1. A Great Day In Utah

2. Left & David Frum (BIRM): If Bill Doesn’t Work, Blame GOP!

3. Think Progress tries originalism, fails

1. A Great Day In Utah

I’m hearing from more and more people that Tuesday night was a truly great night for conservatives in Utah as Bob Bennett’s supporters were largely denied delegate spots to the State Convention.

Across Utah, in most major areas, Bob Bennett’s supporters were shut out. In Provo, Bennett was able to come in first, but barely edged out Mike Lee.

I’m getting reports from across the state, north to south, east to west, that Bob Bennett had a very, very bad night in Utah.

He’s now going to have to jockey for position with the others in the race. Here’s the key though — we need to rally around a guy like Mike Lee who appears to have done well. We don’t want Bennett trying to cut deals with the others.

Let’s hold their feet to the fire.

Remember, Mitch McConnell said conservative dissatisfaction with Republican leadership is “not relevant.” We have the power to prove him wrong by tossing incumbent Republicans and more importantly this year rejecting the candidates the Washington Republicans have picked for us.

At the end of the day, who do you think the NRSC backed candidates will be loyal to — the GOP leadership in DC or you?

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2. Left & David Frum (BIRM): If Bill Doesn’t Work, Blame GOP!

As everyone knows, liberals are far from fans of accountability, responsibility, etc. or any other concept that suggests being held to account for their words and actions. A few days ago, Thomas Frank (of “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” fame) writing in his WSJ Tilting Yard column was obviously in a state of high dudgeon at the Texas State Board of Education’s stipulation that High School students be required to also look at the unintended consequences of LBJ’s Great Society reforms when studying that era.

In the aftermath of the Democrats handing 1/6th of the economy over to their buddies in the public employee unions – through which taxpayer dollars would be laundered back to their campaign coffers, Megan McArdle [HT: Ace], Obama-voter though she was, proposes to use the statistics (inflated and false though most of them are) the proponents of Government healthcare cited in favor of the legislation as measurements via which the effectiveness of the legislation would be measured.

And of course, this has every liberal who cited all those statistics at “The Atlantic” as alarmed as Thomas Frank at the prospect of Texas high school students actually examining the results of liberal “reforms”. All of a sudden those are not reasonable metrics, and it is now unrealistic (even “racist(!)” to demand some way of measuring, or even just use the metrics they pushed to pass this bill, whether Obamacare would result in better quality and access to healthcare for the American people.

However, the most interesting counter-charge by McArdle’s opponents is to echo the media’s newest tame pet “Republican” David Frum and shift the blame to the GOP. The argument goes that if any of the benefits promised by the proponents of this legislation fails to materialize, the responsibility is entirely on the GOP for not signing up to place a cherry on top of the turd pile.

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3. Think Progress tries originalism, fails

Think Progress is alarmed that the coming Constitutional crisis over the President’s newly-signed Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA). I conclude this because it is unusual to see progressives use an originalist argument for Constitutional interpretation. However Ian Millhiser and Think Progress need more practice at it, because the argument they make is not the one they intend.

I’ll start with Millhiser’s last point, that the framers “they probably knew a little bit more about the Constitution than Ken Cuccinelli.” This is not entirely true for several reasons. First, we’ve ratified seventeen amendments to the Constitution since the passage of the second Militia Act, and ten more were only ratified six months earlier. These changes to the Constitution require careful consideration, especially those of the ninth and tenth amendments.

Regardless, Millhiser makes one core point: If it is Constitutional to require individuals to purchase firearms in the course of regulating the Militia, then it is Constitutional to require the purchase of medical insurance. However there is a key difference between the two here: the Militia Acts of 1792 are grounded in two specific clauses in the Constitution, while the PPACA has no such support.

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