He was the only candidate who repeatedly steered the questions toward Barack Obama. He was the only candidate who dared point out that the media barely touched Obama’s infanticide support as an Illinois State Senator. He returned to the role of elder statesman.

The crowd leaned to Mitt Romney. It was probably inevitable. Mesa, AZ is the second largest concentration of Mormons in America and the State Republican Party handled getting the seats filled. It threw Rick Santorum off his game. The crowd booed Santorum taking on Romneycare’s individual mandate.

Santorum did not shine. He came in, it seemed, prepared to be beaten up. He was off his game. In the second half of the debate he did better. But the beginning was stumbling, bumbling, angry, and in the weeds. One thing he did very, very well is steer the contraception issue to families.

If Santorum can consistently steer this issue back to stable families, he has an issue that will win over independent voters. Note to the Santorum campaign: you will actually win the debate even in the general election if you focus your social values critique on the integrity of the American nuclear family.

Romney out performed Santorum, but he had two flaws. First, Romney claimed to be a long time proponent of school choice, but he opposed school vouchers as Governor of Massachusetts and the Boston Hereald noted Romney refused to ever meet with the head of the Massachusetts Charter School Association while in the Governor’s Mansion.

The big problem for Romney was his concluding moment in the debate. John King asked him what was the biggest misconception about him. It was a legitimate question and a chance for Romney to help himself. Instead, he got bossy and arrogant and told John King he wouldn’t answer the question. That question of all questions was the one he chose to get arrogant about?!

Newt Gingrich won. He kept the focus on Obama. He sounded like the adult in the room. He was both diplomat and scholar.

I would caution the media on one thing — the Rick Perry Factor.

Back during the first debate, Rick Perry came under withering assault from Romney on social security as a ponzi scheme.

After the debate, the media consensus was that Rick Perry had been badly wounded, performed badly, and would be hurt by the social security issue.

His polling actually went up. Conservative voters actually embraced Perry doubling down on social security as a ponzi scheme. Conservative voters rejected Romney’s attacks. The conventional wisdom was wrong.

I think the conventional wisdom is wrong about Santorum. While I think he did not perform as well as he should have and, in fact, hurt himself, on the social values issues I think Santorum helped himself more than the media would believe.

I agree with Rick Santorum. I also think that this is a Romney leaked piece. Given the close ties between Matt Drudge and the Romney camp, that’s an easy guess. I also think it will hurt Santorum who apparently has Gingrichitis, a disease the frontrunners all seem to get where they mouth off on any topic under the sun once they are the front runner.

Focus on this topic does not help Santorum and is largely irrelevant to being President. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to defend Santorum given how clueless some of those attacking him seem to be on the specific points he made and also given the cluelessness of a lot of reporters trying to put his remarks in context or explain them.

In 2008, Rick Santorum wasn’t running for President. His statement is well within the mainstream of orthodox Christian theology. And that’s the point here for a lot of reporters who seem stunned by Santorum’s statements.

I’m not Catholic and disagree with some of the teachings of that church, but both orthodox Protestant and Catholic views are consistent with the idea of Satan (who is very real) at war and trying to both tempt and corrupt people.

The humorous thing is there are many on the left who are trying to claim Santorum’s view is nutty, wacked out, or bizarre. There’s actually a stronger case for saying Satan is trying to corrupt the United States than that Barack Obama is a Marxist. Pick your poison.

But one of the statements Rick Santorum made that the media has terribly portrayed and clearly does not understand is Santorum saying, “We look at the shape of mainline Protestantism in this country and it is in shambles, it is gone from the world of Christianity as I see it.”

He is absolutely correct in this statement. When mainline Protestant denominations are in the news these days, it is more likely to be over their debates on the ordination of gays than on anything they have done to actually advance Christ’s kingdom. The problem is that a lot of reporters and even a lot of conservatives do not understand what “mainline Protestants” are.

It is not hard.

A mainline protestant is not a “mainstream” protestant. The two are not interchangeable. The former is more of an academic term.

The base way to understand what a mainline protestant is would be to understand that the term largely means those protestant denominations that existed during the colonial era of the American colonies and as they have evolved from that point.

