Each one of these developments has its own destabilizing impact on an
increasingly fragile world.  When taken together, these ingredients
produce a dangerous recipe for spiraling global problems unlike any that
the world has ever faced before.  The uncertainty alone makes optimism
difficult in even the most stable countries, and makes hope elusive in
the rest of the world.  With a world economy that teeters on the edge of
financial collapse, just one international crisis could tip the balance,
especially with so many nations struggling to just survive under
mountains of deeper and deeper debt.

Throughout history, periods of peace and prosperity have depended on
strength and stability, not weakness and decay.  For decades, the United
States has served as an important source of that strength and stability.

The United States economy has powered the world economy through
challenging times. The United States military might has protected and
deterred conflicts that might threaten the globe.  Both the economic
might and military power have given U.S. Presidents the ability to speak
and act authoritatively, giving direction and reassurance to an
otherwise uncertain and sometimes chaotic world.

On June 12, 1987, in a speech at the Brandenburg Gate near the Berlin
Wall, President Ronald Reagan did not apologize for a past of airlifts
of food and supplies to the West Berliners in defiance of Soviet rule.
Instead, President Reagan said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”

Indeed, on June 26, 1963, when President John F. Kennedy flew to West
Berlin, he did not speak softly either; instead, he defiantly said “Ich
bin ein Berliner” – “I am a Berliner.”

President Kennedy and President Reagan boldly challenged the Soviets
from a position of strength – grounded in economic and military might.
The result was peace and prosperity, and eventually victory over
Communist oppression.

Throughout history, strength has an interesting way of calming troubled
times and opening the door to peace and prosperity. Today, the world
would have been a very different place if either President Kennedy or
Reagan had chosen the path of apology, unilateral disarmament, and
weakness.

That was then, this is now.

The Obama Administration proposes eliminating a minimum of 8 brigade
combat teams from the Army; 6 combat battalions and 4 tactical air
squadrons from the Marines; 130 planes and 7 tactical squadrons from the
Air Force; and 7 Navy cruisers.  More cuts are on the table, among which
is the Administration’s proposal to reduce the U.S. nuclear arsenal by
as much as 80 percent.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta conceded that such drastic cuts
involve risks, but concluded that the Administration believes they are
‘acceptable risks.’

Meanwhile, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made clear that he was
not backing down on his threats.  He not only confirmed that Iran is
much closer to successfully processing nuclear fuel, but also threatened
countries who might interfere.

Specifically, Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency confirmed
that the ambassadors to Italy, Spain, France, the Netherlands, Greece,
and Portugal had been told they would be cut off from Iranian oil.
Iran’s official statement was that “Iran warns Europe it will find other
customers for its oil.”  Many of these countries already face
challenging futures because of economic instability arising from heavy
debt loads.

But, the consequences would extend beyond Europe. If Iran did cut off
the oil, some estimates are that the global price of oil would double.

Meanwhile, Russia and China continue their ‘nuclear weapons
modernization’ programs.  Both countries continue their program of
increasing not only the numbers of nuclear weapons but also the roles of
those weapons in overall military strategies.  In addition, both
countries are experimenting with the development and deployment of new
types of nuclear weapons including tactical and ‘low-yield’ weapons.

Experts openly worry about the degree to which these dynamics – Russia’s
and China’s increasing nuclear strength (and corresponding international
political clout) in the face of declining U.S. nuclear strength – opens
the door to a new round of ‘political adventurism’ by the Russians and
Chinese without considering the Iranian risk.

During Jimmy Carter’s Presidency, the United States tried the ‘shrinking
America’s presence’ strategy. He cut defense and applied the ‘be nice to
our enemies’ approach as well.  Of course, the result was American
hostages in Iran, and Soviet-sponsored insurgencies followed by the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

The stakes are too high to repeat that mistake.

J. Randolph Evans
Column No. 1108 (2/17/12)

Indeed, in Nevada, Gingrich proved that when deployed, his ground operations could outperform the Paul army. Second, that while in the next two major races Romney’s ability to outspend by 5 to 1 in attack ads and drive down turnout will have real impact in Arizona and his other home state of Michigan , the approach of Super Tuesday — with10 states and 437 delegates at stake – makes this less likely.

