Editor’s note:
The foregoing is by my dear friend and colleague—and one of my favorite people in the world—Katie O’Malley (known to Modern Conservative readers for years, of course). I have, on two occasions since Thursday, mentioned that I knew Andrew Breitbart personally, but that we were not close enough to be friends. Katie and Andrew actually were close friends. Andrew left behind a family, whose grief I can scarcely imagine, and a movement that loved him and misses him terribly. But his loss is felt keenly indeed by those who truly called him friend. 

By Katie O’Malley
Thursday, March 1, 2012 

As I write this, I find that I bounce between every stage of Kubler Ross’ stages of giref in 15 second increments. Bear with me.

Years ago, a friend of mine was listening to me noodle on a problem. She said, “You should call my friend Andrew and talk to him. He loves to talk about this stuff.” And so I did. At the time, he was still behind the curtain of the burgeoning new media space and none of us knew how exactly it would unfold and what his role would be. But everyone who spent even two minutes talking to Andrew knew he would be a game-changer.

We talked for hours on that first call (there was no such thing as short phone call with Andrew) juggling our households of kids in the background. We laughed, railed, solved as many problems in the world as we could before one child or another knocked something over. He charmed me from the first hello.

During that first call with Andrew, I was a stay at home mom who was trying to find my voice. I had feelings and opinions but I was struggling to find the confidence to express myself. Talking to Andrew with his “I know!” and “Exactly!” punctuating the conversation was magical for me at the time. He gave me confidence and encouragement to find my voice, and use it. USE IT. Get out there and fight.

Fast forward a few years and I took a shot in the dark and sent a snarky email to Human Events Editor Jed Babbin. The email was not in a format covered in “How to land a writing gig” but more “jotting down the wacky way I talk to Andrew and other friends.” And Jed, God Bless that wonderful, amazing man, let me further develop my voice under his tutelage.

And now, I feel the loss of Andrew in so many ways. I lost a friend. I think of his wife Susie, one of the most generous, amazing, kind souls I have ever met, and my heart breaks. At a time in my life I was struggling with a very real family issue, she gave me insight that changed my perspective and did so with such generous honesty and vulnerability it endeared her to me forever. His children were the lights of his life and as a mother, their pain makes me nauseous and almost paralyzed with grief for them.

As a warrior in General Breitbart’s army, I feel leaderless. In a movement that is punctuated with example after example of cowardly and self-destructive behavior, I fear for the movement and fear for my country.

Bev Perlson of Band of Mothers, always referred to Andrew as the “General Washington of our time” and she is right. Andrew did not lead from an ivory tower, a comfortable consulting office in DC or from the cesspool of Beltway politics. He led from the streets, from stages in the middle of deserts, corn-fields and town squares. He is one of the few people I can think of who never asked those around him to fight a fight or take a risk he was not already up to his eyeballs in.

One time I had to get him to a designated spot by a certain time for an important interview. I was on much feared “Andrew Wrangler Duty”. No one ever volunteered for that role, but many around him had to wrangle at some point. The challenge that drove us crazy? Knowing he had to be at a set spot, at a set time, and we would have to nudge him through all the people who just wanted a quick moment.

It didn’t matter how important the meeting, or how famous or powerful the person he was meeting was, it was never as important to him as the little old lady who tugged on his sleeve as he raced through a hallway who just wanted to say hi and get a picture. And you just couldn’t get frustrated with him when he came to a screeching halt…every 3 feet…for as long as the stretch was from where he was to where he needed to be, because it was so endearing and twas the very essence of who he was. He loved being with the warrior in the street more than any big shot that may have been on his meeting schedule. He loved what he did. He loved who if did if for. He loved who he did it with.

He was frenetic, exhausting, exhilarating and one of the funniest people I have ever known. He could make you cry with laugher as he barked out a self-deprecating story at the pace of machine gun fire. He could make you grab your camera and run to the streets to heed his call for citizen journalists.

After the Tea Party event in Nashville a few years ago, I noticed that my face hurt and I tried to figure out why. I realized it had been ages since I had smiled that much or laughed that hard. He was utterly and completely charming.