Many suggest the term comes from the Pennsylvania Main Line railroad that ran through Philadelphia neighborhoods at the turn of the twentieth century, which were organized around communities of interest making up those original colonial faithes.

Specifically, Mainline Protestant denominations are Episcopalians, the United Methodists, the Presbyterians (USA), the American and Northern Baptists, the United Church of Christ, the Congregationalists, the Disciples of Christ, and the Lutherans.¹

While evangelical churches are more mainstream in America, they are not considered main line. Many evangelical churches branched off from the main line. The Southern Baptists, the nation’s largest protestant denomination, branched off from the Northern and American Baptist Churches. The Presbyterian Church in America, Evangelical Presbyterians, and Reformed Presbyterians broke away from the main Presbyterian Church, which is today the PCUSA. Anglicans have come back into the country in response to the ordination of gays within the Episcopalian Church.

I await the United Methodist Church splintering over that issue and the social gospel too. The Methodists are one of the last major mainline denominations not to have a serious split. But it is on the verge of happening.

There is a long history here and I am no religion scholar, but there are a couple of points to understand.

The mainline churches are more concerned these days with the social gospel, the role of gays in the church, etc. These churches are in decline. Their numbers are falling as they have replaced the actual Gospel with a modern sense of spiritualism that ultimately does not feed the flock.

Evangelical churches over all are growing. The charismatic churches are really seeing strong growth. These churches are much more concerned with fundamentalism, which is, like “mainline”, a specific term. Fundamentalist churches believe in the fundamentals of the faith, which were toward the turn of the twentieth century narrowed to five points including the inerrancy of the Bible, the death and resurrection of Christ, and the need for salvation. When people talk about “fundamentalists” these days, they usually mean hard line Christians who are no fun. Actually, a “fundamentalist” is someone who subscribes to five specific points within Protestantism: (1) the inerrancy of the Bible; (2) the virgin birth of Christ; (3) the atonement of sins through Christ’s death; (4) the bodily resurrection of Christ; and (5) the reality of Christ’s miracles.

So, when Santorum says mainline Protestantism in this country is in shambles, he is referring to specific churches, not all Protestants and specifically not evangelicals. He is referring specifically to those specific denominations more interested these days in the social gospel and the ordination of gay ministers than in salvation through grace. And both the decline of those churches’ populations and their ceding the field on actual matters of the Gospel are proof that Santorum is right. These churches have less and less to do with orthodox Christianity and it is no surprise that it is from the ranks of these churches that the media typically draws on ministers to rebut long held orthodox Christian views and the mainstream churches of America, which are more and more evangelical.

Oh, and of course we’ll take on Santorum’s “protestant” critique.

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This same false argument was made about Reagan, you know it, I know it, the press knows it. It got him shut out by the GOP leadership in 1976…it got him elected in 1980.

Never run from your principles, NEVER RUN from what you know is right.

It just makes you a traitor to yourself and those who rely on you.

Good people gravitate to persons that act in a principled manner, scary as that may seem to the political class.

Except this comment shows no sense of history.

First, I never said that the candidates should abandon their principles. They should not. But they sure also shouldn’t scare the heck out of independent voters by fixating on their personal positions. For example, Santorum says his position on birth control is a personal one. As a legislator, he never opposed legislation relating to contraceptives. But why spend so much time focusing on his personal view when he makes clear he wouldn’t impose it on others?

But back to Reagan. There is a well established myth about St. Reagan that he said what he meant and he meant what he said with unvarnished truth. Actually, that was Barry Goldwater and Goldwater lost. Badly.

Reagan said what he meant and he meant what he said, but he did so smiling, laughing, and with a lot of fun. And he spoke in a way that was not off putting to independent voters. More so, back in November of 1979, the Reagan campaign was already in danger of being painted as the second coming of Barry Goldwater, so Reagan shook things up a bit.

From the Washington Post on November 29, 1979,

Like a troubled theatrical production that tries out new scenes and actors well away from Broadway, the Ronald Reagan presidential campaign is making big changes on the road.

After the third departure or demotion of a major longtime Reagan adviser in as many months, the Reagan candidacy is losing some of its conservative California appearance and taking on the coloration of its pragmatic Washington campaign director, John P. Sears III.