With the key primary battlegrounds of Georgia (Gingrich’s home state), Oklahoma, Tennessee and Ohio and the key caucuses Alaska, Idaho, and North Dakota, Romney’s the negative attacks are likely to have the diminished impact they had in South Carolina.

Moreover, the Gingrich “dream team” endorsements of Gov. Nathan Deal and Herman Cain in Georgia, Thompson in Tennessee, Watts in Oklahoma, Todd Palin in Alaska will be a factor.

Third and finally, the Gingrich planners projected that with only 396 delegates chosen in March, no clear frontrunner is likely to emerge until Texas (155 delegates on April 3) and there too the endorsement and help of Gov. Perry is to their advantage.

Yet for all of the arithmetic showing the race will go on and no single set of states could put the contest away — through Super Tuesday less than 800 delegates will be selected and many will be proportionally distributed — those of us who were part of Gingrich’s first-quarter huddle in Las Vegas also detected more ambiguous yet powerful forces at work.

- By Jim Galloway, Political Insider

Randy Evans, the Atlanta attorney and long-time associate of Newt Gingrich, has posted a long, long defense of the viability of former U.S. House speaker’s campaign for president at Newsmax.com.

Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, comments on the issue:

“Southern Baptists and people of other various faith communities are outraged with President Obama’s so-called compromise on his administration’s abortion mandate. In his attempt to mollify his radical pro-abortion supporters, President Obama has declared that individual conscience is subject to government edict.

“The president’s failure to grasp the seriousness of this issue reveals a dangerous presidential blind spot concerning First Amendment constitutional religious free exercise guarantees. It also highlights the wisdom of our forefathers who bequeathed to us a legislative system that is supposed to pass laws with the consent of the governed through their elected representatives, rather than being governed by executive branch imperial edicts passed down from on high. If these issues had been subjected to the legislative process as our political system intends, then the problems we are currently facing would have surfaced and been dealt with in ways that would have truly respected both individual conscience and the health needs of our citizens.

“For instance, the fact is GuideStone, a Southern Baptist medical plan provider, (founded in 1918 and covering approximately 200,000 pastors, church workers, professors, secretaries, social workers, missionaries at home and abroad) is self-funded. That means that it pays benefits directly instead of using a third party insurance company as the source of benefit payments. This self-funded approach to health care coverage, common in the faith community, was completely ignored by the president in his statement today. Did he truly not know of such plans?

“As GuideStone’s president O.S. Hawkins has stated, ‘The President’s statement today is an insulting affront illustrating a basic lack of understanding that this issue will not be solved by sleight of hand word games. It is a fundamental matter of religious liberty that threatens the very coverage of those dedicated persons who serve our churches and affiliated organizations. GuideStone will never depart from the core convictions it has held dear for decades regarding the sanctity of life.’

“Today President Obama let down his fellow Americans of religious faith by dismissing these issues of inviolable conscience as troublesome inconveniences. The president’s so-called compromise tramples the deeply held beliefs of tens of millions of Americans, beliefs that are guaranteed and protected by the U.S. Constitution.

“Mr. President, mere accounting tricks will not suffice. You have given your fellow citizens’ cry of conscience the dismissive back of your hand by offering them not a solution, but a distinction without a difference.”

The Southern Baptist Convention is America’s largest non-Catholic denomination with more than 16.2 million members in over 44,000 churches nationwide. The Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission is the SBC’s ethics, religious liberty and public policy agency with offices in Nashville, Tenn. and Washington, D.C.

To request an interview with Dr. Richard Land, contact Elizabeth Wood at (615) 782-8401, or by e-mail at ewood@erlc.com.

The American public’s dependence on the federal government shot up 23% in just two years under President Obama, with 67 million now relying on some federal program, according to a newly released study by the Heritage Foundation.

