Ross Douthat says Newt’s flame-out in the two Florida debates showed that anti-Romney Republican voters bet on the wrong horse:

I also think it’s important to recognize that some of what we’ve seen this week are problems inherent to Gingrich’s candidacy: You just can’t expect a rich Washington insider with considerable personal baggage, an endless enemies list within the party, and a long history of ideological flexibility to exploit Mitt Romney’s myriad weaknesses terribly effectively, at least so long as Romney himself is willing to fight back. The evidence of last night’s debate suggests, once again, that Santorum would have been a more effective anti-Romney over the long haul than Gingrich. But the people of South Carolina wanted Newt, not Rick — and don’t think that Romney isn’t grateful to them.

Florida polls are trending Romney in the wake of the debates, so it looks like most Florida GOP voters are sobering up. Assuming that’s accurate, this story from today’s NYT offers a fascinating, and kind of pitiful, snapshot of this race:

As Republican presidential candidates duke it out down here in Florida, the most visible measure of how they are doing is the crowd count.

And by that very simple measure, Newt Gingrich is crushing his opposition.

At an event Tuesday afternoon, more than 1,500 people showed up to rally for Mr. Gingrich. Later that evening, he stood before as many as 5,000 people, all applauding his surge toward the Republican nomination. And then on Wednesday, another 4,000 people.

Contrast that to Mitt Romney, who, according to polls, is roughly tied with Mr. Gingrich in the state. He, too, has been traveling around Florida in an effort to recover the momentum he had after a big win in New Hampshire.

Mr. Romney has not had a crowd with more than a couple hundred people since he arrived in the Sunshine State.

Republican voters have about as much passion for Romney as David Gest had for Liza Minnelli.  But it’s starting to look like they’re voting their heads, not their hearts.

Reports the Washington Post:

Ron Paul, well known as a physician, congressman and libertarian , has also been a businessman who pursued a marketing strategy that included publishing provocative, racially charged newsletters to make money and spread his ideas, according to three people with direct knowledge of Paul’s businesses.

The Republican presidential candidate has denied writing inflammatory passages in the pamphlets from the 1990s and said recently that he did not read them at the time or for years afterward. Numerous colleagues said he does not hold racist views.

But people close to Paul’s operations said he was deeply involved in the company that produced the newsletters, Ron Paul & Associates, and closely monitored its operations, signing off on articles and speaking to staff members virtually every day.

“It was his newsletter, and it was under his name, so he always got to see the final product. . . . He would proof it,’’ said Renae Hathway, a former secretary in Paul’s company and a supporter of the Texas congressman.

If this is true, then Ron Paul is a liar. If this is true, the best thing that can be said about him is that he’s a terrible cynic, because he profited off of the propagation of rancid views that he didn’t personally share.

Andrew Sullivan’s reaction includes this:

I cannot and will not defend the newsletters. And Paul’s apparent lies about his involvement make the matter worse. And I don’t think Paul is the “best vehicle” for advancing the ideas TNC cites. He’s a very flawed vehicle, like most politicians and human beings. And I corrected immediately the record on the MLK holiday.

But when Paul has said what he has said in these debates, when he has walked into the lion’s den of a GOP primary and attacked the criminal justice system for racial bias, lacerated the war on drugs, and cut to the core of the delusions behind American global aggression, he deserves to be judged on his recent history as well as his increasingly distant past. His message that more liberty makes diversity more possible is a vital one.

I would ask readers to think before rushing to comment about how this or that group is trying to destroy Ron Paul by publicizing this. Attacking the messenger, or argumentum ad hominem, constitutes evading the truth, not dealing honestly with it, and its implications.

UPDATE: Well, that was pointless, at least for some readers, to judge by the comments section. The Paultard instinct, it would seem, is to denounce any criticism of Paul as either a) generated from disreputable motives, or b) minor, given the context. You will note that I did not express a view about the Paul newsletters, other than to describe their content as “rancid.” Simply to have brought them up here is, for many readers, a sign that I am a Dalek (= mortal enemy of the Doctor). This is what living in a political bubble will do to you: make it impossible to imagine that any reasonable person could have views contrary to your own.