If you know your history, you know that many of the men who left the Reagan campaign in 1980 remained powerful figures within the conservative movement and closely connected to Ronald Reagan. But on the campaign trail, Reagan could portray a “pragmatic” candidate.

He never wavered from his principles. When he spoke of them, he spoke of them with a smile and jovial tone. But his focus was on fixing the country. When he spoke, he maintained his principles, but did not delve into them so starkly. Check this out from the June 16, 1980, Washington Post:

[S]enior members of Reagan’s camp have been sharply divided about how to present the candidate’s tax and budget policy. A more radical element in this group has pressed for a stark presentation: A Reagan administration would cut taxes 10 percent a year for three years, would “index” tax rates to inflation rates, would eliminate all federal inheritance taxes, would improve tax benefits for private industry, would increase defense spending and would promise lower inflation and smaller deficits.

In practice, this is the line Reagan adopted in the primaries, though never quite so starkly. In one television commercial, this was Reagan’s message:

“High tax rates don’t lower prices, they raise them. In the 1970s taxes grew faster than any other item in the household budget, including the price of energy. High tax rates discourage work and production. They add to the cost of living. If we make a deep cut in everyone’s tax rates, we’ll have lower prices, an increase in production, and a lot more peace of mind.”

Keep the principle. I wouldn’t trust any candidate who abandons his principle. But accept it can be a political liability if not handled properly.

From: dougs2msu2003@yahoo.com
Date: February 21, 2012 9:23:31 AM EST
To: contact@redstate.com
Subject: Erick Erickson

I find it hard to believe that you do not find the phrase “off the reservation” to be racially offensive.

Life exists only in the eternal present.

Just bizarre.

No matter how right the cause or principle, it may still be a political liability.

I’ll start with the one you’ll agree with it. Barack Obama and many on the left may believe that abortion . . . er . . . um . . . “women’s health except for mammograms, pap smears, and the like — contraception only —” is a fundamental right necessitating the Catholic Church foregoing its own tenets and forced to give out free birth control pills and abortifacient drugs, but those who agree are deluding themselves that it will not also be a political liability.

Let’s try another one. Barack Obama and the Democrats may believe that socializing healthcare in this country is the right and proper thing to do, but it has also been proven to be a political liability.

How about this one: God bless Mitt Romney for being a capitalist’s capitalist making millions on Wall Street, but it will be a huge political liability in November.

Oh, one more. Come on! Rick Santorum may be absolutely right on the principles of morality and social decay in this country, but it will be a political liability with independent voters.

The funny thing is that many of you on the left who read the first two were shaking your heads in absolute disagreement and then agreeing with the latter two. Those of you on the right had the opposite reaction.

Partisans typically do. It is for level headed strategists, consultants, and pundits to try their best to overcome their partisan world views and accept reality. Some things you and I may love about a candidate may actually be real political liabilities for that candidate in a general election.

In prior years it seems a candidate would try his best to minimize the political liabilities of his principles or offset those liabilities with some real political assets. For some crazy reason this year, it seems the President and his Republican rivals are hell bent on attaching spotlights and banners to their political liabilities and running with them in a “rally the base” campaign that’s doing nothing but burning bridges on all sides.

If Republicans are to win in November, it is incumbent on both the base and the die hard supporters of each of the candidates to recognize that some principles are worth fighting for, but some of them cannot be fought for if they become political liabilities denying that candidate the White House. In that regard, if Rick Santorum really believes we’re going to hell in a hand basket, perhaps he should campaign on fixing the place instead of pontificating on theological matters and mangling Edmund Burke.

Likewise, perhaps MItt Romney has gone overboard in the opposite direction. If principles can be political liabilities, he seems to have calculated that he should run his campaign on having no principles to minimize the liabilities.

Unfortunately, just as there really is no such thing as an atheist, there is no such thing as a man without principles. The lack thereof is a principle in itself, just as the rejection of God becomes a replacement for the Almighty.