Despite the level of vitriol from the left, my frustration with my own movement, Andrew’s powerful, consistent, smart and saucy voice made me feel less despondent. He was the warrior in the foxhole who put his head up, took enemy fire, and let the rest of us see what we are up against.

All morning I have wondered, how do you fill the hole he has left? What leader can step up to take his place? And I know. No one can. He is irreplaceable. One person alone can never fill the gaping hole he leaves behind. We don’t need one Andrew Breitbart to carry on. We need thousands of Andrew Breitbarts. We need you to be Andrew Breitbart.

My heart is broken. But today, and going forward until my last breath, I am Andrew Breitbart.

A few years ago, the folks on Martha’s Vineyard, a favorite Massachusetts island getaway for New England liberals, were under siege by a wild turkey named Tom.  Unlike most turkeys who can be scared off by waving your hands or shouting at them, Tom enjoyed nothing better than attacking people.  Shouting and waving merely egged him on.  Compounding the problem, Tom led a flock of like-minded birds.  If you think of the Hells Angels, but with wattles and feathers, you’ve got the picture.

Tom would even terrorize people in cars, daring them to come out and face him man to turkey.  If they chose to wait him out, he’d peck the paint off their doors.

One day, the folks who rented cribs and cradles to vacationing tourists couldn’t make a delivery because Tom was chasing them around their truck, trying to draw blood with one of his spurs.  In a panic, they dumped the stuff in the front yard and drove off.  When the cops were called, Tom attacked them.  Four bullets later, Tom was dead.

Naturally, Martha’s Vineyard being a community of liberals, it was the cops who came in for tons of grief.  These are, after all, the same folks who get their shorts in a knot when American soldiers shoot jihadists, so you can imagine their outrage over a turkey being whacked.

I am recalling this event not merely to amuse you at the expense of liberal chickens, although that would normally be motive enough.  This time, I am leading up to a reason why I think it’s time we divided America.  I mean, can you imagine a town in Oklahoma, Montana or Alaska, being held hostage by psychotic poultry?  That bird would only have had to look cross-eyed at a Texan and his next appearance would have been on a dinner platter with a side of cranberries.

It only makes sense to divide the United States along political lines.  I’m not saying it would be easy, but it’s pretty obvious that the nation is growing increasingly polarized with roughly half the population favoring a huge federal government that oversees everything from smoking to nutrition, while the other half believes that the federal government has gone from being a necessary evil with the emphasis on necessary to one that is increasingly evil.

As I see it, the entire Pacific coast, along with the Northeast, favors Obama and the Democrats.  Unfortunately, those two areas are separated by about 2,500 miles.  Therefore, I would suggest connecting those two parts of the country with, say, a 30 mile corridor south of the Canadian border that would run through parts of Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.  That America would include California, Washington, Oregon, New York, Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maryland and New Jersey.  We conservatives would give up Hawaii in exchange for Alaska.  You can see where that would make for an odd-looking country, but no odder than the congressional districts that have been gerrymandered by the Democrats here in California.

I’m not being capricious about dividing a nation that has already cost 600,000 American lives lost during the war that was waged to preserve the Union.  I simply see no other way to resolve the differences when half the population regards abortion as murder and the other half feels that young girls are entitled to state-funded abortions without parental consent.  The same separation exists between those who favor same-sex marriages and those who don’t; those in favor of capital punishment and those who oppose it; those who respect the Second Amendment and those who’d like to abolish it; those who favor class and race warfare and those who believe their America is above such things; those who regard compulsory union membership as a good thing and those who don’t; those who defend public schools but send their own kids to private schools and those who believe in vouchers and home-schooling; those who oppose drilling for oil and digging for coal, and those who realize that alternative sources of energy might be sufficient for a house, but not for an industrial nation; and those who think that the rights of insects trump the rights of human beings and those of us who are sane.

If you believe that the bigger the federal government grows, the better it is, you will be right at home in the new America.  If you not only believe that illegal aliens and jihadists are entitled to the same rights as a citizen, but believe that the government should intrude in every aspect of your life, including those that it is precluded from by the U.S. Constitution, you might even consider running for public office.

