The GOP: This Is What It Has Come To

Alabama and Mississippi are the heartland of today's Republican Party. Despite a veneer of modernity and significant strides away from their segregationist past, both states remain deeply conservative, and despite his Roman Catholicism and Rust Belt roots, Rick Santorum was the logical winner of primaries yesterday that threw the race for the party's presidential nomination into further turmoil.

Santorum's twin victories were shocking but at the same time not surprising, and should dispel any remaining doubt that the one-time party of the Big Tent has devolved into a knuckle dragging caricature of all that is rotten in American politics, as well as provide further evidence that Mitt Romney remains unready for prime time.

Despite the backing of the political establishments of Alabama and Mississippi and a huge fundraising advantage, Romney finished third in both states, and had Newt Gingrich dropped out -- as he now will be pressured to do by Romney and Santorum supporters -- the former Massachusetts governor would have been crushed.

While Santorum was triumphant, exit polls showed that 39 percent of voters in Mississippi and 36 percent in Alabama said that defeating President Obama their top priority.

In yet another gaffe, Romney had called the primaries "the desperate end" of Santorum's candidacy, but exit polls showed that it is he who should be feeling desperate. With the exception of the elderly, no demographic got behind him and even affluent voters flocked to Santorum. Oh, and young voters stayed away from all three candidates in droves.

With Hawaii and American Samoa also voting, Romney still garnered the most delegates despite continuing to run what is possibly the most pathetic campaign in modern history. Although Romney appears weaker after each contest, the nomination is still his to lose because it is unlikely that Santorum can overtake him even if he wins the Illinois primary next Tuesday. Then again, the conventional wisdom has been wrong much of the time, and a Santorum win in the state of Abraham Lincoln could be a game changer.

Gingrich at this juncture is grasping at straws. He boasted last night that he remained viable because he won delegates despite losing, a weak argument that Romney also has used.

"Ordinary people across this country can defy the odds," Santorum declared last night. "This campaign is about ordinary folks doing extraordinary things, kinda like America."

That is true, of course, but only if you are an American who believes in the co-mingling of church and state, opposes family planning and abortion even in the case of rape and incest, who sees universities as left-wing re-education camps, and never saw a war you didn't like.

Image by Blue Sky

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Tom Toles/The Washington Post

The Future Be Damned, The GOP Wants To Return To Those Good Old 1950s

June Cleaver talks to little Mitt, Ricky, Newt and Ron

In this most excruciating of primary campaign seasons, it has become obvious that the Republican Party has lurched not just to the right but into the past.

On issues ranging from women's rights to gay rights, the GOP unashamedly evokes a "Leave It To Beaver" past that, as Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts puts it, was "before Martin Luther King had his dream, before Betty Friedan wrote her book, before Rock Hudson was gay, before everything changed."

The bitterness and fear -- bitterness over 2012 not being 1952 and fear over an increasingly black and brown America -- among Republicans, who are almost uniformly white, gray and less educated, is palpable out on the hustings, and the party's presidential wannabes, passing up opportunities to offer policy proposals and platforms in contrast to President Obama's, are vying to see who can be the biggest demagogue in pandering to them.

Rick Santorum will win that contest hands down even if he won't win the nomination.

This is because Santorum has chosen to take a trip in the Wayback Machine (remember Mr. Peabody and his "boy" Sherman from "Rocky and His Friends," the 1950s and 60s kids' cartoon show?) to a time when young ladies always kept their legs crossed and blacks knew their place instead of focusing on what matters most to voters -- the economy.

Beyond the Santorum's misogynistic outlook, which dovetails nicely with the party's ongoing War on Women and use of sex as a wedge issue, there also are these aspects of the party's backwards looking stance:

* Opposition to affordable higher education and a return to a time when few Americans attended college and many of those who did were from well-to-do backgrounds.

Santorum unfortunately speaks for many of his party peers in declaring that President Obama wants to expand college enrollment because colleges are "indoctrination mills" that destroy religious faith.

* A return of cheap energy, U.S. industrial and military hegemony, extraordinary economic growth and plentiful jobs.

Conveniently overlooked is that the 1950s were a time of massive public investment in infrastructure and education and the growth of government at all levels and rich people paid their fair share of taxes.

One consequence of this hellbent pursuit of times when party elders were party youngers is that young voters are pretty much completely turned off by today's GOP.

Only 5 percent -- only 5 percent -- of eligible voters younger than 30 cast ballots on Super Tuesday, roughly splitting evenly among Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul, according to an analysis by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University, while so far only about 600,000 voters younger than 30 have cast ballots in all the Republican primaries.

ead more

here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/03/03/2673572/yesterday-you-can-kiss-it-good.html#storylink=cpy

Cartoon du Jour

Tom Toles/The Washington Post

Media Reports Of The Death Of The Daily News Are Yet Again Premature

There has never been a big city newspaper quite like the Philadelphia Daily News. Although it is a tabloid, it has been short on sleaze and long on quality journalism, winning its most recent Pulitzer Prize in 2010 for exposing a rogue police narcotics squad. It has long had the largest minority readership of any big city newspaper on a percentage basis and its blue collar sensibilities, powerful editorial voice and award-winning sports section has provided an alternative to the larger and more button-down Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Daily News has yet another distinction, as well. At a time when most big city newspapers are hemorrhaging revenues by the millions of dollars, the Daily News continues to make money. But the Inky, as it is locally known, is among the hemorrhagers and the two papers and their valuable Center City ivory tower property (think Superman and the Daily Planet) are up for sale for the fourth time in six years.

The Daily News has been something of an unwanted stepchild from the time that Knight Newspapers, which was to become Knight Ridder, bought the Inky from Walter Annenberg in 1969. He refused to sell just the Inky, so the Daily News was part of the deal -- and ever since has been on the chopping block or death bed or any number of other terms for going bye-bye.

And so it is that that fourth prospective ownership group has been told by its bean counters that the Daily News should jump off a cliff because the Inky, doncha know, is a newspaper of record even if it is awash in red ink while the Daily News is something else although it continues to make money. Besides which, the Daily News picks up the readers that the Inky misses and they're not likely to gravitate to the Inky if the Daily News ceases publication.

This bit of actuarial lunacy is sorting itself out, although 37 more jobs will have to be shed on top of the hundreds lost in the last decade before an ownership group led by Ed Rendell, the former Philadelphia mayor and Pennsylvania governor, does the deal. That Rendell is even involved has provoked controversy in the papers' newsrooms although he has said he will not meddle. Current owner Brian Tierney said the same thing. He lied.