We really are a party on the verge of suicide against an imminently beatable President. The beltway Republicans are finally starting to realize it, but I fear it may be too late. And far be it for me to point it out, but I see no reason the base of the Republican Party should trust the judgment or candidate alternatives of any person who has peddled Mitt Romney for half a decade.

The ship, my friends, is sinking. It can be saved. But not if we don’t first realize the reality we are in, instead of the one we want.

On Wednesday night, CNN will bring the nation what may very well be the last debate in the Republican Presidential Primary season. From Mesa, AZ, Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Ron Paul will take the stage one last time.

At least we can presume it will be the last time. Romney, Santorum, and Paul bailed on the pre-Super Tuesday debate that would have been hosted by both CNN and the Georgia Republican Party in Atlanta.

So this may be the last bite at the apple for Newt Gingrich to rebound, Santorum to throw Romney off his game, and for MItt Romney himself to maybe help himself with a base that still is not in love. Tune in Wednesday for the CNN Debate starting at 8pm ET live from Mesa, AZ. And stick around afterwards. I’ll be part of the post-game commentary and this most likely last debate of the primary season.

But there is a problem in Jennifer Rubin covering conservatives at the Washington Post. According to the Post’s ombudsman, Patrick Pexton, editorial page editor Fred Hiatt hired Rubin “to be an opinion blogger who would appeal to conservatives and people who want to follow conservative politics. She does.”

It is the “appeal to conservatives” that is problematic when coupled with the affirmation that “she does.” For the past year, Rubin has done more to hinder the Washington Post in the eyes of conservatives as a place willing to treat conservative views honestly than even hiring Ezra Klein and Greg Sargent, both activist leftists who can, at least, put aside partisanship to occasionally engage in good reporting. We can presume that Fred Hiatt has changed the mission from “appeal to conservatives” to “appeal to liberal notions about conservatives.”

Today, Jennifer Rubin discovers that Rick Santorum is a devout Catholic and, through leaps of logic that would defy Cirque Du Soleil, arrives at a laughable conclusion not in evidence that puts a big spotlight on her understanding of devout Catholics — a core constituency in the modern conservative movement, particularly inside the beltway no less.

In her latest escapade, Rubin discovers that Santorum, a pro-life Catholic, believes that doctors who commit abortion should be prosecuted for killing a child.¹

In discovering this and trying to overcome her shock, Rubin first ignores that Santorum and most ardent social conservatives have lllooooonnnnnnngggggggggg held this view — and then she does something that not just proves her ignorance on this issue, but also her pro-Romney agenda driven hostility to Santorum’s conservative convictions. She writes:

As for his comments on prosecuting abortion doctors, this would, I assume, concern the death penalty in states that impose capital punishment for murder. After all, it would be contrary to his views (that unborn children are people under the Constitution) to decide for criminal law purposes that an unborn child is any less a person, and deserving of less protection, than any other person.

As Jennifer Rubin is clearly not aware, devout Catholics are opposed to both abortion and the death penalty. Yes, dear reader, you may be shocked to learn, but devout Catholics are the most pro-life of all pro-lifers. Where Presbyterians like me are quite comfortable opposing abortion and supporting the death penalty based on our reading of Romans 13, devout Catholics and the Magisterium of the Catholic Church are opposed to both abortion and the death penalty.

On Santorum more particularly, he has maintained support for the death penalty as it exists, but while in the Senate was opposed to its expansion for other crimes, voted to limit its use, and in 2005 told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette that

“I felt very troubled about cases where someone may have been convicted wrongly. DNA evidence definitely should be used when possible. I agree with the pope that in the civilized world … the application of the death penalty should be limited. I would definitely agree with that. I would certainly suggest there probably should be some further limits on what we use it for.

In fact, of all the Republican Presidential candidates, Rick Santorum has offered only the weakest support for the death penalty and has repeatedly sought to curtail it, never to expand it.

In other words, Jenn Rubin extrapolates from Rick Santorum’s devout Catholic views on abortion that he would advocate criminalizing abortion and somehow fails to both know that Rick Santorum is not a staunch death penalty advocate and further extrapolates that, despite his devout Catholicism and his record on the issue that Santorum would champion expanding the death penalty for doctors who perform abortions — something that does not stand up to either Santorum’s record as a public official or how he publicly reconciles his faith with positions.