Just to avoid any possible confusion as to boundaries, we’d build a very high wall at both our southern and northern border.

There would be no hard feelings between our two nations, but knowing how opposed liberals are to military action and how unwilling they are to fund the Pentagon, they should not expect us squander our blood or treasure racing to save them if they are ever invaded by Canada or, for that matter, by a flock of really angry turkeys.

Even if you’re not a basketball fan, you may well have heard the outrage and indignation that erupted last week over New York Knick point-guard Jeremy Lin.  Lin has been a sensation in New York, where he has reeled-off a string of impressive performances for the heretofore floundering Knicks after being inserted into the starting lineup about two weeks ago.  The one glaring problem with Lin’s game is a propensity for committing lots of turnovers, and I do mean LOTS.  This prompted a story published by ESPN last week about the weakness in Lin’s game, which in turn prompted a headline-writer to scribble-out the phrase “Chink in the Armor” as a header for the story.  This is where the trouble started, not because the headline-writer necessarily did anything wrong, but because Jeremy Lin is Chinese.

Fast-forward to Monday night.  Being a life-long fan of the Los Angeles Lakers, I was up late watching their game against Portland, and listening to the team of Reggie Miller and Kevin Harlan, who always do a good job of calling a game.  Late in the game, Miller and Harlan were discussing the play of the Laker’s forward formerly known as Ron Artest* and Miller was making the point that the drop in Artest’s offensive statistics was not of great concern for the Lakers, because he was such a good defender.  At one point during his comments, Miller uttered the phrase, “..let’s call a spade a spade..”  I was not sure I heard it correctly, so I hit rewind on my trusty DVR, and listened again.  Sure enough, that’s exactly what Reggie said, and you could tell by the way he said it that even as it came out his mouth, Reggie was thinking “oops.”  Artest being Black, one would expect at least SOME notice to be taken in the sports media the following day.  Not a peep.  I even did about 30 minutes of searching, and could find nothing.

Here’s the thing: ESPN fired the anonymous headline-writer, and also suspended an on-air personality who had the ill-grace to read the headline on the air.  Miller, who used a word which is considered at least equally egregious, did not even merit notice.  Why the double-standard?  Why does Reggie Miller get a pass?  If everything else about Reggie had been exactly the same, except for his skin color, I’d wager he’d be getting absolutely crucified right now.  The answer of course is that it’s all about perception.  Because Miller is Black, and the player formerly known as Ron Artest is Black, nobody imagines that Reggie meant anything by his remark, other than what he explicitly said, and therein lies the rub.  The key is that one, little word: imagine.

Political correctness requires that we imagine racism or bigotry on the part of the speaker or writer.  ESPN’s anonymous headline writer didn’t say anything worse than what Reggie Miller said, and like Miller, he was merely using a literary metaphor to make a point.  There was nothing the least bit offensive about it, it was a perfectly legitimate, innocent remark.  But because there is a broad section of the media who imagine that the writer might be a racist or a bigot, and further assume that Chinese or Asian people would be rightly offended by it, he lost his job.  This is plainly absurd.

*For those who don’t follow basketball, Ron Artest is a veteran NBA player, who last September officially changed his name to:

 wait for it…

Metta World Peace

Yes, Ron has always been a little “out-there.”  You just can’t make this stuff up!

Republicans are worried sick that the Democrats will be able to use all the nasty sound bites from the GOP debates in the general election.  I’m not too concerned for a number of reasons, but the main one is that the GOP will merely have to produce ads in which we show Barack Obama saying, “I’m pledging to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office” and “If I don’t get the unemployment rate under 7%, I deserve to be a one-term president.”

For good measure, I would produce another ad in which I showed Obama and jobs czar Jeffrey Immelt giggling as the president says, “I guess shovel-ready jobs weren’t quite as shovel-ready as we thought.”  The viewer would be reminded that this came a long time after Obama, Pelosi and Reid, shoved through a trillion dollar stimulus that they promised would turn around the economy.