I should mention at that I worked for the Daily News for a mostly glorious 21 years beginning in 1980. When I took an early retirement buyout in 2001, which was Knight Ridder's way of ridding the Daily News and Inky of its most experienced and often best staffers in a last-gasp effort to recoup lost profits, the Daily News was once again on the verge of going bye-bye. But the deep loyalty of its reporters, editors, ad salespeople, printers, pressmen and drivers, combined with its close ties with the community, as well as perhaps a dollop of good karma, kept its lease on life.

But for how long no one knows.

Cartoon du Jour

Ted Rall

Super Tuesday: Mitt Romney Wins The Delegates But Still Not The Argument

Mitt Romney was bound to win a fair number of delegates yesterday in the 10 Super Tuesday primary states because most of these contests were proportional, but the real test was whether he won more than 50 percent of the delegates since these states represent 20 percent of the total delegate count, a not inconsiderable number. Win more than half and Romney's sclerotic campaign shows new signs of life. Win less than half and the issue of Romney's electability looms ever larger and the Republicans might as well give up on winning the presidency.

Well, Romney won 209 delegates of the 416 up for grabs. Rick Santorum won 85, Newt Gingrich 83, and Ron Paul 20, with 19 delegates still in play.

Yet -- and any Romney victory these days seems to come with qualifiers -- he appears to have beaten Santorum in the pivotal swing state of Ohio by a mere 12,000 or so votes and may have lost had the former Pennsylvania senator met ballot requirements in all districts. This despite Romney outspending him by a whopping 4-1 margin, while the former Massachusetts governor lost badly across the South.

Romney pointed to his wins in Idaho, Massachusetts, Vermont and Virginia to make the case that his campaign has regained momentum, but Massachusetts and Vermont will go to President Obama in November and Santorum and Gingrich weren't on the ballot in Virginia. Nice job in super important Idaho, though.

Santorum rightly claimed that his victories in North Dakota, Oklahoma and Tennessee were further evidence that many Republicans are still looking for a conservative alternative. Gingrich claimed that his overwhelming victory in his native Georgia showed that he is back, a dubious claim at best since he remains in the race only because of the largess of a billionaire and finished third or worse in every other Super Tuesday state, while Ron Paul continued his winless streak.

As Jeff Zeleny of The New York Times put it, "Mitt Romney won the delegates, but not necessarily the argument."

While Romney took a little more than half of the delegates yesterday, he only won about 40 percent of the popular vote and 60 percent of the states, which is pretty much what he has done to date, which is to say that Super Tuesday was yet another opportunity for him to break out -- as George W. Bush did in 2000 and John McCain did in 2008 -- but he did not.

In fact, as Romney has continued to roll up victories and delegates, his overall general election standing has not improved, which arguably makes Barack Obama the biggest Super Tuesday winner. Current polls show the president winning in all of the swing states against Romney and has pulled even in Florida. He has a healthy lead in Pennsylvania and is ahead in Ohio, while his lead against the other candidates is even bigger.

Romney also cannot expect much bounce from Super Tuesday because of the closeness of his Ohio victory. Exit polls there showed that he continues to struggle with working-class voters and evangelicals. He was crushed by Santorum in Tennessee and now faces primaries in Kansas, Alabama and Mississippi where he will not do well.

"There's a lot of questioning about why Romney can't 'close the deal,' " writes David Frum, a former George W. Bush administration who was banished from the Republican temple for being too moderate. "But maybe we should equally wonder, why GOP voters refuse to understand how complex and difficult the deal is."

That, as the Aussies like to say, is it in a bit.

No one, Romney included, is going to come close to beating Obama by continuing to relentlessly characterize the man who took out Osama bin Laden and much of the Al Qaeda cadres as being "weak" on foreign policy and not providing concrete alternatives to the president's efforts to resuscitate the economy other than giving tax breaks to the super wealthy.

When Bad Things Happen To Bad People

There have been myriad consequences flowing from the Republican Party's decision to make birth control an election issue under the guise of religious freedom.

Even more woman voters are migrating away from the former GOP Big Tent, Mitt Romney has had to do one of his on-demand flip-flops on whether employers beyond religious organizations should be able to refuse to underwrite family planning costs (he's now for it, of course) and least consequential but most delicious of all, radio talkmeister Rush Limbaugh is losing advertisers like leaves from a walnut tree in October after three straight days of calling a Georgetown University law student who testified before Congress a whore and a slut and then issuing a non-apology. (UPDATE: He has now issued an apology stunning for its candor.)

The issue has now spun so out of control that the publicity is almost entirely negative, which Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski found out to her chagrin. She now says that she would not back the measure, which she said she had in order to make a statement about religious freedom, if asked to vote on it again.

That is what happens -- okay, sometimes happens -- when politicians or in this case a political party go all pious for devious reasons. It is a beautiful thing.

Cartoon by David Horsey/Los Angeles Times

Okay, Okay. I Reluctantly Agree.

Responding to Obama administration critics head on, Attorney General Eric Holder asserted yesterday that it is lawful for the U.S. to kill American citizens if officials deem them to be terrorists who are planning attacks on the homeland.

In a speech at Northwestern University's law school outlining the administration's counterterrorism policies, Holder said that if capturing a terrorist alive is not feasible, "Our government has the clear authority to defend the United States with lethal force.”

Holder is not the first administration official to address the issue, but he is the highest ranking and his remarks were an effort to ease the controversy over the assassination of Anwar al-Awlaki, a New Mexico-born radical Muslim cleric who died in an U.S. drone strike in Yemen last September.

"Some have argued that the president is required to get permission from a federal court before taking action against a United States citizen who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces," Holder said. "This is simply not accurate. 'Due process' and 'judicial process' are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process."

Holder's logic is not easy to digest after years of Bush administration abuses, but I reluctantly endorse it in cases such as Awalki's when there appears to have been incontrovertible evidence that he was planning an attack on the homeland.

The attorney general did continue the Obama administration's refusal to even acknowledge that a Justice Department memo on killing American citizens exists. The New York Times and ACLU have filed separate lawsuits seeking both the memo and evidence against Awlaki.

Choosing his words carefully, Holder did not say that a situation such as Awlaki's is the only kind in which it would be lawful to kill a citizen.

Rather, he said it would be lawful "at least" under those conditions. He also offered the example of a situation in which it would be lawful to kill a citizen even if all those requirements were not met: "Operations that take place on traditional battlefields."

Image from Al Jazeera, via Middle East Media Research Institute

Cartoon du Jour

Pat Oliphant/Universal Press Syndicate

The GOP Has Worked Hard To Insure A Political Apocalypse. Will That Happen?

Eight months from tomorrow, Americans will go to the polls to vote in what is in effect is a referendum on the future of the Republican Party.