The conservative think tank’s annual Index of Dependence on Government tracks money spent on housing, health, welfare, education subsidies and other federal programs that were “traditionally provided to needy people by local organizations and families.”

The increase under Obama is the biggest two-year jump since Jimmy Carter was president, the data show.

The rise was driven mainly by increases in housing subsidies, an expansion in Medicaid and changes to the welfare system, along with a sharp rise in food stamps, the study found.

“You can’t get around the fact that policy decisions made over the past two years, on top of those made over the past several decades, are having a large effect on the pace of growth of the index,” said William Beach, who authored the Heritage study.

Dependence on the government has climbed steadily since 1962, when the index stood at 19. By 1980, the index had risen to 100. It stood at 294 in 2010, the last year for which the data are available. The D.C.-based Heritage Foundation has produced the index for nine years.

The report also found that spending on “dependence programs” accounts for more than 70% of the federal budget. That, too, is up dramatically. In 1990, for example, the figure stood at 48.5%, and in 1962 just over a quarter of federal spending went to dependence programs.

At the same time, fewer Americans pay income taxes, the report notes. Almost half (49.5%) didn’t pay income taxes in 2009, the latest year for which the researchers have data. Back in the late 1960s, only 12% of Americans escaped the income tax burden.

Other findings:

The number of people dependent on the federal government shot up 7.5% over the past two years.

In 2010, for the first time ever, average spending on dependence programs per recipient exceeded the country’s per-capita disposable income.

The dependency index has dipped only seven times in the past 49 years, three of which were under President Reagan and two under President Clinton.

Some observers say the rise in dependence under Obama is merely a reflection of the deep and long recession.

But Beach says his team’s research shows that economic effects account for only one-fifth of the change in the index.

By JOHN MERLINE, INVESTOR’S BUSINESS DAILY Posted 08:02 AM ET

As more than 10,000 participants gather at the 2012 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) Feb. 9-11 in Washington, D.C. to visit with many different leaders of the conservative movement from around the country, they will hear discussed all the controversial issues of the day and, equally important, they will be presented with many ways and means to unite against the incumbent president.

Those who come to CPAC regularly told us they expect the gathering of some of the conservative movement’s most energized activists to be one where the party’s fissures are exposed and discussed, as well as one where the scope of the challenge and the big tasks ahead in the presidential and congressional election year are sorted out and calls to action heard loud and clear.

“We face the morality of Chicago, the self-interest of greed and the power of incumbency,” Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, told HUMAN EVENTS. He said that he expected CPAC attendees to be optimistic “with an understanding that the other team is very serious about holding onto power.”

CPAC will be the launching pad for the conservative movement’s 2012 campaign efforts, just as President Obama’s State of the Union address last month kicked off his 2012 campaign, said Al Cardenas, chairman of the American Conservative Union, which has long sponsored the annual CPAC.

It will be “ground zero” for the fight for the Republican nomination, said Cardenas, who predicted, “there will be fireworks and that is what makes CPAC exciting.

Among the scheduled speakers: Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, and current and former presidential candidates Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and Herman Cain.

Differences from 2008

Notably, much has changed from CPAC of four years ago, the last time a presidential election was in full swing. At CPAC 2008, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney announced he was suspending his campaign for President. At that time, many conservatives saw him as an imperfect, but acceptable alternative for a movement in which many were opposed to Romney’s rival, Arizona Sen. John McCain.

Today, President Barack Obama’s election and policies have galvanized conservatives against Obama and his agenda. The tea party movement, formed in response to Obama’s policies as well as to some big-government Republican policies of the past decade, propelled Republicans back into relevance during the 2010 midterm elections.

Conservatives and fireworks

The “fireworks,” as Cardenas called it, are likely to come largely from supporters of the various presidential candidates who will flood the hotel handing out material. Also there will be many vocal conservatives frustrated with what they view as various big-spending Republicans in Congress, spotlighting the gap between Tea Partiers and those many call establishment Republicans. Any fireworks would not be unprecedented. In 1975, Ronald Reagan delivered his famous speech at CPAC in which he advocated the politics of “bold” conservatism over that of “pale pastels.”