Only a know-nothing know-it-all like Obama would even consider blowing hundreds of billions of tax dollars on solar panels and railroads, two things that Americans crave about as much as they do a case of measles or mumps.

In spite of Obama’s chief of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano’s insisting that our southern border has never been more secure, according to Townhall writer Katie Pavlich, there is at least one official sign posted in southern Arizona that reads: “Travel Caution: Smuggling and Illegal Immigration May Be Encountered in This Area.”  But I suppose Ms. Napolitano can’t possibly see the sign from 2,000 miles away.

It’s also worth mentioning that the American Bar Association has rated a record number of Obama’s judicial nominees as “not qualified,” and they weren’t even referring to Kagan and Sotomayor.  Or, for that matter, to Attorney General Eric Holder, under whose watch the feds allowed over a thousand weapons to be delivered to Mexican drug cartels and who, for good measure, refused to prosecute the Black Panthers for intimidating white voters.  For purposes of comparison, the ABA rejection rate of Obama’s judicial appointments is four times as high as it was under Clinton or Bush.  But I guess that’s to be expected when you keep trying to pay off hundreds of crooked Chicago cronies with federal judgeships.

Speaking of numbers, Newt Gingrich came under fire from the self-righteous Juan Williams for referring to Obama as the Food Stamp President.  Led by Williams, liberals insisted that was a racist slur.  But, then, those self-righteous ninnies consider every honest comment about Obama’s administration to be a racist slur.

Liberals were quick to point out that most of the 47,000,000 people now collecting food stamps are white.  As typically happens when liberals start tossing numbers around, the purpose isn’t enlightenment, but obfuscation.  Their intention, whether it’s food stamps or crime statistics, is to pretend that guilt can only be ascribed to white Americans.

In the case of food stamps, all they had to do was point out that the majority of those using food stamps are whites, not blacks.  While that’s true, it’s also true that whites constitute two-thirds of the population, blacks roughly one-seventh.  So while it’s a fact that whites are 34% of the folks on food stamps and blacks only 22%, 66% of the population is white and only 13% black.  In case you’re one of those who never quite mastered percentages in junior high, let me try to clarify things.  There are 310 million Americans, 205 million of whom are white, 40 million are black.  That, we can agree, is quite a gap.  On the other hand, of the 47 million Americans collecting food stamps, only about 16 million are whites, while nearly 10.5 million are black.

So, while I don’t favor Newt Gingrich in the primaries, I think we can all agree that he’s not a racist.

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of Juan Williams.

It’s always amusing when you see a little karma come back and bite someone in the backside who richly deserves it.  Sitting across from Mary and Donald all day doesn’t just mean listening to their constant yelling about how greedy, intolerant, racist and stupid conservatives and Republicans are, it often means also listening to how stupid Mary thinks everyone is.  The word stupid really must be her favorite, usually preceded or followed by an expletive, and always shouted.  I must hear it at least 20 times a day.  But Mary has one other “endearing” habit: she always parks in the handicap space, closest to the door of the building.  We work in a pretty old building, and the parking lot is fenced-in.  The handicap space in the lot is marked, but the lines are faded, and we have nobody who works in the office who is actually handicapped, or has a sticker for their car, so Mary has been treating this as her own personal parking space for as long as I’ve been there.

Well, last week, the inevitable finally happened.  Another person who works in the building came in from the parking lot a little after lunch, and alerted Mary to the presence of a parking ticket on her car.  She immediately went outside to check, came back in, and had a meltdown.

Who do those F#@%ing A%%Ho&#$ think they are!  I am NOT PAYING THIS!  They can KISS MY A%%!  They can’t come in here, this is PRIVATE PROPERTY!  That’s not a REAL handicapped space!  They should be out catching rapists and murderers, not wasting their time trying to give out ILLEGAL parking tickets on PRIVATE PROPERTY!  What STUPID A%%Ho&#$!!!