This is because the GOP, to riff on a phrase used by some of its presidential candidates this primary season in a far different context, is at a tipping point. Not Rick Santorum's tipping point -- "when those who pay are the minority and those who receive are the majority" -- but whether a party that has marched ever deeper into the electoral wilderness and away from what not long ago was a plausible shot at taking back the White House, can remain a national contender.

The reasons that Republicans have arrived at this crossroads less than two years after recapturing the House are not only obvious, they are acknowledged by saner party leaders in increasingly public denunciations of the culture war-based campaigns that Santorum, Newt Gingrich and even Mitt Romney have run dependent on red-meat hyperbole that appeals to the party's white, less educated and rural base.

It was Pat Buchanan who launched the culture wars with a fiery speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention in which he railed against legal abortion, gay rights, discrimination against religious schools and women in combat.

That the GOP embraced all that and more, including making English the official language and denying citizenship to the U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, throughout the last decade is a commentary both on its fealty to evangelicals and hard right-wingers and the reality that it was bereft of policies beyond going to war with any country that gave America the finger.

It has not helped that President Obama, in some respects, has had some good luck to go along with his ability to lead and occasionally inspire.

But the biggest reason that Obama may be cruising to a landslide victory on November 6 is that the very people who elected him -- the young, college educated and independent women with a smattering of independent men -- are repelled by the racial, class and gender resentments that have become the Republican stock in trade. Stir in Republican congressfolk whose only goal has been to prevent Obama from doing his job while trying to pull the rug out from under the middle class, the poor, the elderly and the infirm, and you have a recipe for electoral Armageddon.

Beyond these factors is the reality that demographic trends favor the Democrats.

Republicans have made no effort to court Hispanics and other immigrants, who represent the fastest growing bloc of new voters. This bloc would seem to be a built-in opportunity for the GOP to win new friends and influence people, but instead it has denigrated the immigrant community and tried to impose draconian measures on it.

There is yet another reality as well: Modern American conservatism, which is to say Republicanism, appeals to so-called heartland values that are often expressed in anti-government and racial terms, and this too is a turn-off for the majority of voters, many of them black and brown, who hail from urban and suburban areas and may not be particularly fond of big government, but recognize the need for the safety net it provides and Republicans would deny them.

The Republicans have miscalculated in several key ways.

The party's strategy has been to strive for short-term victories rather than long term viability at the expense of broadening its base, while it willfully miscalculated that Obama had become so weak that voters could pretty much be ignored and it was a waste of time to develop policies and themes that might be viable alternatives to what the president and Democrats were saying and doing.

The result of all of this -- the weakest presidential field in memory, obstructionist politics, appealing to the few and ignoring or denigrating the many -- has resulted in a wholesale panic because it is now understood that the party has sabotaged itself and the result is that 2012 will be a do-or-die election.

The Republicans have worked hard to insure an apocalypse at the polls and they deserve one. Yet Obama and the Democratic majority are certainly not without fault while America needs two healthy political parties. As things stand, one of those parties is deathly ill and it may be a long time before it again becomes viable.

Photo by Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photos/New York Magazine

Cartoon du Jour

Chris Britt/State Journal-Register

We Will Not Speak Ill Of The Dead

Andrew Breitbart, the conservative Internet publisher, author and lightning rod for controvery, has died. He was 43.

A statement posted on his website said that Breitbart died "unexpectedly from natural causes" this morning.

The following statement was posted on Breitbart's website today:

"With a terrible feeling of pain and loss we announce the passing of Andrew Breitbart. We have lost a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a dear friend, a patriot and a happy warrior.

"Andrew lived boldly, so that we more timid souls would dare to live freely and fully, and fight for the fragile liberty he showed us how to love."

As the headline notes, we will not speak ill of the dead, but you might want to read Breitbart's remarks after the death of Teddy Kennedy to see what he really was about.

The Biggest Enduring Beatles Mysteries

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Two More Notches In Romney's Belt As He Stumbles On To Super Tuesday

Never mind that Mitt Romney won the Michigan Republican presidential primary yesterday by the hair of his chinny chin chin. If he is the eventual nominee he has no chance of carrying the state where his father was a beloved governor. This because this favorite son has managed to alienate auto executives as well as assembly line workers because of his opposition to the auto industry bailout and pathetic attempts to rationalize it.

As it is, Romney finds himself in dire straits although he once had the most money and has the best campaign organization. This is for two reasons: He is the ultimate empty suit who played the expectations game far too long and he is being nibbled to death by Rick Santorum, a sanctimonious demagogue who acts like he is running for Pope and stands even less of a chance of prevailing in November than he does.

Oh, yeah, Romney also won in Arizona yesterday.

CROSSOVER DEMS DIDN'T MATTER

Is there anything that Romney hasn't flip-flopped on?

He decried efforts by Democrats and Santorum to get Democrats to vote in Michigan's open primary as "a new low," but that is exactly what he did in the 1990s in Massachusetts in voting as a Republican in a Democratic presidential primary.

Michigan has no voter registration and voters could request a Republican or Democratic ballot. Voting booths were open only to Republicans, but party rules allow anyone to declare themselves a Republican on the spot — temporarily — and then vote.

From all indications, the efforts in Michigan to undermine Romney did not bring Santorum a substantial number of votes, let alone may a difference.

MONEY HIS HOW HE KEEPS SCORE

People like Romney, of course, live in a world where money is how you keep score, as one pundit put it, and by that standard he is a huge winner. But you would think he would be a little more modest when he climbs onto the soapbox.

Yet the real Mitt keeps saying stuff in Tourette's Syndrome-like outbursts that remind us of his wealth and privilege. In the run-up to the Michigan vote he stepped in it twice, first when was asked whether he follows NASCAR, to which he responded, "“Not as closely as some of the most ardent fans. But I have some great friends who are NASCAR team owners.”

And then for good measure actually bragged at another appearance that his wife drives "a couple of Cadillacs," this in a state where nearly one in 10 workers are unemployed.

CAN IT GET ANY WORSE? PROBABLY

It is hard to imagine the vituperation among the Republican presidential wannabes getting worse, but they have the better part of a week to prove me wrong as they hop-scotch across the country campaigning for the Super Tuesday primaries on March 6.

The name calling has resulted in an unprecedented level of public scolding from GOP bigs ranging from Maine Governor Paul LePage , who told a meeting of his fellow governors that the primary season has been “too messy” for any of the candidates to enter the fall campaign on a strong footing and urged his party to pick a “fresh face” at the Tampa convention this summer, to Jeb Bush, who says he has found the campaigning "a little troubling" because the candidates are appealing to voters' emotions rather than more overarching political concerns.