Craig Shirley, Reagan historian and biographer, reminded us that Reagan attended CPAC every year from 1973 to 1988—with the exception of 1976 and 1980, when he was campaigning—“because he liked conservatives and conservatism.” But, Nelson Rockefeller and Gerald Ford never attended CPAC .

What tea partiers are saying

Steve Bannon, who has made many influential films chronicling tea party conservatives, will be premiering at CPAC a movie about conservatives that features stalwarts like radio talk show host Mark Levin and columnist Michelle Malkin. He said conservatives should play “hard to get” and reject any call for unity unless “we make a deal where the conservative voice is guaranteed to be heard,” such as in platforms and policies that the eventual nominee will have to enforce. Teri Christoph, co-founder of Smart Girl Politics, which has organized conservative women around the country, told HUMAN EVENTS that much tension between the establishment and the grassroots stems from the fact that the “establishment types” have been around for many election cycles and “might be less likely to think that big changes can be made” while the “tea party types are newer to politics and activism, and they are not willing to accept the idea that things can’t be changed, and they want that change right now.”

“[The members of the establishment] have to stop thinking of tea party conservatives as a temporary phenomenon,” Christoph said.

Rachel Swaffer, a Ron Paul supporter from Hillsdale College that annually treks to CPAC, told HUMAN EVENTS that she was frustrated with the Republican Party because it “alternates between ignoring and disparaging the libertarian movement” and that CPAC “lends legitimacy to the growing libertarian, small government movement.”

Building bridges at CPAC

Ed Allie, a conservative from Massachusetts who supports Mitt Romney and will be attending CPAC, told HUMAN EVENTS that the party establishment “needs to recognize the “fresh blood” that the tea party brings to the table in enthusiasm and ideas” but that the “tea party needs to recognize that some level of compromise is necessary” while “both groups need to realize they are more powerful and effective together than either is apart.”

Allie, Christoph, and Swaffer all agreed that CPAC would present many opportunities and events for conservatives of all stripes to start building bridges.

“CPAC really does provide a great service to the conservative movement by bringing together the old and new guards,” Christoph said.

It is perhaps fitting then that Palin is delivering the closing address to CPAC this year for she has been such a fierce critic of Obama.

Palin also has repeatedly has said that any of the Republican candidates would be better compared with Obama. So Palin’s voice, as Bannon noted, may be important in the long run, as a reminder that conservatism is not associated with one person, and that may be the ultimate bridge that links the grassroots and the establishment in opposition against Obama in the fall.

In the end, Norquist predicted that the opposition against Obama would unite all. “As each CPAC activist leaves the hotel Sunday morning, American Conservative Union staffers will whisper ‘Obama, stimulus, government takeover of your healthcare’ in their ear,” Norquist jokingly said. “That will unite us.”

Tony Lee edits The Chase 2012 section and writes on politics and culture for HUMAN EVENTS. Follow him on Twitter and Facebook. E-mail: ALEE (at) EaglePub.com

Jarrett Stepman is a staff writer at Human Events and a contributor to The Chase 2012 section. He is a graduate of UC Davis, where he studied Political Science.  Follow Jarrett on Twitter.  JStepman@eaglepub.com

Voters this year look set to continue an odd pattern that’s prevailed in presidential politics for a quarter century. They will elect either a candidate with a famous father or with no father.

The surviving serious contenders—Barack Obama, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney—all exemplify one of these two categories. For the seventh consecutive election, the winning candidate will be either a privileged prince with an adored, powerful patriarch, or an up-from-nothing scrapper with no relationship with his biological dad.

Mitt Romney is a classic example of a candidate with a famous father. George Romney achieved distinction as an auto-company executive, three-term governor of Michigan, serious presidential candidate, and secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

Newt Gingrich, on the other hand, enjoyed no meaningful connection with his birth father. Newton Leroy McPherson was an abusive, hard-drinking auto mechanic who abandoned his 17-year-old wife within days of young Newt’s birth. The boy later took the last name of his stepfather, Bob Gingrich, a career army officer who moved his family around the world with the demands of his service.