Yep, it took her a bit, but she finally worked-in her favorite word.  She carried-on like this for a good ten minutes, and finally finished-up by announcing that she was going to go out and cover-up the handicapped sign posted in her parking space.  Sure enough, by the end of the day, there was a heavy plastic bag secured over the sign with a plastic cable tie.  You see where this is going, don’t you?

Today code enforcement visited the building to cite the owners for covering the sign designating the handicapped space.  It looks like poor Mary is now going to have to hunt for a parking space like the rest of us tomorrow morning.

As most people with a driver’s license know, handicap parking spaces must be provided in any public or private non-residential parking lot.  It’s actually a federal requirement, outlined in the Americans with Disabilities Act.  Parking in a handicap space without a sticker always carries a painful fine, too, which is another thing most of us know, at least most of us who aren’t excessively absorbed with the perceived mental deficiencies of others!

It’s always satisfying seeing someone who deserves it getting smacked with the karma stick.  It’s just too bad Mary probably won’t learn anything from it.

Political prognosticators are a lot like Iowa and New Hampshire in that it’s only every four years that people pay them any attention.  Something you can always count on is that at some point they’ll stop gazing into crystal balls and reading tea leaves long enough to remind us that the taller presidential candidate tends to win elections and that the candidate with the longer name has an even better track record.  Occasionally, such notable exceptions as Richard Nixon and George W. Bush break the rules, but it’s pretty rare.

While studying up on the subject, I discovered that Barack Obama isn’t 6’4”, as I had assumed, but only 6’1”.  That led me to wonder if one of the prerequisites to being invited to join his administration was to be short so that he can always appear to tower over advisors and cabinet members.  I mean, 6-1 is certainly above average, but nobody that height would invariably be the tallest person in a group, unless the Small People of America was holding its annual convention.

Just for the record, Mitt Romney is 6’2, while Newt Gingrich is 6 feet even, although his weight makes him appear shorter.  Both have longer last names than Obama; make of that what you will.

Speaking of the GOP contenders reminds me that if Timothy McVeigh hadn’t existed, Ron Paul would have had to invent him.  I mean, has there ever been an occasion when sane people have been discussing the existential danger of Islamic extremists when Rep. Paul hasn’t felt it necessary to climb aboard his portable soap box and remind us that native-born terrorist McVeigh was not a Muslim?  Apparently at some time in the distant past, someone told the congressman that he had come up with an excellent reason not to take the fight to Al Qaeda, the Taliban and the Iranian mullahs, but someone should tell Mr. Paul that it’s not quite the argument clincher he seems to think it is.

Thanks to the GOP debates, people once again are talking about illegal aliens.  One of the sillier things they’re saying is that we should inaugurate a guest workers program.  With millions of unemployed Americans, do we really need to import workers?  Of course, like everybody else, I have always heard about those jobs that Americans won’t do.  I just don’t know what jobs they are.  Would those be in hospitals, hotels, restaurants and the construction industry?  Funny, but I seem to recall Americans doing that sort of thing.

Or perhaps they’re referring to jobs involved with agriculture.  If so, I’m confused.  It seems to me that with 12 to 15 million illegal aliens already here, we’d have sufficient numbers to pick the damn crops.  Heck, if farmers paid a decent wage — and with all that expensive machinery and expensive acreage, you’d think they could somehow manage to swing it — I suspect they’d have to beat off able-bodied workers with a stick.

Finally, to show the depths to which America has fallen, radio talk show host Michael Medved recently disclosed that the two most popular names for newborns these days are Jacob and Isabella.  I happen to think that both names are rather nice.  The only problem is that the reason for their popularity is that they happen to be the names of the two main characters in the “Twilight” movie series devoted to vampires.

I suppose we should all be grateful that an earlier generation had more sense than that, or today a lot of us running around would be named Vampira or Dracula.

Part of the reason that people enjoy watching sporting events is because the outcome is clear cut.  One team wins, another loses.  Outcomes aren’t usually so black and white in any other area of life.  That being said, my problem with sporting events is that far too often team defeats are laid at the feet of a single individual.