Personally, my view on the Paul stuff corresponds somewhat with Andrew Sullivan’s, though I have always been less enthusiastic than he (and some of my TAC colleagues) about Paul’s candidacy. I disagree with Paul philosophically on several points; I am not a libertarian, but he is. But I continue to be pleased by his candidacy because he serves as a much-needed dissenting voice among Republicans on foreign and defense policy. Any enthusiasm I have for Paul is for him as a protest candidate who is giving voice to a more rational foreign policy on the Right, and who is therefore building a constituency for a more realist foreign policy among American conservatives. I have no enthusiasm for him as a potential president of the United States. I think he would be a disastrous chief executive.

The point is, I don’t automatically dismiss a candidate because he has taken an immoral, or at least profoundly mistaken, position in the past. I know from personal experience that good and capable men and women can have moral blind spots, and that they deserve to be judged in a broader context. If the moral blind spot indicates something pervasive about their character — as I think Gingrich’s various episodes of grandiose self-absorption most definitely do — then that may determine our judgment. It could also be that the circumstances of the times compel a prudent voter to support a particular candidate in spite of their moral flaws, because that candidate holds the positions or has the skills that the polity needs. If we dismiss politicians, essayists, and other public voices because of their heretical views on particular issues, we may deprive ourselves of much-needed wisdom, and allies in causes that are, or may be, important to us. As contemptible as the late Christopher Hitchens’s views on Mother Teresa (for example) were, I kept reading him because he was intelligent and at times insightful. In public life, we rarely have the opportunity to caucus with saints. Not even in the Church!

I am most sympathetic to arguments from Paul supporters who say that whatever Ron Paul’s sins with these newsletters, they are mere peccadilloes compared to the great and unrepented-of sins of his opponents in supporting overseas wars. This makes sense to me: defending Paul’s disreputable actions within a particular context.

What I am unsympathetic to are those who say that Paul’s involvement in this affair, and his shifty defense of it, isn’t a problem in the first place. This represents a failure of moral imagination. Ta-Nehisi Coates has taken a highly critical view of Ron Paul in light of the newsletter mess. He writes, sarcastically:

All parties agree that Ron Paul is not, personally, racist and that he didn’t write the passages. This is comforting. I am not an anti-Semite. But give me a check to tell Harlem the Jews invented AIDS, and I’ll do it.

As I’ve said before, we all must make our calculus in supporting a candidate or even claiming he is “good” for the debate. But it must be an honest calculus.

If you believe that a character who would conspire to profit off of white supremacy, anti-gay bigotry, and anti-Semitism is the best vehicle for convincing the country to end the drug war, to end our romance with interventionism, to encourage serious scrutiny of state violence, at every level, then you should be honest enough to defend that proposition.

What you should not do is claim that Ron Paul “legislated” for Martin Luther King Day, or claim to have intricate knowledge of Ron Paul’s heart, and thus by the harsh accumulation of  evidence, be made to look ridiculous.

If you read the original WaPo story, you’ll see that Ed Crane, head of the CATO Institute, and hardly a wild-eyed bomb thrower, recalled a meeting with Paul that, if true, shows a grave flaw in Paul’s character:

Ed Crane, the longtime president of the libertarian Cato Institute, said he met Paul for lunch during this period and the two discussed direct-mail solicitations, which Paul was sending out to interest people in his newsletters. They agreed that “people who have extreme views” were more likely than others to respond.

Crane said Paul reported getting his best response when he used a mailing list from the now-defunct newspaper Spotlight, which was widely considered anti-Semitic and racist.

Benton, Paul’s spokesman, said that Crane’s account “sounds odd” and that Paul did not recall the conversation.

At the time, Paul’s investment letter was languishing. According to the person involved with his businesses, Paul and others hit upon a solution: to “morph” the content to capi­tal­ize on a growing fear among some on the political right about the nation’s changing demographics and threats to economic liberty.