It may be hard for Jenn Rubin to comprehend, but devout Catholics are so intense on the right to life issue, they really aren’t willing to hold on to the life issue at birth and give up on it at the end. What’s good for the child in utero is good for everyone else. It is, in fact, the most consistent pro-life approach, even though I disagree with it. Had she studied Santorum’s record on the issue, she’d see that those times the death penalty has come up in his career he has not exactly championed it, but has instead accepted it as (1) constitutional, (2) let it remain as part of the law, and (3) tried to curtail its use and application.

At this point, I don’t think even my friend Quin Hillyer can maintain that Jenn Rubin might support Rick Santorum.

More troubling, the Washington Post’s Fred Hiatt believes Rubin is supposed to not just cover conservatives for the typical left-wing reader of the Post, but also expand the pool of the Post’s readership to conservatives.

When a majority of conservatives have rejected Mitt Romney and the Post’s in-house conservative blogger not only routinely assails all the Republican candidates but Romney (with the caveat that she will praise non-Romney candidates whose actions benefit Romney) and does so while showing no understanding, no matter how nuanced, of basic conservative positions like abortion and life issues, the Washington Post needs to rethink its strategy.

Sometime around 8pm I hope to have time to take on George Lucas and his latest “story” about who shot first.

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Consider this an open thread.

You can listen live right here on WSB’s live stream and call in at 1-800-WSB-TALK or 404-872-0750.

I’ll be broadcasting live from 6:05 pm ET to 9pm.

Consider this an open thread.

The article profiles a number of people who take advantage of the federal social safety net and are increasingly resentful of it. The solutions on fixing it vary. The angry, for some, may or may not be misplaced. The article reads as a Rorschach test on your ideology — liberals will read it and find the people hypocritical. Conservatives will read it and find it all maddening.

The key paragraphs of the whole article comes toward the beginning:

The government safety net was created to keep Americans from abject poverty, but the poorest households no longer receive a majority of government benefits. A secondary mission has gradually become primary: maintaining the middle class from childhood through retirement. The share of benefits flowing to the least affluent households, the bottom fifth, has declined from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis published last year.

And as more middle-class families … land in the safety net …, anger at the government has increased alongside. Many people say they are angry because the government is wasting money and giving money to people who do not deserve it. But more than that, they say they want to reduce the role of government in their own lives. They are frustrated that they need help, feel guilty for taking it and resent the government for providing it. They say they want less help for themselves; less help in caring for relatives; less assistance when they reach old age. [Emphasis added]

In other words, the United States is increasingly taxing the middle class to subsidize the middle class. All the talk about the poor and what the safety net is designed to do for the poor overlooks that the government has taken it upon itself to keep the middle class from falling into the poorer classes of society.

It reminds me of this Robert Heinlein quote:

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as ‘bad luck.’”

We seem to be on the cusp of that in this country and the middle class realizes what is happening. The creators in the country who come up with the ideas, take the risks to capital and reputation, and possibly get ahead are more and more being labeled the bad guys. But there is more to it than that. The middle class is coming to terms with the idea that upholding its principles will put it at a competitive disadvantage and they are seething about it.

It is a long held principle in this country that the individual is supreme above the collective and the government. Tied to that is the principle espoused by Abraham Lincoln back in Kalamazoo, MI back in 1856, that in this country, unlike so many others, “every man can make himself.” It is less and less true.

More and more, the Middle Class has become dependent on the federal social safety net. It was a slow and creeping dependence the Middle Class did not recognize until it was too late. Now suddenly their principles have come into conflict with their lifestyle.

The Middle Class believes that with hard work it can move up the ranks of society. It is not content to and does not expect to stay in the Middle Class. At the same time, the Middle Class recognizes its current dependency. It also recognizes that if it does break through it will be despised by government. Even more troubling, it does not know how to break through. Due to lobbyists, regulators, and legislators, the process of inventiveness and creativity has been shut down.