For instance, in 1991, with the score 20-19 in favor of the New York Giants, Buffalo Bills kicker Scott Norwood missed a game-ending 47-yard field goal in Super Bowl XXV.  Buffalo fans haven’t forgiven him to this day.  God only knows when Baltimore Ravens fans will forgive Billy Cundiff for missing a 32-yard attempt in the recent AFC playoff or San Francisco fans will cut Kyle Williams some slack for fumbling the ball during the NFC playoffs in the 49er loss to those same Giants.

For most Americans, December 7, 1941 and September 11, 2001 are dates that will live on in infamy.  But for Chicago Cubs fans, a third date is October 14, 2003.  That was the day when, with the Cubs leading the Florida Marlins 3-0, just five outs away from advancing to the World Series for the first time in 58 years, Steve Bartman, a fan in the stands inadvertently got between outfielder Moises Alou and a foul ball.  By the time the smoke cleared, the Marlins scored eight runs in the eighth inning and 26-year-old Bartman was a marked man.

Back in 1951, Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca gave up the three-run homer to Bobby Thomson of the NY Giants, costing the Dodgers their shot at the World Series.  It later turned out that the Giants had a spy tucked away in the scoreboard with a pair of binoculars who signaled the manager Leo Durocher, who in turn signaled Thomson what pitch to expect.  Of course Thomson still had to hit “the shot heard ‘round the world,” as it came to be known.  But Brooklyn fans didn’t know about Durocher’s shenanigans at the time, and it probably wouldn’t have mattered if they did.  Sports fans don’t want excuses, except, of course, when it comes to their own fumbles, errors and mistakes.

In the same way that certain moments can taint a career, others can be magnified all out of proportion in the other direction.  I am thinking of the moment during the South Carolina debate when Newt Gingrich used John King’s question about his first marriage to paint himself as the moral avenger.  Because snippets of Marianne Gingrich’s ABC interview had been all over radio and television that day, everyone knew the question was coming.  To his credit, Mr. King asked it first in order to get it out of the way, but it was the manner in which Gingrich employed verbal jujitsu to make himself out to be the victim of an unjustified attack that reversed the entire momentum of the campaign.

But I contend that Newt’s response had less to do with the reversal than the standing ovation it received from the folks in the auditorium.  It was the thunderous applause that touched off the Pavlovian reaction in the voters at home.  After all, what did his predictable slap down of the moderator, something he’d been doing regularly since the first debate, have to do with his electability or his qualifications to be president?

That is why my favorite debate was the one moderated by NBC’s Brian Williams.  Before the first question was asked, Mr. Williams told the audience to hold their applause, thus providing the four contenders with more time in which to respond.  As a result, it’s my opinion that all four men, including Rep. Paul, had the opportunity to make their strongest case yet to the electorate.

Recently, my friend Bernie Goldberg reported on a 2008 Pew Poll that indicated that it isn’t just conservatives who recognize that the elite media is filled with left-wingers.  In the post-election poll, 62% of Democrats acknowledged that the media had been in the tank for candidate Obama.  Of course every conservative is well aware of media bias, but I had assumed that most Democrats regarded themselves and their lap dogs in the fourth estate as middle of the road moderates and regarded the rest of us as being way out on the right shoulder of the road, along with the weeds and road kill.

Speaking of Obama, a friend send me a definition of “ineptocracy,” a made-up word that is deftly defined as “a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing, and where the members of society the least likely to sustain themselves or succeed, are rewarded with goods and services paid for by the confiscated wealth of a diminishing number of producers.”  It would be a challenge to do a neater job of summing up the Obama administration in 50 words or less.

Finally, lest anyone conclude that just because he isn’t my first or second choice, I would not vote for Newt Gingrich if he were to garner the GOP nomination, let me assure one and all that I will vote for any Republican running against Obama, and that includes Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes and William McKinley.

Granted, there are a number of things that I don’t like about Mr. Gingrich, but the main one is that I think he would have a tougher time defeating Obama than either Romney or Santorum.  I also think that all the talk about the way Newt would manhandle the ex-community organizer in a debate is a whole lot of hooey.  In the aftermath of those events, Democrats inevitably think their guy wins, Republicans think our guy wins, and independents, whose votes unfortunately determine the election, are busy watching “The Kardashians” or alphabetizing their canned goods.