The investment letter became the Ron Paul Survival Report — a name designed to intrigue readers, the company secretary said. It cost subscribers about $100 a year. The tone of that and other Paul publications changed, becoming increasingly controversial. In 1992, for example, the Ron Paul Political Report defended chess champion Bobby Fischer, who had become known as an anti-Semitic Holocaust denier, for his stance on “Jewish questions.’’

Hitler’s defeat was the defeat of Europe. And of America. How could we have been so blind? The blame, it seems, must be laid at the door of the international Jews. It was their propaganda, lies and demands which blinded the West to what Germany was doing. . . . If Satan himself, with all of the superhuman genius and diabolical ingenuity at his command, had tried to create a permanent disintegration and force for the destruction of the nations, he could have done no better than to invent the Jews.

This is over a year old, but a reader sends it to me, and it’s worth looking at, as a portrait of contemporary trends in Christianity. Seems that a group of young Christians went to a gay pride parade to demonstrate, but did so in a different spirit:

While the most vocal “Christian” presence at the parade was in the form of protesters with “God Hates Fags” signs, Nathan and a team from the Marin Foundation took a different approach… they chose to apologize.

The volunteers wore black t-shirts with the phrase “I’m Sorry” on the front and held signs with messages of apology, on behalf of all Christians, for the way the church has treated the gay community.

While the ultimate message Jesus came to preach was one of love, grace and compassion, we’ve sadly misrepresented Him and alienated sons and daughters from their Father’s embrace… and I’m so excited to see how Nathan and his team took a different, humble approach and in the end, did something far more powerful than preaching or shouting… they showed love.

Yesterday, a user of Reddit posted a photo of an African man with a massive scar atop his forehead. The text read:

Meet Omari. Two days ago he returned from the hospital after being hacked in the face by a machete defending an orphanage of 35 children by himself. Think we could raise the $2,000 needed for the remainder of the cement/barbed wire wall to keep both him and the children safe?

My son Matthew, who is a Reddit user, just showed me the photo of Omari and the suggestion.

“Matt, I can’t use my blog to raise money for anybody,” I said.

“No, Dad, that’s not what I’m showing you this for. They raised $65,000 for the orphanage. Once they confirmed that Omari’s story was legit, everybody started giving. Look at this.”

The original Redditor who posted the appeal for the orphanage wrote on the site:

$44,000!!!!!!!!! REDDIT!!!!! I can hardly breathe. I refreshed the page at least twice to make sure it was real. I cannot believe this. I just came back from the orphanage….. Let’s just say many tears were shed, and many hugs were shared. The children were all leaving to school as I arrived, but I will return around 6pm to take a group picture. I am about to upload the picture and video of Omari’s thanks. He’s been reading all of your comments, he said he’ll read every one if it takes him all day. $44,000. Reddit, thank you.

At last count, as Matthew said, they’d raised even more money to help Omari protect these children from thugs. Unbelievable what people can do through the web. Reddit, thank you. ZDNet covers this story, and other good things Redditors have done in this way.

I blogged yesterday about how bothered I was by the meme pumped out by Newt Gingrich, and taken up by some conservatives, that receiving food stamps are a sign of being a parasite. To me, this is unconscionable, given the depth and length of this depression. To be fair, it’s worth considering just what we mean by poverty, especially childhood poverty. A few weeks ago, I blogged about a conversation I’d had with a public school teacher who works in another parish, who told me that almost all of her students are on free or reduced lunches, consistent with their parents’ poverty, but many of them also have the latest smart phones, new and expensive sneakers, and other costly gewgaws.

Peter Hitchens, writing from the UK, explores this apparent paradox. Excerpt:

Now here we have an attempt to claim that the government’s rather modest and uninteresting welfare reforms, which deliberately avoid all the real most pressing problems, will create ‘child poverty’.

