Political Round-up: 1st week of January

Welcome to the first in a weekly series of posts that will run right up through the first week in November.

1) Romney got ambushed by some OWS hipster in a post-Iowa "victory lap" rally. This comes about a month after he got ambushed by a gay soldier on the campaign trail. Screw Romneycare; this guy's biggest problem is that he seems to fall flat on his face in one-on-one interactions. This is all the more puzzling because he's a fantastic debater. (Incidentally, if Romney does lose the nomination, he could score a few points with the more conservative wing of the party by loaning the nominee his debate coach gratis. Even if the nominee is Gingrich.)

2) Rick Santorum came out of nowhere to be the latest Anti-Romney, so that he can then run as an Anti-Obama in the general blah blah blah.

2a) Rick Santorm got an endorsement (though they certainly didn't intend it that way) from CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the group that recently suceeded in stifling free speech in America by pressuring a blogging service to shut down an anti-jihad blog. The organization branded Santorum as "islamophobic," which is as good as an endorsement as any.

Let me be blunt here: Captain Sweatervest does not have the organization in place to run a competent national campaign. He's going to burn out well before the convention. And, family values aside, he's pretty much the "same" big-government conservative as Romney.

The word "same" is in quotation marks there because I don't really buy the argument that Romney's a big-government conservative. I mean, I don't really think Romney's conservative. I think Romney's a federalist. By that I mean he believes (or at least appears to believe) in a small federal government and powerful state governments. I base this theory on the facts that he's trotted out federalism as part of his defense of RomneyCare and has infused his campaign pamphlet with federalist rhetoric. (There's no direct link to his pamphlet because I am not a member of his political campaign and I'd probably be violating some obscure and unconstitutional law by providing you with one.)

3) Obama claims he has "an obligation" to act without Congress. Can we start comparing him to Franklin "I have an obligation to act without the Supreme Court" Roosevelt again? How about Caesar?

So anyway, Caesar Obama can determine when Congress is and is not in session now, and can act on his own accord for the good of the people. Let's remember that when the next president uses recess appointments to fill the Supreme Court with originalists and textualists.

4) There are 1,231 waviers for ObamaCare. There are 1,231 politically-connected individuals or organizations out there that do not have to play by the same rules as the rest of us.

All hail Caesar.