For my part, I think Gingrich’s strengths would be wasted in the White House. Being quick-thinking and verbally adroit can certainly come in handy, but they happen to be skills I possess and I know only too well that I shouldn’t be allowed to come within a mile of the Oval Office.

With his short fuse and excess baggage, Newt Gingrich really isn’t cut out to be the president of the United States.

Instead, if he came to me for vocational guidance, I’d tell him to host a radio talk show or go be a judge on “American Idol”.

..and How he can Win.

For those of you who slept-in this morning, something very big happened last night in the race for the Republican nomination.  Rick Santorum swept all three contests yesterday, and not by small margins.  Most shockingly, he decisively took Colorado, where Romney was expected to coast to an easy victory.  And Santorum won despite being decisively out-spent and out-organized in all three states.

His Inevitableness took a very big hit last night.  Romney has had a very difficult time selling himself to conservatives in general, and last night’s Santorum win made it clear, a large part of the Republican Party simply does not want him.  The fact that Romney has not been able to generate any consistent momentum, that he has been unable to get the Party generally behind him, has been the only consistent theme throughout this campaign.  And for a candidate whose only real salable attribute is his supposed electability, the fact that he’s not even electable within his own party calls his viability as a candidate into question.

If Santorum is going to hold-onto this momentum, he still has a lot of obstacles to overcome.  So far, he has escaped the sort of sliming Romney’s people have been focusing on Newt, but starting today, that is going to change.  Santorum is also way behind in money and organization, and will need to catch-up fast.  And he is not without his flaws.  Santorum has been principally a social-conservative candidate, and as the nominee, he will inevitably attract attention to social issues as opposed to the economy.  He will need to become very good at focusing-on and addressing economic issues, as he will be attacked from both the left and the right on this.  But in my opinion, the best thing he can do right now is what Gingrich could have done, but failed to do.  Santorum needs to articulate a strong, conservative message.  He is the last, viable candidate with the credibility to communicate this message.

Much breath and ink is spent on the political right looking for, or lamenting the lack of “the Next Reagan.”  Santorum is not, and should not be mistaken for another Ronald Reagan, but he can take a page out of Ronnie’s playbook.  Think “Morning in America.”  He needs to start today painting a picture for all of us of what America can be again.  We live in a country that is exhausted and demoralized.  To a greater extent now than at any other time in my life, there is doubt about our country, our future, and whether our best days really are behind us.  Conservatives believe in Morning in America, and if there is any lesson at all in yesterday’s sweep by Santorum, it’s that there is a hunger to hear that message again.  Santorum is the last guy who can credibly deliver it, and if he does, not only can he beat Romney for the nomination, he will trounce Obama in November.

I love pithiness, and I think you will find none better than this paragraph by Erick Erickson over at Red State:

The Republican Party is putting itself in the hands of the economy. With Mitt Romney as the nominee, we will be forced to hope for a deteriorating economy because, while I will vote for him and think he is vastly better than Barack Obama, the fact is he has made no case for himself against Barack Obama except that he can do a better job on the economy. And let’s be clear — no Republican should hope or appear to be hoping for a deteriorating economy. It’s just that with no other justification for his election other than electability based on the ability to fix the economy, if the economy fixes itself, suddenly there is no justification for Mitt Romney’s electability.

Erick is Right.  After months of voraciously eating our own, this is where we are headed.  This should be a great year for us.  Against all expectations after his strong win in 2008, Obama is a very weak and unpopular president, and a very vulnerable candidate.  Certainly no incumbent president has been so readily beatable since Jimmy Carter, and Obama may be even more vulnerable that he was.  Yet despite this, the establishment wing of the Republican Party has steadily argued us into the proposition that the only “electable” candidate is Romney, a candidate who himself is unable to articulate a single reason why we should vote for him.  In a year when we should be running on our ideas and our principles, a year when the incumbent is the personification of why our ideas and principles are superior, the establishment insists we must run another retread of Bob Dole and John McCain.