I think this is just emotionalism. As I so often say, there is no real, absolute material poverty in this country. Look at the living conditions portrayed in the TV series ‘Call the Midwife’, or those described in Somerset Maugham’s novel ‘Liza of Lambeth’ – or indeed the factual reports of poverty in Victorian and Edwardian Britain, and you will see what the word really means – unavoidable squalor caused  by the simple lack of plumbing and sanitation,  desperate overcrowding, real, gut-grinding hunger, untreated disease. You can find such things, as well, right now, in modern Bombay (those who wish to call it ‘Mumbai’ might like to check the Index item on this stupid, mistaken renaming by people who think they are being ‘progressive’), in Burma  and in many African countries. I have seen it there. One of the striking things about it is that those who endure it are often even so unbroken, but dignified, self-disciplined, hard-working, house-proud, and  send their children, in crisp uniforms, shining with cleanliness, off to school each morning. It is very moving.

It is also quite unlike the world of the British dependent population, who have all the material basics, but live amidst terrible state-encouraged moral squalor. In many cases, people resist this,  and their struggles to maintain respectability and order in their lives area is as moving as anything in Africa. But in many cases they are corrupted by it, and the results are tragic and appalling.

What these  people need is an organised and systematic moral rescue which, alas, Iain Duncan Smith is not ready to attempt. Even so, it is surely too much to ask struggling families who earn their bread and pay their debts, to subsidise others who don’t, at the sort of levels now seen.

I agree with this, in general, but I do wonder what “an organized and systematic moral rescue” would entail. How does a state do that without a massive exertion of coercive powers?

Both of my parents were raised in rural poverty. Growing up in the Great Depression, with his father away from home for much of that time because he had to work to support the family, my dad and his brother had to hunt in the woods behind their house to put meat on the table. If they didn’t kill squirrels or other animals, there would be nothing but cornbread and greens for dinner. My mother was born in 1943, but she was so poor as a child she may as well have been living in the Depression. Her stories of walking to school winter mornings in a thin dress, because her family was too poor to buy her a coat, bring tears to my eyes. Aside from the physical suffering — enduring the cold — there is the humiliation that poverty inflicted on that child. My mother is in her late 60s today, and I can’t detect any effects from the cold, but I can still see the effects of that humiliation. When she told me what it was like to be poor as a child, I finally understood why she was so strangely generous to the children who rode the school bus she drove for many years. Every holiday, she would give each child a bag of candy as he or she exited the bus for the school break. She told me later that knowing many of these children were poor, she didn’t want them to do without something special, no matter how small.

So there’s that. I remember from my childhood that there was a distinct cultural element to the kind of poverty we saw in our parish (just so you know, in Louisiana, parish = county). It was common to see black folks living in tarpaper shacks, but with expensive cars, sometimes luxury brands, parked out front. You never saw that with poor whites back then. Many years later, I read sociological research exploring the culturally determined ways people spent their money. If memory serves, poor blacks had the habit of spending their extra money on cars, clothing, and consumer items that quickly depreciated in value — this, as opposed to spending it on improving their housing, saving for education, and so forth. I remember that it was a constant source of low-level grumbling among whites around here: the idea that people depending on public assistance somehow found the cash to spend on automobiles more luxurious than those owned by working people who paid taxes, and who did not drive fancy cars. This was not a myth; it really did happen.

I also seem to recall — and again, forgive me if my memory is faulty — that when satellite television became available to consumers, you’d drive around and see expensive satellite dishes in the yard outside of ratty, falling-apart mobile homes. The folks who lived there were often white.

Now, what middle-class person, black or white, really wants to begrudge people who live in such dire housing a little something special to brighten their lives — satellite TV, a nice car, etc.? Who would want to trade places with them? Not me. Not you. And yet, if you’re seeing a kid with a pair of $150 sneakers, and a $400 smartphone, standing in line every day to get his government-subsidized lunch, something inside you is going to protest. And why not? A generation or two ago, that would have been seen as a source of personal shame, at least in the culture in which I was raised. It would not have been done, at least not among respectable people. Today? I wonder.

What we call “poverty” in this country is not what poverty was a generation or two ago. The deepest poverty is not material, but moral, and social. How do you address that? What do we do with that information? As with the school choice debate, one gets the idea that this discussion takes place between and among elites who have no direct experience with the poor, and who either sentimentally valorize them, or demonize them.