"I used to be a conservative and I watch these debates and I'm wondering, I don't think I've changed, but it's a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people's fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective and that's kind of where we are," Bush said.

WE DON'T NEED ANOTHER STINKIN' BUSH

Bush is considered by some Republicans to be the last best hope to derail President Obama although he has repeatedly said he would not accept a convention draft.

This is just fine with Ann Coulter, who says that "I think on closer examination, Jeb Bush would be the worst of all candidates to run, for one thing. We don't need another Bush. That would be embarrassing to the Republican Party.

RICKY LEADS IN THREE STATES

Even with Santorum's second-place finish in Michigan, the campaigning is far from over.

Polls in forthcoming Super Tuesday states show that Romney is ahead in Massachusetts, Vermont and Virginia, Santorum is ahead Ohio, Oklahoma and Tennessee, and Newt Gingrich (remember him?) ahead in his native Georgia.

A split will insure that the campaign slogs on indefinitely.

Cartoon by KAL/The Economist

Happy Birthday, Abeer Qassim Hamza

This is the story of how the three most powerful men in America were responsible for the gang rape of a 14-year-old girl, who was burned to a blackened char, and the murder of her parents and sister.

The enablers of these heinous crimes were President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who conspired to invade Iraq for bogus reasons, then starved the Army of the men and materiel to get the job done, which led to a lengthy occupation that triggered an Al Qaeda insurgency and a protracted civil war.

Journalist Jim Frederick describes the scene that Abu Muhammad came upon when he was summoned to his cousin's house on March 12, 2006:

"Abu Muhammad had seen what the insurgent death squads could do, but he had never witnessed anything like this. Each body was a different sort of travesty. Qassim, the father, was facedown in the far corner of the bedroom, in a lake of his own burgundy blood. His shirt was brightly patterned, striped with white, orange and brown. The front of his skull had been blasted off. Gore and large chunks of gray matter stippled the walls in a wide, V-shaped pattern. A large amount of Qassim's brain, about the size of a fist, lay nearby on an intricately woven rug.

"Not far from Hassim was Hadeel, just six years old. Wearing a bright pink dress, she was beautiful, her face almost pristine like a death mask, except that she was covered with blood, liters of it. It was everywhere, matting her hair, soaking her dress, covering her face in a thin dried sheen. A bullet fired from behind -- perhaps she had been running away from her assailant -- had blown the back right quadrant of her skull apart, A piece of it was lying several feet away, covered in skin and hair. Her hair band had been thrown across the room by the whiplash of the impact. In her right hand she was still clutching some plants she had just picked, a kind of wild sweet grass that Iraqi children frequently gather and eat for fun.

"Closest to the door was Fakhirah, the mother, wearing a black abaya and an emerald velveteen housedress embroidered with white flowers. She was lying on her back with her eyes wide open. Abu Muhammad thought his cousin might still be alive. He reached down to feel her pulse. Nothing. She was dead. He turned her over, and then he saw the hole. She had been shot in the back, but the rich, dark hues of her clothing obscured the full extent of her wound.

"Shaken, Abu Muhammad moved into the living room. There was Abeer, only fourteen years old. What they had done to her, it was unspeakable. Her body was still smoking; her entire upper torso had been scorched, much of it burnt down to ash. Her chest and face were gone with only the tips of her fingers sticking out from the purple scraps of her dress sleeves, recognizably human. The lower half of her body, however, was mostly intact. Her thin, spindly legs were spread and, rigid in death, still bent at the knees. She was naked from the waist down, her tights and underwear nearby."

NEVER CALLED TO ACCOUNT

Why dredge up a nearly six-year-old incident in a war that effectively ended in December?

The answer is that today would have been Abeer Qassim Hamza's 20th birthday. And that Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have never been called to account for masterminding the greatest foreign policy disaster in American history. And never will be. Absent a deathbed confession, we cannot expect any member of this troika to acknowledge that the deaths of nearly 4,000 Americans, Abeer and her family and perhaps 100,000 Iraqis in all was because of their politically-driven neocon blood lust.

The vast majority of the soldiers sent to Iraq performed and behaved admirably, and that was true of most of the troopers in 1st Battalion, 502nd Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division.

There was only one other known atrocity of this magnitude in Iraq -- the Hadifa Massacre, and rapes and murders were extremely rare in Iraq despite the fact that they happen in every war and by one estimate U.S. troops raped 18,000 women in the European theater between 1942 and 1945.

First Battalion was assigned to the Triangle of Death, an area south of Baghdad that only weeks after the March 2003 invasion already was becoming the most restive hotbed of the insurgency. There were far too few boots on the ground to effectively deal with the task at hand, pleas for more troops went unheeded, and when commanders complained to the Pentagon about troop levels they effectively short-circuited their careers.

The travails of Bravo Company, home to the men who went on the rape and murder spree, were especially severe. They were physically isolated and had no knowledge of how their efforts were fitting into the war's broader strategy, let alone what that strategy might be.

The rape and murders were singularly heinous because they were so calculated. But to lay the entire responsibility for them on Private First Class Steven Green, who was the ringleader, and Sergeant Paul Cortez and Privates First Class James Barker, Brian Howard and Jesse Spielman is wrong because others up the chain of command all the way to the Pentagon and White House also were culpable.

ONE BIG KILLING FIELD

By the time 1st Battalion deployed to the Triangle of Death in November 2005, the people whom Cheney had declared would welcome Americans with open arms were longing for Saddam Hussein. Iraq had become one big killing field with armed militias roaming the cities and countryside, and Shiites and Sunnis killing whomever they pleased at will.

The Georgia National Guard unit that the 1st Battalion replaced had become so cowed that it had stopped patrolling roads where IEDs (improvised explosive devices) had detonated, meaning that pretty much the entire area went uncovered as the guardsmen cowered in their barracks.

Despite boasts by Rumsfeld, that the troops in Iraq were the best equipped in the history of warfare, the conditions that 1st Battalion had to endure were deplorable.

As Frederick writes in Black Hearts: One Platoon's Descent Into Madness in Iraq's Triangle of Death, there was no chow hall or even a kitchen to cook meals except at Camp Striker, the battalion headquarters. At bases "away from the flagpole," in military parlance, all food was either MRE combat rations or hamburger patties and steaks that had to be grilled on storm drains. There were no dishes or cutlery so the men had to eat MREs and grilled meat with their hands.

There was no electricity and no lighting that wasn't battery operated, no air conditioning during the day and no heat at night. There were no showers and no toilets, and troopers defecated into so-called WAG Bags, garbage bags with solvents inside that were tied off, thrown in a pit and burned. First Platoon's first major casualty was to be a soldier who suffered bad burns when he threw a match into a diesel fuel-soaked pit filled with the bags.