The young Bill Clinton experienced related challenges: His father, hard-drinking traveling salesman William Jefferson Blythe Jr., fatally crashed his car three months before the future president’s birth. The boy later endured the drinking and battering of Roger Clinton, second of his mother’s four husbands.

Barack Obama fits snugly into the no-father tradition: Barack Sr. separated from his teenage wife and infant son before the boy’s first birthday, eventually returning to Kenya where he succumbed to chronic alcoholism at age 46.

Curiously, this means that if Mr. Gingrich becomes president, three of the last five chief executives of the United States will have grown up with minimal or no contact with their alcoholic, self-destructive birth fathers. And if Mr. Romney wins, three of the last five presidents will have emerged from the shadow of charismatic, widely admired political leaders.

The latter category obviously includes George W. Bush, who still worships his father, the war hero and president, who in turn profoundly admires his father, Prescott Bush—the 6-foot 4-inch World War I artillery captain, Wall Street titan and two-term U.S. senator from Connecticut.

Other would-be presidents of recent years similarly struggled to live up to legacies of famous fathers. Al Gore grew up in Washington, D.C., as the progeny of three-term U.S. Sen. Albert Sr., while John McCain spent his early life trying to replicate the heroics of his father and grandfather, both celebrated four-star admirals in the Navy.

No recent presidents can boast paternity that seems ordinary or normal, finding middle ground between the intense expectations of a powerful, prominent parent and the disasters of badly broken families with absent birth fathers.

In one sense, these extreme backgrounds now dominate the presidential process because that process itself has become so extreme. A rising politico can no longer wait for colleagues to push or pull him toward a White House race, or dream of sudden success at some brokered convention. A serious candidacy currently requires obsessive pursuit of power over the course of several years, with expenditure of tens of millions in campaign cash.

What sort of person willingly undergoes such an ordeal? More and more, it seems, either a privileged individual with a profound sense of entitlement, or an unlikely upstart whose status as miraculous survivor amounts to his own anointing. But despite a shared sense of determination and destiny, famous-father candidates tend to run dramatically different campaigns than do their no-father counterparts.

Sons of famous fathers work tirelessly to burnish family traditions and complete the unfinished business of prior generations. George W. Bush focused on winning the second term cruelly denied to his father, and Mitt Romney still hopes to claim the Republican nomination that his father lost to Richard Nixon in 1968.

Children of dominant dads display a natural tendency to run such “Restoration” campaigns—complete with pledges to bring back the nobility of some prior moment in history. At times, the promise becomes explicit: In 2000, George W. Bush repeatedly declared he would “return honor and dignity to the White House.” This line alluded not only to the scandals of the Clinton years, but harked back to his father, the straight-arrow incumbent who occupied the Oval Office before Slick Willy sullied it.

Restoration campaigns succeed or fail depending on historical context and the nature of the opposition. In 1980, Sen. Ted Kennedy (son of a world-renowned and dominant father) launched such a candidacy against incumbent Jimmy Carter, much as big brother Bobby conducted a prior Restoration campaign in 1968 against another sitting president, Lyndon Johnson. In both instances, the Kennedy brothers offered a recreation of the magical Camelot aura associated with their fallen brother, deploying two inevitable advantages of Restoration campaigns: a sense of legitimacy combined with nostalgia.

Unfortunately for Teddy, his Restoration campaign occurred at a turbulent, angry moment in history much better suited to a very different sort of candidacy: the “Peasant Rebellion” campaign most comfortably associated with no-father candidates who fit naturally into upstart, outsider roles.

When rage at the establishment prevails, Peasant Rebellions like Barack Obama’s hope-and-change campaign enjoy an undeniable edge over Restoration campaigns like Hillary Clinton’s primary run. She promised a return to the glory days of her popular husband, but the public mood in 2008 favored something more daring.