All in all, 2011 provided us with some pretty good news.  For one thing, our military took care of Osama bin Laden and Anwar al-Awlaki, God got rid of Kim Jong-Il and, for good measure, Barney Frank finally got around to announcing his retirement.

It was to be expected that Jimmy Carter, who insisted on paying his last respects to the otherwise unlamented Yasser Arafat, was probably the only person in the civilized world demented enough to send his sincere condolences to North Korea on the passing of its longtime dictator, the aforementioned Kim Jong-Il.  So it is that although Carter’s claim to the title of Worst President of the United States has been usurped by Barack Obama, Mr. Peanut retains clear title to being the Worst Ex-President of the United States.

Speaking of titles, I had been unaware until reading his obituary that among Kim Jong-Il’s own honorifics were Best Leader Who Realized Human Wisdom; Master of Literature, Arts and Architecture; Humankind’s Greatest Musical Genius: World’s Greatest Writer; and, contrary to Al Gore’s opinion, Greatest Man Who Ever Lived.

One of the titles I fully expected to see, but didn’t, was Greatest Golfer in the Universe.  After all, even the likes of Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus, Phil Mickelson and Arnold Palmer, could only fantasize about shooting a round of 38 that included 11 holes-in-one.  Although I have no reason on earth to doubt the North Korean news agency that reported such a miraculous round of golf, I have always wondered why Jong-Il required 27 shots to complete those other seven holes.  I can only imagine that those damn little windmills threw him off his game.

An odd coincidence is that I believe 38 is the same score that Obama once reported bowling, a score that justifiably earned him the title of World’s Biggest Wienie.

Speaking of the man who is destined to take his place with the likes of James Buchanan, Warren G. Harding and Jimmy Carter, as America’s most inept one-term presidents, Obama has been accused of picking winners and losers in the business world by subsidizing the winners with our tax dollars.  Furthermore, cynics claim that he selects them solely on the basis of the owners’ financial contributions to his re-election campaign.  Pshaw!  Even someone as openly partisan as I am can see how unjust that is.  If that charge had any merit at all, Solyndra, as well as several other green energy concerns handpicked by this administration would be flourishing.  So where, I ask on Obama’s behalf, are all these alleged winners?  Instead, I say that Obama has exhibited the exact same questionable instincts when picking winners in the world of commerce that he’s shown in picking cabinet members, friends and religious mentors.

Finally, in all the squabbling between Republican presidential contenders, I have yet to hear anyone utter the unfortunate truth about Arabs and Muslims.  For all the joyous blather that greeted the so-called Arab spring, the world has had no reason to rejoice over the results in Egypt, Libya or Syria.  For their part, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, continue to be the same cesspools they were before America sacrificed blood and treasure in the hope of protecting one group of medieval terrorists from another.

In Saudi Arabia, one of our alleged allies in that part of the world, school textbooks continue to promote the official Islamic bilge that women are “weak and irresponsible,” that homosexuals “should be killed,” and that “the hour of judgment will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them.”

In the meantime, any Christian unfortunate enough to find himself in the Middle East is fair game for jihadists.

But all the while, we Americans are trained to parrot the lie, so often repeated by George Bush and Barack Obama, that Islam is a religion of peace and that America’s Muslims — in spite of Major Hasan’s murderous rampage at Fort Hood, the campaign to erect a victory mosque at Ground Zero, and the Muslims in Dearborn, Michigan, who, along with their friends and relatives in Gaza, celebrated on 9/11 — are every bit as benign and patriotic as the folks in the Tea Party movement.

Until we get a president who is willing to acknowledge that we are at war with Islamic fundamentalists; that Muslims played absolutely no role in the creation of the United States; that they are dedicated to a worldwide caliphate, whose primary goal would be the extermination of Jews and Christians; and that in any war waged between one Muslim sect and another, our place should be on the sidelines, cheering them on; we will continue being drawn into one bloody and ultimately futile enterprise after another.