Humvees were inadequately armored and there wasn't enough body armor to go around, a situation that was not corrected until later in the war and only then because of an expose in a stateside newspaper. And there were no coordinated night recognition signals, resulting in troopers firing on the trucks of other troopers, sometimes with fatal results.

Then there was battalion commander Lieutenant Colonel Tom Kunk.

"His reaction to everything was the same," a company first sergeant told Frederick. "If you lost a soldier, or if you had cigarette butts on the FOB [forward operating base], it was the same reaction. He would explode on you. He would just lose his mind, which made his whole leadership style just totally ineffective."

Said one captain: "If you continually crush their spirit, they are going to be timid, wondering if everything they do will earn them another ass chewing. It had an impact on the way those guys operated."

Kunk also whitewashed the reports he sent up to brigade headquarters.

"They would call three guys a squad," a first sergeant said. "But you can't turn three guys into nine unless you're lying."

"It's not like one little piece of information is going to lose the war," a company executive office said, "but when you see the cumulative effect of information becoming whitewashed in order to tell a story that a battalion or brigade commander wants to tell to their highers, then you got real problems. That's the more sinister side of it."

Meanwhile, the Iraq Army was useless and 1st Platoon troopers quickly came to loath the civilian population. The one member of the platoon who took a liking to Iraqis, becoming nearly fluent in Arabic as he got to know the locals, was called "an Iraqi cock sucker."

And the enemy was everywhere.

HE WAS CRAZY

"What that company is going through would turn your hair white," an officer at Camp Victory in Baghdad told Frederick. "I'm only twenty miles away, and most of the people on Victory have no idea how bloody the fight is down there."

IEDs were cleared with the help of Iron Claw bomb-sniffing teams riding in massive armored vehicles, but as soon as a road was cleared it was reseeded by insurgents. The battalion resorted to parking Humvees at one- or two-mile intervals along a key road that was a resupply route, but the ideal relief in the form of Iraqi soldiers manning these checkpoints never came. They simply refused to operate in so dangerous an area.

The parked vehicles evolved into poorly defended Tactical Check Points surrounded by concertina wire where soldiers would be assigned for six-day intervals, further depleting the platoon's patrol and combat power, and most troopers felt like they were school crossing guards when manning them. When six-foot cubed mesh baskets that when filled made excellent defensive barriers finally arrived, there were no backhoes to fill them.

It was at one such checkpoint at the edge of Mahmudiya that Steven Green helped hatch the plan to rape Abeer and kill she and her family.

With the Army strapped for personnel, Green had been granted a moral waiver because of prior convictions for drugs and other bad behavior when he enlisted in the Army, and by 2005 such waivers were granted to almost one in five recruits.

He was not a bad soldier, but he was crazy. He was a racist and white supremacist who was unable to control his impulses and railed about "niggers," Jews, northerners, foreigners and Iraqis. And he occasionally drooled, a childhood habit that he had not completely broken.

Green, who became the first former U.S. soldier to face the death penalty for war crimes in a civilian court because he had been discharged before he was arrested, had matter of factly explained to a journalist three weeks before the rape-murders that "I came over here to kill people."

By December, 1st Platoon was losing men at the rate of about one a week and an already fraying platoon that lived "outside the wire" -- a term for the outposts -- was unraveling quickly, while Bravo Company's 2nd and 3rd Platoons seemed to be humming right along with few problems. Frederick attributes this to those platoons outstanding sergeants and active efforts to combat the hate that 1st Platoon had succumbed to.

Iraqi civilians were now being beaten routinely by 1st Platoon troopers, drinking increased and became more open, and men would burst into tears while eating their lunches. And after being continuously told that they were screwups, Frederick said the platoon subconsciously decided to live up to its outcast status.

Meanwhile, none of the basics essential to maintaining morale and welfare of combat soldiers had been provided and officers and NCOs who complained about this state of affairs were considered whiners.

Two platoon mates who had disobeyed one of Keck's orders and had taken off their helmets at one of the checkpoints were fatally shot in the head by an Iraqi civilian. This was followed by the deaths of two men in an IED blast and then two more in another blast. Later a forward operating base widely considered to be a firetrap burned to the ground because there were too few fire extinguishers.

The carnage prompted Green to tell Keck that "I just want to get out there and get some revenge on those motherfuckers. They all deserve to die."

"Calling them that is like calling me a nigger," interjected Command Sergeant Major Anthony Edwards, Keck's senior NCO. "This sounds like you hate a whole race of people."

"That's about it right there," said Green. "You just about summed it up."

Green had finally snapped.

"Most of the men by this point hated Iraqis and many would offhandedly opine that the whole country needed to be leveled, or the only good Iraqi was a dead Iraq," writes Frederick. "But only Green talked about killing Iraqis all the time. . . . Only he talked about burning them alive so they had to smell their own flesh cooking. Everybody was frustrated that the enemy was cowardly, but Green had a harder time accepting that this was simply the nature of this war: U.S. soldiers had to behave more honorably than the enemy. Why, he sincerely wanted to know, did Americans have to restrain themselves when the insurgents did not?"

Bravo's company commander sent Green to see a combat stress nurse who diagnosed him with Combat and Operational Stress Reaction, an Army term to describe the typically and usually transient stresses of warfare. The nurse noted Green's obsession with killing Iraqis and then sent him back to Bravo.

His next appointment with the nurse would be on March 20, eight days after the rape-murders.

'I'VE NEVER FUCKED ONE OF THESE BITCHES'

On March 12, Green was pulling predawn guard duty in a gun truck at Tactical Command Post 2. He had been up for 18 hours. Two of 2nd Squads sergeants were elsewhere and Paul Cortez had been rotated in and left in charge although the sergeant was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.

"When I'm on guard next time," Green told Cortez and James Barker, "I'm going to waste a bunch of dudes in a car. And we'll just say they were running the TCP."

"Don't do that!" Cortez exclaimed. "Don't do it while I'm here. I'm supposed to be running this shit."

Barker agreed and said he had a better idea.

"We've all killed Hadjis [Iraqis], but I've been here twice and I still never fucked one of these bitches."

Cortez's interest was piqued, and so was Green's. They talked more about it as the morning wore on and Barker said that he had already picked the target -- a house not far from the checkpoint where a man and three women lived, one a teenager or in her twenties whom he thought was pretty hot. The family had an AK-47 assault rifle, which was allowable under Iraqi law, and he said he knew where it was hidden.

Witnesses were a problem, however, but Green said he would take care of that.

"You'll kill them, right?" Barker asked.

"Absolutely," Green replied. "It don't make any difference to me. A Hadji is a Hadji."

