One consequence of the Republican Party’s current propensity to select its presidential nominee by the political equivalent of American Idol is that we are regularly exposed to sound-bite answers designed to differentiate one candidate from another. Both the brevity of the answers, and the enthusiasm for differentiation, come however at a cost. They obscure the degree to which the candidates share common positions; and they obscure the extent to which each candidate already has a well-developed policy package to offer to the American electorate.

While I'm not going to vote for you I certainly don't want Santorum to get the nomination because in an American Idol electorate like we have, a fluke could happen and Santorum would be a much worse option than you. So I'm offering you a few pointers on your speech, your body language, the telling of homilies---and suggesting you spend at least one weekend at Outward Bound.

The first thing you need to do is slow down your presentation. You look flighty, and fidgety, like you need to go to the bathroom. Stop all that. Stop looking like you know everyone in the audience---you don't, and you can't. It looks disingenuous. The best presenters pick one person in the audience and stay with him or her. A good speaker will have an image or person in mind. I would suggest Todd Palin, he is today's Mr. Republican, not you. He's the voter you need to hang onto.

There has been a frenzy of media discussion about a recent Health and Human Services decision regarding birth control. Let's go over some facts:

The regulation:

Requires employer who offer health insurance with prescription drug coverage that contraception would be required coverage. If and only if the insurance offered already covers prescription drugs. What they were saying is that contraception is one of those drugs that must be covered. This had nothing to do with a co-pay or any other media driven distortion of the issue. This is a fact.

That's right!  A Missisiippit democrat (we may have to let him in to our party!) has proposed to rename the Gulf of Mexico to be the Gulf of America! I think this is a grand idea and I don't know why I didn't think of it sooner. There is no need to stop there. We can call the Atlantic and Pacific the East American Ocean and the West American Ocean. It will remind Frenchies and Japanese who they are dealing with across that water.

Republicans seem only half there. In the three states where Santorum finally pierced the winner's circle, the overall effect was marred by low levels of participation. Rather than engage in a caucus with such a lackluster slate of candidates, Republican voters preferred to stay home and simply withdraw from the process. Republicans are making a classic mistake in military tactics which may result in further low turnout and other problems.  They are fighting the last war. The public has moved beyond many of the culture wars which Republicans have been able to exploit to their advantage for the last several decades.

Anti-gay rhetoric is back firing. "Personhood" amendments have failed in several states, including the most conservative one, Mississippi. And Santorum's penchant for out-of-touch sexual mores is as removed from the common place as a Medieval Knight fitting out his wife with a chastity belt before galloping off to the Crusades. 

Here we go again.

As a New York Times blog puts it:

When President Obama‘s administration last month unveiled rules that would require some religious hospitals, colleges and other institutions to provide free contraception to their employees under the new health care law, it might have seemed to be a political winner.

The idea of birth control being covered by insurance companies is popular across the political spectrum, even among Catholics. The new policy will exempt churches themselves and will have no effect on doctors who object to prescribing contraception. And the decision means the president’s health care law will help make birth control cheaper for millions of women.

So life should be good, right? Wrong.

A New Hampshire poll gives Obama a 51% approval rating and a 10 point lead over Romney in the general election. The last poll gave Romney a 3 point lead, so to be fair I call Obama's lead at about 6 points. The state's 4 electoral votes could be pivotal in the 2012 election. For example if Obama won several of the upper Midwest states plus NM, CO, and NV he could lose OH, VA, NC, SC, & Florida and be at 268 electoral votes, with a NH win putting him over the magic number of 270 electoral votes. 

Obviously, the reverse would hand the election to Romney. Wouldn't it be a uniquely American story if two hundred years after a man left hard-scrabble Vermont, discovered a religion in New York, the religion so flourished out in the new West that the spirit of the man, Joseph Smith, would now return to New England to claim the U.S. Presidency? Perhaps we should detach ourselves from the raucous political process and look at both stories, Obama's and Romney's. Is there someone claiming that freedom in America has declined?