Taking the pulse of the GOP race this morning we find: Michelle Bachmann is now her party’s frontrunner in the race to be the next President of the United States. And while you let that thought marinade in your brain juices for a moment, consider that barring her total implosion, she will remain the leader probably until the New Hampshire primary in February next year and possibly until Super Tuesday in mid-March. It will be until then that the party’s base of zealots, cooks and cranks will control the direction of the small-state caucuses and primaries.

Tim Pawlenty is out. But then, no one really expected Mr. Excitement to go very far did they?

Mitt Romney will spend the next five and-a-half months treading water until the primary calendar starts taking into account the opinions of voters who matter: independents and non-activist Republicans. During this time he will try ever harder to somehow seem relevant to the crazy base; saying things that neither he nor anyone else will believe that he means. Which is too bad. Because whatever his manifest other faults, Mitt Romney is a smart, practical, pragmatic politician. It is his unlucky lot to be running for office in a party that values none of these things.

Knowing all of this perfectly well, riding in to save the day is Texas Governor, Rick Perry. Perry will instantly become a candidate to be reckoned with. He combines the credibility of a three-term, sitting governor with the fundraising prowess of a Texan. And the cherry on top: he is as serious about his Christianist beliefs as it is possible to get. For all that Michelle Bachmann’s religious zealotry is manifestly, creepily visible in her eyes, there is something of an aura surrounding Governor Perry. In his good looks and smooth demeanor, he is the very model of a modern televangelist-cum-politician. The man veritably oozes righteousness and charm.

But for all this will appeal to the weak-minded and religious base of the Republican party, Rick Perry has an actual track record that will send chills through the great middle of the American electorate. It takes nothing but the most cursory review of Governor Perry’s record of governor to find a litany of lunacy, hypocrisy and outright evil.

My personal favorite is his supervision and approval of the execution of at least one innocent man. Perry pushed forward the execution of Cameron Todd Willingham who was initially convicted of arson in the murder of his three children. Willingham steadfastly proclaimed his innocence and refused a plea deal that would have given him life in exchange for a guilty plea. Although new evidence was brought forward that gave strong indication that the fire was not caused by arson and several witnesses in the case proved unreliable, a new trial was never granted and he was executed in 2004. In 2oo8 the Texas Forensic Science Commission concluded that arson did not cause the fire. When the commission convened to hear more evidence in the matter, Perry quickly fired and replaced three of its members, scuppering the investigation.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Texas governor’s contempt for justice and the institutions of the United States. He has most notably been quoted multiple times calling for the secession of Texas from the United States. All this time, while decrying the tyranny of the Union, and railing against the first stimulus package, Perry has continued to rake in stimulus money and used it to top off the state’s budget. As he continued to blather meaningless rhetoric about is fiscal conservatism, as he cutt health care and child health programs in a state with both the hghest percentage of citizens without health insurance and with childhood poverty rates reaching third world levels of 27 percent, the state faces a $27 billion deficit.

None of these things as well as the very long list of other fringe behaviors are going to make Rick Perry an attractive candidate to the large and growing independent wing of the U.S. electorate who, more than anything else want an end to absolutist posturing and gridlock and a return to normality. Instead, they will be treated to many more months of the Parade of Freaks that is the GOP presidential pool as they vie with each other to establish which is the true standard bearer of the party’s new theme, the Audacity of Crazy.

And in the White House, I imagine President Obama sneaking a smoke on the portico and smiling wryly as he contemplates the pundit hand-wringing over his vulnerability in 2012.

Carthago Delenda Est

Andy Kaufman, "Mighty Mouse"

Yeah, so three months and no posts. I don’t have much to offer in the way of an excuse really. Work has certainly been a factor. But more than anything it has been a combination of a numb depression at the direction of things in both DC and in Des Moines. It really does seem more and more like our political system and its denizens are simply incapable of rising to the occasion of the very serious challenges our society faces.

