Exit Marx and Mussolini

It's outrageous that Rep. Allen West (R-FL) said he'd heard that as many as 80 of his Democratic colleagues were communists. The far right doesn't need any more hysterical and nonsensical incitements. Then I Googled "fascists in Congress." Sure enough, on April 5 David Seaman at Business Insider criticized "congressional fascists" for a raft of new national and cyber security measures, just the kind of reckless, ahistorical rhetoric that's bound to get the left all riled up.

How ironic and reassuring that the major party nominees will by election day have amassed roughly comparable four-year records as enlightened, pragmatic chief executives. While each is now in his 'Scuse me while I kiss my base period, in the general election it will become abundantly clear that Mitt Romney and Barack Obama have so much in common that stale ideological appeals will lack all credibility. They can't evade their records, and they shouldn't try. We've heard more than enough about Marx and Mussolini, about all these imaginary communists, socialists, and fascists. This political year now belongs to the silent and heretofore overlooked majority as the epic battle for the great American center finally begins.

Why Do Snails Cross The Sidewalk?

I have the same question for earthworms, who with their even less keen sense of direction end up frying by the thousands. It's a rainy morning in Yorba Linda, so this guy has half a chance, although he altered his vector after mistaking a crack in the sidewalk for the promised land. On a hot day he'd end up baking in his shell for sure. Have you ever helped a snail reach his destination?

An American Classic Begins Today

Talk about burying the lead. Here's how Zach Beauchamp put it at The Dish: "So Santorum up and left, taking with him the last vestiges of interest in the GOP primary." The other way to describe today's events is that Mitt Romney has just won a dazzling victory and set the stage for an American classic.

After the tea party-driven GOP surge in the 2010 elections, it was a foregone conclusion that the far right would dominate the 2012 cycle. Yet all its champions left the arena or were defeated by the establishment choice, the so-called Massachusetts moderate: Palin, Huckabee, Bachmann, Perry, Cain, Gingrich, and now Santorum. If the GOP has a "fundamental problem" with dominance by the right, as Beauchamp says and so many pundits have been insisting for months, why has the candidate conservatives liked the least been able to wrap up the nomination by early April?

Continuing to devalue Romney's achievement, Beauchamp writes:

The obvious conclusion is that, assuming Romney loses in 2012, the candidate best positioned to win the GOP nod next time around will be someone with Santorum-esque views with an extra dollop of political talent.

But lack of charisma was never the GOP's problem. It had many talented conservative candidates. Romney demolished them all. Assuming that Romney will lose is also premature, not only because it's April 10 but because Real Clear Politics' composite poll shows him running only 5.3% behind Barack Obama, another stunning achievement given how bruising the primaries have been.

But who's congratulating Romney tonight? Not Democrats, who know he's Obama's least desired opponent. Not conservatives, who never wanted a moderate standard bearer nor even, I suspect, a Romney presidency to the extent that he would reposition his party closer to the center by forging new center-right coalitions in the country and especially on Capitol Hill. While moderates who think he's just been pretending to be conservative are happy, we don't know for sure if their optimism is warranted.

So is Romney moderate or conservative? To me he seems relentlessly opportunistic (which helped him beat all those conservatives) and non-ideological, a throwback to the days of the country club Republican. His cool temperament and refusal to be pigeonholed remind me of the other pragmatic Republican in the race: Barack Obama.

In the fall election (which began today), party propagandists will spend millions calling Romney a wealthy, far-right wing nut and Obama a socialist. But little if any of that mud will stick, and not only because Romney can't very well run against Obama's big-government health care bill (which was patterned on Romney's) nor Obama against Romney's coziness with fat cats (which isn't that much cozier than Obama's). Voters are smart enough to know that both candidates are steely, smart pragmatists. Obama and Romney are primed to give us the hardest fought, most substantive, and possibly closest presidential race since 1960 -- and that's worth celebrating.

Loaded For Bunny

Elizabeth Tierney of St. John's Church, photographed on Easter Sunday with an eggceptionally tall secular symbol

Stand In The Place Where You Work

The New York Times says sitting for too long can be deadly, even for people who exercise regularly:

[Researchers] found that the more hours the men and women sat every day, the greater their chance of dying prematurely. Those people who sat more than eight hours a day — which other studies have found is about the amount that a typical American sits — had a 15 percent greater risk of dying during the study’s three-year follow-up period than people who sat for fewer than four hours a day.

That's former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld at his famous standing desk.

POTUS In D.C. At TEC

The Obamas were at St. John's on Easter Sunday and heard "Hallelujah" from Messiah (although it was the St. John's in Washington). The pool report (prepared by one reporter, in this case Mark Landler of the New York Times, for the White House press corps) is here.

"Everybody Needs Love," Drive-By Truckers

Just like the sun and moon and stars up above. On the June 21, 2011 Letterman show (and he really likes them!). Hat tip to No Depression.

One More Time, With Feeling?

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Herb Kaion speculates that the Palestinians are interested in negotiating again:

[T]he tactic the Palestinians adopted since September 2010 – when PA President Mahmoud Abbas walked away from talks with [Benyamin] Netanyahu and seemingly turned his back on the idea of a negotiated settlement to the conflict in favor of trying to get one imposed on Israel – has not produced results.

The two leaders will meet next week. Kaion reports that the Quartet (the U.S., Russia, the European Union, and the UN) is expected to call tomorrow for another round of direct peace talks.

Meaning And Mechanism

TEC's presiding bishop (and presiding oceanographer) Katharine Jefferts Schori is featured on the Huffington Post talking about science and religion. Science is about mechanism, while faith is about ultimate meaning, she says; using both views at once gives us "better depth perception."

At Least They'd Stopped Saying "Perfidious Jews"

When African-Americans received full sacramental status in the LDS church in 1978, Mitt Romney, who was 30, said he wept with joy. Nevertheless some commentators promise to confront him during the campaign about the Mormons' racist past.

But is there any religion or denomination whose history or awkward doctrines couldn't be held against a candidate-adherent? When it comes to religion and politics, better to adhere to the Nixon covenant -- which is why, since it was in effect during the 1960 election, no reporter probably asked John F. Kennedy about the version of the prayer for conversion of the Jews that was still being used in Roman Catholic Good Friday liturgies:

Let us pray also for the Jews: that almighty God may remove the veil from their hearts; so that they too may acknowledge Jesus Christ our Lord. Let us pray. Let us kneel. Arise. Almighty and eternal God, who dost also not exclude from thy mercy the Jews: hear our prayers, which we offer for the blindness of that people; that acknowledging the light of thy Truth, which is Christ, they may be delivered from their darkness. Through the same our Lord Jesus Christ, who liveth and reigneth with thee in the unity of the Holy Spirit, God, for ever and ever. Amen.