At around noon, the three men and Jesse Spielman sat down outside the TCP with a cardboard box as a table to play Uno. They drank Iraqi whiskey mixed with Rip It, a carbonated energy drink, and soon became very drunk.

Cortez finally said, "If we are going to do this, let's go before I change my mind." Cortez and Barker would take the girl, Green would kill the rest of the family, Spielman would pull guard and Bryan Howard, who was newly arrived in the platoon, would stay behind and man the radio.

Some of the men changed into clothing that made them look like insurgents. Green grabbed a shotgun, Barker took Howard's M4 carbine and Spielman picked up an M14 rifle.

The targeted house was the home of Qassim and Fakriah Hamza al-Janabi. They were poor but dreamed of building a big family and sending their children -- daughters Abeer, 14, and Hadeel, 6, and son Muhammad,12, who happened to be at school that afternoon -- to university.

With the arrival of the Americans in Mahmudiyah and the quick deterioration of relations between the occupiers and locals, Wassim and Fakriah had become concerned about their daughters, whom they took out of school.

Abeer was of special concern. She had big doe eyes, a small mouth and gentle features. On the verge of womanhood, she was tall for her age and her fragile beauty was attracting a lot of unwanted attention. Soldiers would give her the thumbs-up and say, "Very good, very nice," and Muhammad had once watched a soldier run a finger down terrified sister's cheek.

By early March, the harassment of Abeer had become so bad that cousin Abu Muhammad told the family that he would take her to live with him at his secluded house. Abeer stayed there only one night, March 9 or 10, and Qassim came the next day to bring her back home.

Frederick describes what transpired in a few short minutes:

"Sneaking up to the dingy home, Cortez and Barker broke to the right around a small shack in the front. Spielman and Green broke left. Spielman and Green found little Hadeel and father Qassim in the driveway. Green grabbed the man and Spielman grabbed the girl and they marched them inside. Barker and Cortez cleared the house, checking the foyer, the hallway, and moving plast the kitchen, where Cortez stopped to grab the woman, Fakhriah, and Abeer. Green and Spielman entered the house while Barker continued with the sweep, checking the bathroom and the toilet room, the bedroom and the living room. Then he headed up the stairs to the roof, checked the roof, and went back down the stairs.

"The others had corralled the whole family into the bedroom. After they had recovered the family's AK-47 and Green confirmed that it was locked and loaded, Barker and Cortez left, yanking Abeer behind them. Spielman pulled the bedroom door shut and then set up guard in the doorway between the foyer and the living room while Cortez shoved Abeer into the living room. Cortez pushed Abeer down on the ground and Barker walked over to her and pinned her outstretched arms down with his knees.

"In the bedroom, Green was trying to get the man, woman and child to lie down on the floor. They were scared, screaming in Arabic. Green was shouting back, 'Get down, get down now!'

"Back at the TCP, Howard was trying to get Cortez on the radio, each time saying there was a convoy coming and they needed to come back. They never responded. No Humvees actually came during the ten to 15 minutes that they were gone, but Howard was panicked. [Private Seth] Scheller and he were out there all alone.

"In the living room, Cortez pulled Abeer's tights off. She was crying, screaming in Arabic, trying to struggle free as Barker continued to hold her in place. Cortez was masturbating, trying to get an erection. He started to make thrusting motions. 'What the fuck am I doing?' he later recalled thinking at the time. 'At the same time, I didn't care, either. I wanted her to feel the pain of the dead soldiers.'

"In the bedroom, Green was losing control of his prisoners. They weren't getting down on the ground. Terrified, they were yelling, and they weren't responding to Green's orders. The woman made a run for the bedroom door. Green shot her once in the back and she fell to the floor. The man, agitated before, now became unhinged. Green turned the AK on him and pulled the trigger. It jammed. He tried to clear it several more times, but it kept sticking. Panicking, as the man started advancing on him, Green switched to his shotgun.

"Green couldn't remember if there was anything in the chamber, so he pumped once and a full shell ejected. Then, Green said, 'I shot him the way I had been taught: one in the head and two in the chest.' The first shot blasted the top of the man's head off. He dropped backward to the floor as buckshot from the following shots continued to riddle his body.

"Then Green turned toward the little girl, who was spinning away from him, running for a corner. Green returned to the AK and tried to clear it again, and this time it worked. He raised the rifle and shot Hadeel in the back of the head. She fell to the ground. . . .

"As Green was executing the family, Cortez finished raping Abeer and switched positions with Barker. Barker's penis was only half hard. Despite all her squirming and kicking, Barker forced himself on Abeer and raped her.

"Green came out of the bedroom and announced to Barker and Cortez, 'They're all dead. I killed them all.' Barker got up and headed toward the kitchen. He wanted to look outside the window, see if anything was happening outside. As he did that, Green propped the AK-47 he was carrying against the wall, got down between Abeer's legs, and as Cortez held her down, Green raped her. . . .

"The men were becoming extremely frenzied and agitated now. Spielman lifted Abeer's dress up around her neck and touched her exposed right breast. Barker brought a kerosene lamp he had found in the kitchen and dumped the contents on Abeer's splayed legs and torso. Spielman handed a lighter to either Barker or Cortez, who lit the flame. Spielman went to the bedroom and found some blankets to throw on the body to stoke the fire. As the flames engulfing Abeer's body grew, Green, hoping to blow up the house, opened the valve on the propane tank in the kitchen and told everybody to get out of there."

COVERUP, RETALIATION & AFTERMATH

The Iraqi Army began interviewing neighbors and family members the morning after the rape-murders. Some said that it was the Iraqi Army, others said it was the Americans and still others said that it was a family feud gone bad, while 1st Platoon said it was Sunni insurgents. The Hamza Al-Janabi family was buried in a nearby cemetery and there was little or no physical evidence beyond a few AK-47 shell casings.

On March 20, Green kept his appointment at the Combat Stress office in Mahmudiyah. He confessed to having recently thrown a puppy off of the roof of a house that was being searched and said that was no big deal. In subsequent meetings over the next few days, a combat stress nurse concluded that he wasn't registering the moral implications of what he had done.

She concluded that Green had a preexisting antisocial personality disorder, a condition marked by indifference to the suffering of others and recommended to Kunk the he be discharged. Even though Green had committed rape and quadruple homicide just 11 days earlier, the nurse's mental-health-status evaluation sheet that initiated the personality order discharge stated that his current potential for harm to others was "low."

Green remained at Mahmudiyah for a few more weeks for observation and processing. By April 14, he was headed back to the U.S. and was honorably discharged at Fort Campbell, Kentucky on May 16.

The cover-up of the rape-murders began to unravel in mid-June.