Barack Obama’s challenge in 2012 involves the uncomfortable incongruity of an incumbent president leading a Peasant Rebellion against the powers-that-be. It’s an embarrassing stretch to threaten to upend the establishment when you’re at the center of that very establishment. Nevertheless, the president seems determined to play out his role as born outsider: insistently blaming Republicans (who have controlled a single house of Congress for barely a year) for all dysfunctional government of the last three years.

An Obama-Romney contest might offer an incumbent president attempting to employ his innate outsider’s perspective to obscure the brute fact of his incumbency, while Mr. Romney must mount an underdog, insurgent campaign that reshapes his cautious, Restorationist temperament. The outcome may well turn on which of the rivals most deftly adjusts to playing an uncomfortable but unavoidable role.

Mr. Medved hosts a daily, nationally syndicated radio show and is the author of “The 5 Big Lies About American Business” (Crown Forum, 2009).

In the rush to say something, anything, after a big electoral event like Florida yesterday things can get said that are revealing.  On the smart side of things Robert Costa wondered if Gingrich is now a wounded animal, often more dangerous than a healthy one:

Speaking to supporters on Monday, Gingrich was defiant. Enraged by Romney’s “dishonest” television ads, he pledged to stay in the hunt until the convention, almost out of spite.

Indeed, as Romney said tonight, addressing his cheering supporters, “a competitive primary does not divide us, it prepares us.” If he’s right, Florida will have been a tumultuous stepping stone. If not, his negative ads, along with Gingrich’s barbs, may be only the start of an extended, bitter battle.

But a wounded animal tends to lash out and not exercise strategery.  Consider this tweet from an obvious Newt supporter:

This is why I can’t stand Mitt and a lot of his supporters…they are whine like a toddles and have the same level of self awareness of one.

COPY EDITOR!  Honestly, I thought I was bad at typing and spelling (Thank you Lowell!).  Anyway, we spent all last week looking at Gingrich’s total lack of self-awareness among his many other character flaws.  Fortunately, people are not bears.  When wounded they lash out, and they lash out with the increased vigor of an adrenaline rush.  But such adrenaline rushes also tend to block out the higher functions of the cerebral cortex.  Thus we get, “I know I am, but what are you.”  If this is what we have to worry about from a wounded Team Gingrich, I have better things to worry about.

Such as…

Mitt Romney may have taken his opposition to sound bit heaven to this morning.  He did an interview with CNN, from which a single sentence has been excerpted and is already being tweeted and facebooked and spread throughout the land:

“I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I’ll fix it.”

Now, it’ll be interesting to watch this.  Romney is, of course, talking on a policy level, not a personal concern level.  But that doesn’t undo the damage such a quote can inflict.  I also think that is a much more potent weapon in the general than it is now.  So, will it be held in check or will its power be wasted by Team Gingrich?

Whatever, Team Romney needs to get on this fast and hard or else “I’m not concerned about the very poor,” is going to join “I was for the 47 billion before I was against it,” in the pantheon of killer sound bites.

Of Course, It’s Nonsense…

The benevolence of the Mormon Chruch should be more renown than it is, but nobody wants to pay attention to the good stuff about the LDS.  A South Carolina professor has now studied the vote out of that state and found that religion played a significant role.  Well shucks, we know that – and the results out of Florida confirmed it.  But people suspicious of Romney’s faith are running out of places to go.  Friend David French pointed out in a special piece for CNN that Evangelicals will soon be abandoning Gingrich in droves:

But they also understand that we don’t discard our core values for the sake of political victories. Fidelity, honesty, humility and charity matter.

No one doubts that God forgives, but only God knows Newt Gingrich’s heart.  We only know his actions, and we know that he has a history of deceiving even those who are closest to him.

Three other Republican candidates are anti-abortion. Three other Republican candidates have been faithful and honest in their personal and professional lives. With honest alternatives to choose from, evangelicals will soon abandon Gingrich.

Santorum is a good man that deserves a better shot than he has received, too late now.  Paul is a good man, but a political looney tune.  They have no place to go but to Romney.