Take the debt ceiling battle in Washington. For a month now, I’ve wanted to produce some sort of analysis and prediction for where this was going. But every time I thought I had a handle on the situation; every time it looked like cooler heads would prevail and the right thing, or even half-right thing would be done, the forces of dumbassery raised their heads and smacked reason to the floor. And now look where we are: less than 72 hours from the United States of America defaulting on its sovereign debt. Staggeringly foolish. Unthinkable even two or three years ago. And yet, there appear to be quite a large number of people in Congress who seem quite content to go down that road in pursuit of the purity of their political dogma.

There will only ever be one first time or even the only time for the US to break the trust the world puts in its economy and currency. Once that trust is gone it will be a long time, if it ever comes back.

It’s a perfect storm of both circumstance and social dysfunction really. A combination of extraordinary circumstances that have created a number very complex and threatening situation for the state, the nation and the world. I’m not just talking about the global debt crisis either, though that is the Sword of Damocles du jour. It’s everything; the crazy historical revolutions in the Middle East, our involvement in the basket case that is Afghanistan and nuclear-armed Pakistan, the two-headed snake of peak oil and global climate change, the whole ball of wax.

And what have we got to deal with it? An equally perfect storm of political dysfunction. Our population is ever more ignorant of the issues related to and the workings of their own government. And ignorant people are easily persuaded by simple-sounding black-and-white political nonsense. We have a mass media and journalism sector that had been shattered by technology and unable to do its job of telling truth to power in an effective way and cannot counterbalance that ignorance or attempts to capitalize on it. We have an electoral system that is ever more influenced by anonymous bags of money. And finally, several decades of redistricting have produced a House of Representatives where only a small fraction of seats are actually in competitive, equally partisan districts. Most House seats are “safe” Democrat or Republican, leading to the worst tendencies of both parties to be over-represented in the People’s House.

So, what happens next? Nobody knows. And that’s the problem. At this point it looks like a 50-50 shot that Congress will be unable to come up with even a half-assed measure to assure the markets. Further, it looks like President Obama will not — rightly or wrongly, and I can go either way on this as well — take the responsibility on his own shoulders by invoking the 14th Amendment to order the Fed to pay the bills and issue more bonds. If that happens we really are in Terra Incognita, and hard country it will be too.

And what are we, as a people to do when our political leadership screws up on such a monumental scale? Even if Washington pulls the fat from the fire at the last minute with a semi-useful, short-term plan, it would still amount to an epic fail. Are we to continue on the same course, setting the stage for one dysfunctional, manufactured crisis after another up to and beyond 2012? Does anyone really think that in this divided nation the next election will change anything?

What’s the alternative? I find that I am more and more entertaining as a reasonable plan the “Cairo Option.” Take to the streets, shut everything down, demand change and responsibility. In our divided nation, there would be little in the way of consensus of what, specifically that change should look like. But I’m pretty sure that a baseline demand that our politicians start acting like responsible adults would get a working majority. Yeah, this would probably turn into social unrest the likes of which have not been seen in fifty years and more. But really, what other options do we have? It sounds insane, until you realize that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. An the status quo really is insane.

Carthago Delenda Est

My regular job, the one that pays the bills, has had me very busy lately and I expect it to remain so for some time, so sadly, posting will remain erratic. And between work and all the crazy stuff happening in the world, it really has been kind of hard to gather one’s thoughts as it seems the globe lurches from crisis to crisis.

Last week I gave a presentation to a gathering of health care executives about the impact of social media on marketing and brand management. I started it off with this amazing video by Dan Pink and the premise, “In times of profound change you need to re-examine your assumptions about how the world works.”

Certainly the first three months of 2011 make it seem like all the subtle changes in our economies and societies that have been slowly happening underfoot have suddenly let go, just like the pressure along a fault line can release decades of pressure in a few minutes. But despite all of this, I’m feeling optimistic. I’ll get to why in a minute, but first let’s review some news.