The tax code and regulatory structure are too complex for a small businessman to become a big businessman. Major corporations have, through carving up the patent laws to suit themselves, made it impossible for a small business to compete creatively without running afoul of a process or software patent that never should have existed. The entire nature of the tax code for small businesses is designed to prevent capital formation and growth. A sub S corporation faces a Hobson’s choice at year end, and forming a sub C carries so many compliance costs it staggers the mind. A large company or one with angels can afford this game; the average small business cannot.

In short, individuals in the Middle Class recognize that if they cut the strings on the safety net underneath them and take their own risks to make their way in the world, they are putting their own family at a competitive disadvantage to their neighbors who refuse to cut the strings. The government has forced the Middle Class to put the livelihood of its families ahead of its principles. That is where the resentment comes from.

We see this everyday. We see this in the New York Times article. Should someone dare to suggest that student loans are driving up the cost of higher education — an economic fact — someone will attack the person for having taken student loans. When someone laments paying out 99 weeks of unemployment, they too will be attacked if ever they took social security disability, unemployment benefits, or the like. And when the person rebuts that they had to do it so as not to fall behind in a world turned upside down by the government, their complaints will fall on deaf ears by the conformists who embraced their federal masters.

A stable society depends on a stable Middle Class. A subsidized Middle Class is inherently unstable. When the really rich and the really poor are upset, rarely does the society apple cart itself get upset or overturned. But when the Middle Class is upset, you can bet the apple cart will be overturned. And in Washington, DC, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are offering policies to put the Middle Class back in ownership of their own lives.

The resentment will continue until it boils over or changes are made to put the social order back as it was intended — using the social safety net to help the poor, not subsidize the Middle Class.

Stephen Glass was a fabulist. He made up stories and eventually he was caught. I read somewhere he wants to be a lawyer now, but his contrition is in doubt.

One of the things he made up was a story on CPAC. He may have made it up, but I think he got it right nonetheless.

After RedState got started in July of 2004, blogging on the right became all the rage, though it was correlation and not causation. By 2005, CPAC had a Bloggers Row and I went for my first time. The event was held that year at the Reagan Center in Washington, D.C. Most of the attendees stayed across the street at the JW Marriott. It was not an ideal venue, but it was my first time and I did not know better.

Being the good, intrepid blogger, I ran across the street to a CVS to buy a notepad, having left mine in my office back in Macon, GA. There in line were a half dozen young men, each with CPAC credentials around their necks and each buying condoms.

That is part of life on the college circuit. Young men, regardless of political persuasion or ideology, are intent on having sex, being boys, getting drunk — doing what young men in college often do. All to often there are also a few young ladies willing to shame their parents if their parents only knew.

But — and I wouldn’t be writing any of this had I not had a series of email exchanges on this subject in the past few days — I am more than a bit shocked by the young men at CPAC this year who just seemingly refuse to grow up or act their age. More troubling, while in 2005 it seemed to be just college kids, as the years have passed it is not just the 18 to 21 year old set, but the twenty and thirty somethings who just can’t seem to grow up. It’s like they started out at CPAC this way in college and each year at their CPAC reunion descend back to their freshman year rush week.

This is more and more common in society and none of us should expect that a behavior increasingly common in society should not spill over into any event including CPAC, but just because something is common does not mean it is responsible or acceptable.

We can be thankful that CPAC is not like the communications war room at Media Matters. But it should be much more than that. The young men and women who go to CPAC are often present or future leaders on their college campuses and within the conservative movement. They go to CPAC and are often on near equal terms at CPAC with people much older than themselves. Unfortunately, too many treat CPAC like spring break.

More than a few of the twenty and thirty somethings who go to CPAC seem to treat it like an extension of their college days doing their best to hook up before passing out. It’s not the majority to be sure, but it is a noticeable minority.

I am not even sure that there is a solution to the problem. But we should not think it is anything but a problem. It is not every young man, but there are many. They risk dragging the whole affair down to some bawdy, rowdy distraction. They risk embarrassing themselves and the conservative movement. They risk the perception premised on their own actions that conservative men of a certain age think that good manners and decorum around women of the same age is unneeded or unwanted.