A lot of people are worried about a divided Republican base, fortunately…

The Left Will Unite Us

The really no longer relevant NYTimes has been carrying a series of blog posts about Mormonism.  They have many ominous titles:

• A Male Dominated World
• Can a Candidate be Too Perfect?
• It May Look Good on Paper
• What Is It About Mormons?
• Mormon’s Double Legacy

My favorite is the horror movie title sounding, There is a Dark Side To Mormonism.  (Can you hear the organ sting?)  These are all far-left hits pieces about Mormon being “anti-gay” or believing that the sexes are actually, you know, different from one another.  This is all stuff we conventional Christians hold very much in common with Mormons.  I believe come the general election, given this kind of attack, we will see our similarities more than our differences.

Besides, according to the left we are all crazy:

Coming this spring: The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science — and Reality by Chris Mooney.

Of course.

Many Washington, D.C., Republicans fear that tea party unwillingness to accept a pragmatic candidate like Romney will hurt the GOP in November. Rasmussen Reports polling shows that this view has found its way into the public perception as well: 46 percent of voters nationwide believe that the tea party will hurt Republicans in 2012, while only 26 percent believe it will help. Just 13 percent of voters now consider themselves part of the grass-roots movement, down from more than 20 percent from a year ago. In the public mind, the tea party is more troubling for Republicans than the Occupy movement is for Democrats.

The conventional wisdom suggests that tea party supporters have a “my way or the highway” attitude and Establishment Republicans just want a winner, but the data shows that the opposite is true.

Looking ahead to the Florida primary, 94 percent of tea party Republicans say they will vote for whomever wins the GOP nomination. Only 77 percent of non-tea party Republicans are willing to make the same pledge. This commitment to party loyalty comes even though tea party activists are less convinced than others that Romney is the strongest general election candidate. Similar results have been found in survey after survey in the 2012 primary season.

The pragmatism of the tea party is confirmed by exit polling data conducted for The Associated Press and major television networks in New Hampshire. Among those who support the tea party, 44 percent said the ability to beat President Obama was the most important quality they wanted in a candidate. Nothing else came close.

However, among those who oppose the tea party, only 19 percent put electability first. Fifty-three percent of this group said experience is the most important quality. In other words, the supposedly more pragmatic Republicans think it’s more important to have a candidate with experience in the current political system than it is to have a candidate who can beat Obama. That’s what causes the great divide between the GOP base and its representatives in Washington.

Those outside the Beltway are skeptical of insiders with experience in a system that created trillion dollar deficits and massive amounts of public distrust. Tea party supporters prefer someone who can shake up the status quo over someone who can manage the club a little better. But they are clearly willing to settle for a candidate who can win. Those who oppose the tea party appear to be more afraid of an outsider shaking up the club than they are of a second term for the president.

Put it all together, and Romney, if he is fortunate enough to win the GOP nomination, will have the support of both the tea party and Washington Republicans on Election Day. If Romney moves into the White House next January, the outsiders will hold him accountable for his promises on everything from repealing Obama’s health care law to fixing the economy. If he doesn’t shake things up in Washington pretty quickly, the tea party will be looking for someone new.

COPYRIGHT 2011 SCOTT RASMUSSEN

After months of predictions of a boring race and polls showing Mitt Romney leading, the final race was confusing — and uncalled — down to the wire. The muddled result has a series of effects going forward.

By early morning, Romney had won by eight votes, and a win is a win, especially against the conservative alternative his team would most prefer to face, and when the campaign spent little to achieve it.

Below are POLITICO’s seven takeaways from the Iowa caucuses.

1) Rick Santorum was the story of the night

As the clock struck midnight, just a few votes separated Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney in the Iowa caucuses. But Santorum was unquestionably the story of the contest.

The former Pennsylvania senator, derided or ignored by much of the media and close to broke for much of the year, managed to fight to a virtual tie with the national front-runner and fundraising leader in one of the closest GOP caucus finishes in years.

Romney’s camp for months had minimized expectations in the state that sank his presidential hopes in 2008. He barely campaigned in Iowa for much of the year, skipped the Ames Straw Poll and kept his paid staff low.