Let’s start close by in Wisconsin. Anyone who has been involved in GOP politics for any length of time knows that one of the great goals of the party is to destroy the labor movement in America. Not only is organized labor one of the only organizational and financial counterbalances to the moneyed corporate interests that support the GOP, but labor also stands in the way of turning the clock back on worker’s rights, a cherished goal of those same corporate interests. These goals are rarely stated out loud outside of the confined of the most rarefied party leadership meetings however. If they were widely expressed it would, as they say, “scare the straights,” and make non-partisan voters understandably a bit jittery.

But last month, emboldened by huge electoral victories that installed majorities in both legislative houses and put a Tea Party favorite in the Governor’s Mansion, Republicans indulged in a little wish-fulfillment. We got to see what happens when a political party fueled with a religious-like righteous sureness of cause completely unmoors itself from reality, reason and scruples. The result is exactly as , the tyranny of the majority:

Unmoored from reality as they were, the GOP perhaps had convinced itself that these policies would be supported by the majority of the population, or at least a workable electoral majority. The counterbalance to this wild-eyed overreach by the GOP in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere was mobilization of the people to oppose this. And lurking behind that organization effort, as it is lurking behind almost every one of the major events occurring today, are networks, social media and the movement towards radical transparency.

It has been everywhere, the punking of Governor Walker and subsequent release of the tape on the Internet; the mobilization of his opposition; the central position of social networks in the revolutions in the Middle East; the use of Twitter in getting updates out of Japan; and everywhere WikiLeaks and those damned diplomatic cables.

There are the cables cables foreshadowing Egypt’s revolution, a cable outlining the dangers posed to Japan by older nuclear reactors in an eqarthquake as well as the Japanese nuclear regulatory agency’s lax attitude. And even today, the US Ambassador to Mexico, Carlos Pascual’s has been forced to resign after his criticisms of the Mexican government’s war on drugs cause a rift with President Calderon.

Meanwhile, Bradley Manning, the US Army private who is charged — only charged mind you — continues to be held degrading and inhumane conditions in the brig months after his arrest. The State Department Chief Spokesman, P. J. Crowley was forced to resign last week after suggesting that Pvt. Manning’s treatment was wrong.

It is because of all this that I am feeling a bit optimistic in spite of all the apparent chaos. This is because what is emerging out of all of this chaos is the light of knowledge. We are now seeing exposed to the light of truth so much that used to happen in the shadows. From the shabby motivations and loyalties of a fake prairie populist to the rather astute observations of the professional foreign service employees of the United States, the previously only suspected (and even then with a sense that is might all be “just conspiracy talk”) is confirmed to be real.

But the truth does nobody any good if it remains an orphan, un-loved and un-embraced. If the arc of history is indeed, as Gandhi said, to “bend in the direction of justice,” then we need to start embracing these dirty little truths and acting on them.

I’m in complete agreement with Andrew Sullivan,

To rate this address on any political meter would be to demean it. The president wrested free of politics tonight and spoke of greater things. I pledge myself to try and follow his advice and debate with vigor and spirit and candor and bluntness, but with more civility, more empathy, and, yes, more love.

It never should have needed to be said, but it should have been said by these same people a long time ago. While none of the conservative commentators here at the Des Moines Register have been guilty of the subtle and not-so-subtle incitements to violence that have run like a crimson thread through the political discourse of the last two years, I think the sin of omission is present among most members of the national conservative movement for not decrying it sooner.

Pennance. Source: Flickr User, Tuna Sandwich, CC Non Commercial, Attribution, No Derivs.

The plea will go up among many of those guilty of these incitements that, “No reasonable person would ever have taken our rhetoric seriously.” And they are right. Reasonable people don’t take anything most of these people say seriously. They are fundamentally unserious (pun intentional). But reasonable people don’t tote an automatic weapon into a crowd and start shooting. Unreasonable people do, i.e. see Sirhan Sirhan, John HInckley and apparently, this young man in Tuscon.

It is perfectly obvious to “reasonable people” that irrational rhetoric inspires irrational people to do irrational things. And there has been plenty of irrational rhetoric and actions from the right over the last two years.