On June 16, the checkpoint where Green and the others had hatched the plot was attacked and overrun. Specialist David Babineau was killed and Privates First Class Thomas Tucker and Kristian Menchaca were captured.

The bodies of the two troopers were found on June 19, and judging from a video shot by the insurgent abductors, both were eviscerated and half naked, dirty with caked blood and mud, just as one would appear after being dragged behind a truck. Tucker was decapitated and a man, after holding his severed head aloft like a trophy, placed it on Tucker's body. Al Qaeda in Iraq later said the attack was in retaliation for the rape of Abeer and murder of her family and the leader of AQI himself had slaughtered the two men himself.

While the search for Tucker and Menchaca was on, Sergeant Tony Yribe remarked to Private First Class Justin Watt that "It just drives me crazy that all the good men die and the shitbag murderers like Green are home eating hamburgers."

"Murderers?" Watt asked.

Yribe told Watt about the rape-murders and that Green had confessed to him that he had acted alone. The less you know about it -- the better, Yribe had said.

Watt was horrified. He began obsessing on Abeer's father for reasons he didn't understand and couldn't sleep. When he ran into Howard he insinuated that something really messed up had happened in March. Convinced that Watt knew the whole story, Howard filled in many of the missing pieces and implicated Barker, Cortez and Spielman.

Watt called his father, who had been an airborne combat engineer in the 1970s, and asked him what he would do if his brothers in arms had done something really bad.

"You should let your conscience be your guide," his father had replied. "If it is as heinous as you say, you can't let your loyalty to your men get in the way of doing what is right.

Wanting to bypass what he believed would be a skeptical command structure, Watt revealed the crimes during a psychological health counseling session on June 22.

Meanwhile, rumors about the rape-murder began to percolate through 1st Platoon and eventually reached Kunk after two troopers went to their superiors.

While skeptical of the allegations, Kunk ordered an investigation. Then, a few days after the memorial service for Babineau, Tucker and Menchaca, the commanding officer called a kind of town hall meeting.

Frederick writes that Kunk began by telling them, with complete unconcern for the men who were brave enough to speak up, "You are right to think that there is a lot of suspicion and finger-pointing going on because [two men] came forward to tell the chain of command that five of your shitbag friends probably raped a girl and killed her whole family. And these guys are cracking, it looks like they are guilty."

"We thought we were going to get the 'Keep your heads up' speech," said one soldier. " . . . He just crushed us."

The four active-duty soldiers involved were arrested and were court martialed.

Barker pleaded guilty to rape and murder as part of a plea agreement requiring him to testify against the other soldiers to avoid the death penalty. He was sentenced to 90 years in prison and must serve 20 years before being considered for parole.

Cortez pleaded guilty to rape and murder as part of a plea agreement to avoid the death penalty. He was sentenced to 100 years in prison and must serve 10 years before being considered for parole.

Spielman was convicted of rape and murder. He was sentenced to 110 years in prison with the possibility of parole after 10 years.

All three men are being held at the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas.

Howard was sentenced under a plea agreement to a dishonorable discharge. He served 27 months in prison for obstruction of justice and being an accessory after the fact.

Green was arrested as a civilian and was convicted in the U.S.District court in Paducah, Kentucky. In September 2009, he was sentenced to four consecutive life sentences in prison with no possibility of parole and is being held in the U.S. Penitentiary in Tucson, Arizona.

Kunk, who was investigated because of reports of numerous acts of complacency and a lack of standards at the platoon level, received a letter of concern, the least serious form of admonishment and one that carries no real punitive weight or negative long-term implications for an officer's career. Two of his NCOs received letters of reprimand.

Justin Watt, the whistleblower, received a medical discharge and now runs a computer business. He said that he has received death threats.

Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld are retired and except for Cheney, are little in the news. All three have published memoirs that whitewash their roles in starting and utterly screwing up America's longest war.

Abeer's next-of-kind received a $30,000 check from the U.S. government in compensation for the rape-murders.

PHOTOGRAPHS (From top): Cheney, Bush and Rumsfeld; Abeer; Blood-splattered wall of the Al Janabi home; Map of the Triangle of Death; Tactical checkpoint where rape-murder plot was hatched; 1st Platoon trooper on patrol; Green, possibly with the shotgun he used in the murders; Barker; Cortez; Spielman; Watt; Babineau; Menchaca; Tucker; Green at sentencing.

Cartoon du Jour

Jim Morin/Miami Herald

Why Have Our Dear American Golden Retrievers Become Cancer Time Bombs?

It's not hard to see why Golden Retrievers are among the most popular breeds in the U.S. year in and year out. They're cuddly cute as puppies and beautiful as adults. They're great around kids, energetic, intelligent, intensely loyal and easy to train. In fact, they often train their owners.

But American golden retrievers are also are ticking time bombs. An extraordinary six of every 10 Goldens succumb to cancer well before living to the once typical 12- to 16-year life expectancy. The mortality rate for other dog breeds, as well as for humans, is three in 10.

While any dog that has lived beyond its normal reproductive years is at increased risk for cancer and Goldens are not alone compared to other breeds in this regard, anecdotal evidence suggests that an inordinate number of Goldens are dying before they reach middle age

This post has become somewhat of a Wailing Wall for people who have lost their Goldens. Some 47 of them have shared stories of their losses to date. The average age of these dogs was only 7.6 years.

* * * * *

The outlines of the Golden epidemic have been clear for over 10 years, but organizations like the Golden Retriever Club of America (GRCA), while on the one hand funding studies on and supporting research into the cancers, have done little or nothing to rein in greedy member breeders who play God in knowingly selling interbred, cancer-prone puppies to unsuspecting buyers who end up heartbroken.

Their rationale, in so many words, is that it's not their job. The GRCA's homepage contains no mention of the epidemic and the association has not updated its National Health Survey of the breed since 1999.

The GRCA has gone so far as to recommend that owners give their Goldens a regular regimen of a drug that has been shown to inhibit cancers, which is not unlike a car manufacturer recommending that drivers wear crash helmets when using vehicles that it knows cause an inordinate number of fatal accidents.

Meanwhile, it would seem to stand to reason that if breeders only bred Goldens whose parents were long-lived, progress could be made against the epidemic.

Alas, many breeders seem to be in the business only for the money and have little interest in improving the breed. No surprise there. Purebred Golden pups can fetch upwards of $2,500 and the alternative to selling dogs with shortened life expectancies is to stop selling them. Period.

And while the canine genome has been successfully sequenced, the fine print of the genetics of Goldens and their cancers is still not understood well enough to hold out hope for Goldens less vulnerable to cancer in the foreseeable future.