Toward the end, his team saw the potential for a win and played harder. Romney stumped hard in the state in the final days. His team sought to minimize the expectations of a flat-out win, which works in his favor, despite his own slip-up on the eve of the caucuses when he declared that he could “win this thing” (his camp insisted he meant the nomination).

But at the end of the day, Romney wasn’t able to expand on his 2008 percentage, receiving almost exactly the same level of support. Caucus-goers in the conservative-leaning Iowa GOP electorate simply have never warmed much to him. And the questions about whether he can expand his base of support — roughly 75 percent of GOP voters did not vote for him — live on for another day.

Santorum will now head to the next phase of the campaign with momentum, and into New Hampshire — a state that often likes to go in the opposite direction of Iowa. He was never expected to win, and now he’s the man of the hour.

His lengthy Senate record is about to get a vetting the likes of which he’s never experienced, and Romney’s supporters will continue to beat the drum of “electability.” Romney is still the odds-on favorite for the nomination, especially since resources still matter in states like Florida.

But now the former Massachusetts governor faces a winnowed field and a clear conservative alternative — one who is an able debater, can connect with voters and relishes a fight.

2) Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich are going to help Santorum

Their methods won’t be the same. But at the end of the day, Perry and Gingrich are going to shore up Santorum as the conservative candidate.

Perry, in a gracious and politically wise speech, told his supporters he is planning to “reassess” whether he has a path forward. Few people usually make that statement and then decide to continue.

That opens up a nice swath of prospective backers for Santorum in South Carolina, the state where Romney needs a divided conservative field in order to have a strong shot.

At the same time, Gingrich made clear he is planning on staying in the race despite a disappointing fourth-place finish. He praised Santorum for his “positive” campaign in his own election night speech — and lambasted Romney once again for the millions of dollars his backers spent on negative ads trashing the former House speaker.

Gingrich claims to have raised over $9 million in the final fundraising quarter of this cycle, despite maintaining some debt. That should enable him to march on for a while and to make headlines as he slams Romney — essentially serving as a human battering ram for Santorum, regardless of whether that’s the intention.

Michele Bachmann seems set on staying in for a while, although it’s not clear how much of a factor she will be with no resources, and having gotten just about 5 percent of the caucus vote. But Romney benefits from having more conservatives stay in the race, so she could inadvertently lend him a hand.

“The problem [for Romney] is that Santorum or some other conservative won’t have to outrun the bear, as the old joke goes, he’ll just have to outrun Mitt,” said veteran GOP strategist Alex Castellanos. “That may not be impossible if a few conservatives drop out of the field and Mitt fails to expand his appeal.”

3) The verdict is still out on the conservative media

Mitt Romney has not been a favorite of the conservative radio talkers, and Wednesday will provide the first real test of how hosts like Rush Limbaugh react to Santorum.

He could use the boost as he battles the better-funded Romney.

In an early sign, Santorum got a supportive tweet from News Corp. proprietor Rupert Murdoch, who urged Iowans to take a look at the former senator on the eve of the caucuses. Santorum also was a Fox News contributor until his contract was suspended as he launched his presidential bid.

But Santorum earlier this week took a jab at conservative and liberal media alike, singling out Fox News host Bill O’Reilly as someone who had no interest in talking to him for much of the year. It remains to be seen how receptive people will be to him now.

4) Chicago is smiling

While it wasn’t a three-way tie in the end, there also wasn’t a clarifying moment out of the Iowa caucuses. Santorum and Romney dueled through the night with a vote tally that went back and forth, and Ron Paul managed to snare 21 percent of the vote.

But the race going forward remains confused, and newly joined by an energized Santorum.

That can only thrill President Obama’s reelection team, which would love to see a drawn-out primary — and had lost hope it could happen as one challenger after another seemed unable to tackle Romney.

The race could still end in a few more weeks, after the Florida primary. But Santorum has lived off the land for months, and it will most likely take a lot to get him out of the race.

• Maggie Haberman – Politico