The National Rifle Association should give President Obama a lifetime achievement award for inspiring the biggest run of gun sales in living memory. Liberals were not the people bringing weapons to political rallies in 2009. It was not an opinion leader of the Democratic Party who told her political allies “Don’t retreat, reload!” Michelle Bachman was not the only Republican last year expressing violent resistance to the government when she said she wanted Minnesota residents, “armed and dangerous,” to resist cap-and-trade legislation. I could go on, and on, and certainly many will. But I think we’ve all seen ample evidence of this to know the truth of the matter.

This is the kind of thing that happens when you have an absolute view of the world; when you are convinced of the nigh-on divine righteousness of your cause. It then becomes tantalizingly easy to portray your opponents as deserving of retribution. It should come as no shock to anyone when weak minds take these sentiments literally and take up arms accordingly.

That is why we in the media (and I account myself among them, albeit in the lowest tier), the public can no longer afford to accomodate hateful, inciteful political rhetoric. No one can deny these jerks the right to say whatever they want. But the media and the public should no longer shrug that off with the attitude that “that’s just so-and-so talking crazy again.” No. Crazy has to be called crazy to its face. The crazy has to be marginalized and driven back into the dark corners of political discourse.

Carthago Delenda Est

“Carthage Must Be Destroyed.” During the Third Punic War, the Roman statesman, Cato the Elder, was said to have inserted this phrase into every public speech he gave, regardless of whether he was speaking of the war with Carthage. Thus, the Latin phrase, Carthago Delenda Est has come down through the ages to be synonymous with the repetitive insistence on something.

I’d like to propose dusting it off and polishing it up a bit and returning to its more literal meaning. In this case, by Carthage, I mean the modern conservative movement in America. For the sake of our future, it must be defeated, razed to the ground and salt sown on the earth.

Cato the Elder (Source: Wikipedia)

How can the two-party system be expected to function if one of the parties no longer has any interest in any sort of constructive engagement in the management of the nation’s needs?

Because what else could they do? Anything else would have meant admitting that, it was their fault. Modern conservative thought has moved far away from its mid-20th Century big tent with a Western, libertarian wing, an Eastern socially-liberal, economically conservative wing and an Old South churchy component. Conservatism in 2010 is now deeply rooted in the absolutist dogma of thought that is central to their fundamentalist religious base.

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Gelinas makes a good point. But this is hardly a comprehensive solution either to pricing externalities or to controlling oil demand. Note first this free-market pricing of risk will only work if the U.S. government holds oil companies’ (in this case BP) feet to the fire for the full cost of damage and cleanup. Which will require that a reasonable number of pro-business politicians ignore the special pleading of BP and do the right thing. Because, in the case of the Deepwater Horizon spill, those costs are likely to run well into the tens of billions of dollars; enough to wipe out the better part of a couple of years’ worth of BP profits.

But U.S.-based production accounts only for a smidgen of world oil production. Oil is a fungible asset. BP sells its oil from the wellhead to refiners who get crude from all over the world, refine it, then sell it back to BP’s chains of gas stations. The oil from a BP pump doesn’t necessarily come from a BP well somewhere. I might come from a Petrobras or a Yukos well.

Those who think that free-market approaches to pricing in externalities and risk would be well-advised to do a little research on the success of the residents of the Niger Delta region in getting adequate settlement for the environmental degradation of their region by various oil companies. Hint: not much. Or of the efforts of environmental activists in Russia. Hint: they end up dead.

Also, next week I will be in Des Moines on business on Wednesday and Thursday. I’ll be staying overnight Wednesday night and instead of staying in my hotel watching porn, I figure I could take the same $20 or so and have some stimulating conversation.

Drop me a line if you want to suggest a meeting place somewhere a) a short cab-ride from the west end of downtown b) that has good food and good beer. I’ll post the location early next week.

So, this is your advanced notice that there probably won’t be much to see here this week. In the meantime, enjoy a Cute Overload Moment courtesy of Dexter, the love-sponge.

Where have all the little dogs gone?

Also, look for our takes on the State-of-the-State message tomorrow by Noon on the website and on Wednesday in the print edition of the Register.