This is not to say CPAC cannot and should not be fun. This is not to say that CPAC cannot and should not be a party. But it is to say that I hope the college groups bussing in students next year, the out of college set there to network, and CPAC itself encourage behavior we all too often don’t talk about anymore in our society — the behavior of gentlemen. Eat, drink, smoke, be merry, but be chivalrous too. There really is, regardless of your age, no need to play the cad at CPAC to score points with conservative ladies.

Conservatives should, first and foremost, want to conserve the basics and good behavior should remain a basic characteristic of the conservative movement. As conservatives, we believe in self-government. With that belief comes the duty of personal responsibility. We should accept that duty as the opportunity to do what is right, not as license to behave like fools.

It really is time to embrace again the concept of growing the hell up.

It is sad that we have gotten here, but House Republicans, including conservative stalwarts like Jim Jordan of Ohio, are set to pass Barack Obama’s latest stimulus plan. Except they are calling it John Boehner’s “Highway Bill.” Consider, however that Barack Obama’s budget, unveiled yesterday, calls for much of the same infrastructure spending the House Republicans want.

There is a reason the Heritage Action for America, Club for Growth, Competitive Enterprise Institute, and other conservative organizations are opposed to this spending spree. It is not conservative. It should not be Republican. It is Barack Obama style spending. Call your Congressman today at 202-224-3121 and tell him to oppose H.R. 7, the American Energy & Infrastructure Jobs Act.

Last week, when I pointed this out, I handed the front page over to Brendan Buck, Speaker Boehner’s Press Secretary, to rebut my claims. I would say he more than proved that this is, in fact, Barack Obama’s latest stimulus scheme hiding behind John Boehner’s name.

Consider first that this highway bill “expands domestic energy production and puts in place a long-term plan for America’s infrastructure that is controlled by the states and completely paid for –without raising the gas tax.” Why would a highway bill focus on energy production? Well, first because it is called a sweetener designed to woo conservatives to vote for it. Second because “the gas tax does not generate enough revenue to meet all the infrastructure needs in America.”

There you have it. Instead of opening up American land to energy production and using that energy production to pay down the national debt, we will instead jack up highway spending, bankrupt the highway trust fund as a result, and then use the energy taxes to offset the project funding. Oh, and even better, the House GOP has an accounting “score” that claims they won’t bankrupt the Highway Trust Fund. How’s that? Well, just like how Democrats took all the major budget busting provisions out of Obamacare and put them in separate legislation so it looked like Obamacare actually decreased the deficit, House Republicans have decided to take mass transit funding and pay for it out of the general fund of taxpayer dollars instead of paying for it out of the Highway Trust Fund. So it makes it look like the Highway Trust Fund won’t go bankrupt!

Accounting gimmicks — they’re not just for socializing the American healthcare industry any more.

This is the key. As noted in the rebuttal to my original claims, “the gas tax does not generate enough revenue to meet all the infrastructure needs in America.” But rewind the clock to just last July when Congressman John Mica (R-FL HAFA Score 66%) passed a highway spending bill out of his committee that spent no more than what the gas tax raised. In other words, House Republicans have taken us from being able to spend as much as the gas tax raised to bankrupting the Highway Trust Fund and requiring domestic energy production fees to offset the spending binge.

This is what smaller government looks like to House Republicans.

Even worse, in the rebuttal we learn “Currently, only about two-thirds of federal highway dollars go back to the states for them to control. Under this bill, it will be 93%. What’s more, for the first time in three decades, ALL of the gas tax revenue – the user fee paid by every motorist on the highways – will go to core highway programs.”

The first question is if we can get to 93%, why not 100% and get Congress out of the business of dictating local and state highway projects? But more so, note that all of the gas tax revenue will go to core highway programs. All of it. And Congress will keep spending beyond all the gas tax revenue.

This is madness. This is Barack Obama style stimuli and Barack Obama style accounting. It reminds me of the unemployment chart showing where unemployment would be with and without Barack Obama’s stimulus plan. After the plan passed, unemployment was even higher than Obama said it would get without his stimulus plan.

The House Republicans are relying on five year estimates of revenues generated from energy production to hide just how bankrupt they will leave the Highway Trust Fund with this spending binge. And in five years, none of us will be surprised when reality comes in less than the estimates.