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.

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. 

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?

Before the process of deconstructing Willard Romney began in earnest a month ago it was difficult to objectify that special world of Finance which exists as a form of supra-capitalism I choose to call Financiocracy---a Confederation of institutions and individuals who in a multi-national context make money with money. 

The Confederation exists in an ethos which is literally not anchored to our traditional form of locale-specific capitalism. One of the most vivid examples of such un-connectedness is when, in the invention of Mortgage Backed Securities, sold and traded world wide, home mortgages in the U.S.were severed from the established grounding of actual paperwork and signatures, and the physical recording of mortgages in the municipalities where the asset resides, a centuries-old practice, was violated. 

Romneyville crystalizes one aspect of this brave new world of finance so discreetly and clearly that it is likely to remain as Exhibit A of a practice known as Private Equity for a generation to come. Romneyville rests on several important privileges extracted from the government and populace of the U.S (see below).

It is almost impossible to understate the achievements of Bain Capital and Mitt Romney, but I'll try.

Bain capital financed a new Mall store retail chain called Staples. The idea came from two veteran Retailers. Home Depot, for example, had been in existence for over 15 years before Staples and served as a model of how a bunch of Mom and Pop building supply stores could be put out of business, products bought from China and prices reduced for the benefit of consumers. Staples is one of about fifty retail segments so reorganized and financed in the U.S. Its total sales are a fraction of Walmart, for example, and about one one thousandth of the retail sector as a whole.

In an improbable sequence of events we are reaching a time when everything is illuminated about Wall Street greed.  The improbable messenger is Newt Gingrich. The foil is Mitt Romney. The audience in this sudden drama is a combination of Americans of every political stripe who understand that financial industry excesses nearly brought this country to its knees. The stage crew is Occupy Wall St. The on-lookers are the power brokers in Washington.

During the news coverage of today's Republican primary I gagged at comments by John Sununu and Judd Gregg, Northern Republican Establishment stalwarts, aimed at defining Romney as an acceptable choice across the broad Republican party electorate. While a majority of Republicans will ultimately accept Romney if he is the nominee, he is as out of place with the rank and file Republican base as a Volvo in Gun Barrel City, Texas.

Most likely Gingrich will come in about fourth in the Iowa caucus which might seem like a big success for the Romney Super PACS who tried to bomb Gingrich out of the race, but for that strategy to work against a personality like Gingrich you have to make sure you kill him (speaking metaphorically) not just wound him. A wounded or threatened animal is sometimes more dangerous than one which can run away from you.

As caucus feeding frenzy comes to a gluttonous end in the inland state of Iowa there are likely more coastal journalists, consultants, and other out of state lookie-loos there than native caucus-goers. Last night from several states away I watched Chris Matthews and other television hosts broadcast their shows from local restaurants and cafes across Iowa. I was reminded of my many gourmet dinner outings with my mother who retired back to her native state of Iowa.

The insouciant conservative is back to work after Christmas, sharing his typical rationalizations of the core beliefs of conservatives and the failings of, for example, Obama. 

Framing his criticism of Obama's Teddy Roosevelt pitch within his own vast perspective of three centuries of social norms and economics, Brooks debunks Obama's attempt to compare the Progressive movement in the early 1900's with our current state of affairs. In criticizing the Obama team for making inept comparisons, he does worse himself.

There are a host of myths about Christmas---as well as anti-myths. There is a myth, particularly around this website that evil forces are not attempting to take Christ out of Christmas---when it is perfectly clear they are. Thus the anti-myth must be reinforced by Christians, particularly around North Dallas mega churches. Cops who control mega traffic for Christmas service goers are stopping drivers and motioning for them to roll down their windows and take a bumper sticker--Don't let them steal Christmas!. I was pulled over to the curb, a Cop asked me about my bumper sticker---which reads, I reject the myth that they are not trying to steal Christmas. 

No one can predict what impact the OWS movement ultimately will have on our society and our politics but the irrepressible tangible result is that the top 1% of income earners has been objectified---the result of which has been to put questions of equality into the headlines of our political debate. 

Re-framing the political debate has alarmed chief word polluter Frank Luntz who is now advising Republicans to say "they get" OWS but then essentially ignore it while searching for synonyms for the word "capitalism"---and, as always, blaming everything on big government.