* * * * *

I know of the Golden Retriever cancer epidemic all too well. I have lived with and been acquainted with a dozen or so goldens over the years. I have midwifed their births, taken them to the vets, helped breed them and cradled them in my arms as they drew their last breaths.

It's hard to name favorites, but Ruffie (Medford Ben's Ruffles was the snooty name on her pedigree papers) would have to be at the top of my list.

Ruffie was special from the time she opened her tiny eyes. While she played with her litter mates, there was an unpuppy-like serenity about her which grew deeper as she matured. She in turn seemed to impart a Zen-like quality on her own offspring, who included Cody, the companion of a good friend, and a sweetheart by the name of Luna.

But despite careful attention to their diets, plenty of exercise, regular visits to a terrific vet and the love and devotion of their owners, Ruffie departed this world well before her time, a victim of lymphoma (cancer of the lymphatic system) at age five, while Luna died at age three, also of lymphoma. Cody, meanwhile, lived to the relatively ripe old age of 11 before succumbing to hemangiosarcoma (cancer of the blood).

While hemangiosarcoma and lymphoma are the leading killers of Goldens, the breed also is at increased risk for osteosarcoma (cancer of the bones) and immune system diseases -- primarily allergies and hypothyroidism -- that can comprise their ability to destroy abnormal cells before they can cause cancer.

In fact, it may be that the first litter of founder dog Goldens -- a cross between a registered Tweed Water Spaniel and unregistered yellow flat-coated retriever bred in 1865 by a Scottish land baron who was seeking a superior sporting dog -- carried genes that have led to widespread immune system dysfunction in the breed.

All purebred dogs are technically interbred, but as Rhonda Hovan, an Ohio breeder and health and genetics writer puts it, Goldens may have a very similar inherited "germ line" that put them at greater risk.

"One gets cancer, another becomes hypothyroid, another gets lots of hot spots, and another has food allergies -- but the underlying genes that put them at risk for cancer and which are passed on to the next generation, may be very similar," Hovan explains.

This situation is further complicated because cancers usually don't appear until after a Golden is no longer bred but has passed on its genes to multiple puppies.

* * * * *

There is little that Golden owners can do to detect cancers in their dogs and they often are too advanced to treat when discovered, although there have been strides in treating the cancers with Palladia, the first FDA-approved cancer drug for dogs, as well as some of the same chemotherapy drugs used in humans.

Such treatments can be quite expensive, $26,000 in the instance of one owner who managed to prolong her Golden's life by only a few months, while some pet health insurance policies have cancer riders that do not cover hereditary conditions.

There are some early warning signs. These include lumps or masses on or under the skin, vomiting, diarrhea, lethargy, difficulty in breathing and changes in eating habits, but many Goldens seem fine one minute and are deathly ill or dead the next.

Hovan had a Golden who had hiked 8,000 miles by her side and died of hemangiosarcoma.

"As experienced as I am," Hovan said, "I didn't know until 12 hours before she passed away."

As with humans, lifestyle can make a difference. Studies show that dogs that are lean and fit have a lower risk of cancer, as well as other health problems, but there is no evidence that exotic diets make a difference.

Not much of a defense in the face of an unrelenting epidemic without end.

SOURCES

"Pedigree Dogs Exposed," a BBC One documentary first aired on August 19, 2008; "When Cancer Comes With a Pedigree" by Melinda Beck, The Wall Street Journal (May 4, 2010); Winning Cancer Fight: No Longer Automatic Death Verdict Thanks To Advances" by Amy Sacks, New York Daily News (November 14, 2009); "Understanding Cancer In Golden Retrievers" by Rhonda Hovan; Email interview by the author with Hovan.

For Romney, There's Nowhere To Go But Down. Then There's The Convention.

1976 FLASHBACK

The latest Republican-centric Rasmussen nightly tracking poll is out and it's bad news for the struggling Mitt Romney: For the first time, he dropped below 40 percent against President Obama despite a strong performance in the Arizona presidential debate.

Rasmussen tracked the incumbent at 49 percent while Romney got 39 percent, and if the pattern of tit-for-tat primary victories -- with Romney taking one or two and then Rick Santorum taking two or three -- continues, the likelihood of neither candidate having the requisite 1,245 delegates to secure the nomination in Tampa grows.

This, of course, raises the exquisite prospect of a brokered convention, but Republican Party elders who are desperate for a Romney-Obama face-off must surely realized that the GOP has been turned on its ear since the last brokered convention in 1976 when party deal makers sealed the nomination for President Ford over an up-and-comer by the name of Ronald Reagan.

That was when party leaders in the form of monied conservatives, state chairman, governors and influential congressfolk had the clout to broker the outcome, but in acceding to a toxic cocktail of Christianists and Tea Partiers in recent years in the service of short-term electoral gains, they also acceded power, which in the GOP is now pretty much from the bottom up and not the top down. Long story short, the people with torches and pitchforks do not take orders from party elders.

This is very bad news for Romney and very good news for Santorum since the former Massachusetts governor is anathema to the new party base and the former senator from Pennsylvania is a far better fit even though only Romney has a chance of beating President Obama.

As Dick Polman writes at NewsWorks:

"Elected leaders used to have a lot of sway when the chips were down. But who, down at the grassroots, is going to take direction from John Boehner? Or Mitch McConnell? Or the Bush family? Or any of the governors (Chris Christie, Haley Barbour, Mitch Daniels) who have already fled center stage in 2012? None of them can speak for the party, much less knock heads together.

"Maybe Fox News chairman Roger Ailes is a pillar of a new kind of establishment. Or Sean Hannity. Or Rush Limbaugh. Or radio host Mark Levin. Or Karl Rove, assuming he has sufficiently distanced himself from the wreckage of the Bush administration he brought to power. But none of those people are brokers, in the traditional sense. They are agitators, not conciliators. If the GOP winds up this summer with a nominee who can't unite the party -- or no nominee, mathematically speaking -- those people are likely to gin up the frenzy, not staunch it by seeking a solution."

Political scientist Larry Sabato offers a compelling alternative: If no candidate wins a delegate majority, the brokers may well be the candidates themselves. Writes Sabato:

"Their delegates are bound for at least one ballot, and most are personally loyal to the candidate and may follow his lead for multiple ballots, if it comes to that. Romney, Santorum, Gingrich and Paul will have slogged through all 50 states by convention time. Why would they permit someone who slept in his own bed and had regular meals for the past year to swoop in and take the big prize? More likely, perhaps through trusted intermediaries, the four contenders would negotiate a solution — a ticket, platform and prime-time speech schedule."

The alternative, Sabato notes, is chaos, and that would be disastrous after a lengthy primary season that has been the very definition of chaotic.