be won." --historian Victor Davis Hanson

Editorial Exegesis

"Feminists are declaring a sex strike for Obamacare-subsidized birth control. The group Liberal Ladies Who Lunch is organizing 'Access Denied,' a week-long exercise in self-denial starting April 28. The strike is supposed to motivate men to stand up for government-funded birth control 'because when we lose our reproductive choices, so do they.' This is akin to protesting welfare cuts by getting a job. ... In this case, activists are abandoning the activity that causes their supposed need for the birth-control handout. ... Conservatives should applaud the strike. Abstention is well-regarded on the right, and not simply because it is 100 percent effective in preventing unwanted pregnancies. Taking a week off from promiscuity may give young women an opportunity to think about their life choices. Perhaps there is more to being a woman than ensuring the government supplies the means to engage in limitless hookups. Nursing chastity for a week puts necessary perspective on the type of subsidized sexuality that's at the center of the debate." --The Washington Times1
Insight

"The preservation of freedom is the protective reason for limiting and decentralizing governmental power. But there is also a constructive reason. The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or in literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government." --economist Milton Friedman (1912-2006)

"I assert that the cosmic religious experience is the strongest and noblest driving force behind scientific research. ... God Almighty does not throw dice. ... Before God we are all equally wise -- equally foolish. ... My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble minds." --Albert Einstein, who was born on this day in 1879

The Demo-gogues

Left-theology: "When we start using religion as a bludgeon in politics, when we start questioning other people's faith, we start using religion to divide, instead of bring the country together, then I think we've got a problem." --Barack Obama

Failed record: "I'm going to keep doing everything I can to help you save money on gas, both right now and in the future. I hope politicians from both sides of the aisle join me." --Barack Obama

Promises are always just around the corner: "If you are willing to work as hard in this election as you did in the last one, change will come!" --Barack Obama

Diversions: "[The Keystone XL pipeline] won't lower the price of oil. Construction won't be complete for a long, long time,. And under the way it's constructed now, all the oil would be sold elsewhere. We can't have that. When I say elsewhere, I mean to some other country." --Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV)

Out of touch: "These [Republicans] don't have a sense of the average folks out there. They don't know what it means to be middle class." --Joe Biden addressing 87 wealthy Democrats at a $10,000-per-plate fundraiser