It’s funny how people refer to regulations they don’t like as “nanny statism.” Anyway, it may be nanny statism, but I support the move to get junk food out of public schools, given the obesity epidemic. Trouble is, new research shows that these junk food bans don’t do any good:

No matter how the researchers looked at the data, they could find no correlation at all between obesity and attending a school where sweets and salty snacks were available.

“Food preferences are established early in life,” said Jennifer Van Hook, the lead author and a professor of sociology and demography at Penn State. “This problem of childhood obesity cannot be placed solely in the hands of schools.”

This is a fascinating result, because it seems to indicate that food preferences are largely set in the first five years of life, before kids get to school. And, it suggests that any good the school might have done kids during the day, by keeping them away from sugary sodas and high-calorie junk food could be wiped out when they go home. One thing I see these days that we didn’t have when I was growing up: this bizarre practice of giving kids between-meal snacks as a part of anything they do. It seems to me that kids can’t do anything without adults handing them a Capri Sun and a bag of chips at the conclusion. When did this start?

In the end, as with so many things, it all goes back to parenting, and home training.

Gayle Tzemach Lemmon writes about how the school choice issue was front and center for her struggling single mom before it was a big deal nationally. Her mom basically lied to get her daughter into a better school instead of the one the state picked out for the girl. Excerpt:

I write this so many years later because right now, the school choice debate is leaving out people like my mother: parents who embrace choice because they believe they have no other choice. It is a conversation that happens largely among highly educated people in fancy conference rooms and on lofty campaign platforms, in highbrow publications and among rarefied circles.

… I wonder now what my mother would have made of today’s school choice discussion and the passions it stirs on all sides. (She passed away not long after I finished elementary school.) I think she would have been surprised to see so many of her fellow self-identifying liberals, usually so sympathetic to cash-strapped parents, fighting to keep her from exercising the choice she felt was her right as a taxpayer and her duty as a mother.

For my part, I find it remarkable that many who support the status quo with such ardor vigorously exercise their own choice by sending their children to expensive private institutions gated off from public school hoi polloi. But I know my mother also would have found it surprising that people who otherwise think little about poor kids today embrace vouchers with the kind of ideological fervor those on the other side once reserved for the gold standard.

The Catholic blogger Mark Shea, who has for a long time been taking Catholic conservatives to task for supporting torture in the name of protecting us from the jihad, is worried about the signs he sees in the concentration of power in the executive (which accelerated under the last Bush), and Obama’s attitude towards religious liberty. He cautions Catholics not to become hysterical, but says that all of us — not just Catholics — should be watchful and apprehensive. Excerpt:

[T]hey certainly have laid the groundwork for persecution and tyranny with the repeal of habeas corpus via royal fiat, the authorization of murder and indefinite detention on the word of the Dear Leader alone, and this latest move to trample religious liberty. It will take only the right combination of economic, social and political triggers to turn our de jure tyrannical police state into a de facto one. Who will be the designated scapegoats the Dear Leader will select in order to crystallize The People around him will depend on who the Dear Leader is, what precipitates the crisis whereby he euthanizes the last bits of liberty, and what goals he is trying to achieve in consolidating power and crushing opposition as he does so. But our Ruling Class (with our supine “What’s Snooki doing on Jersey Shore?” fat, dumb, and happy help) has come a long way in terms of softening the ground for that. It may well be Catholics who bear the brunt of it, but it may be some other minority instead.

Niall sends along this wonderful story from England, about an Antiochian Orthodox priest who built England’s smallest working church — in his garden shed.  He’s a woodworker, and designed it himself. He built it with the help of volunteers. It’s a work of art. Excerpt:

The regular congregation at the church has now grown to seven, including two pensioners and their walking frames, which means Father Weston now needs to upsize.

The clergyman said: ‘When we do a Saturday liturgy we’ve had 18 people in the church and it really is a bit of a crush.

‘We would like to see our congregation grow, a large part of orthodox services are sung not said and in bigger orthodox churches that is led by a choir and the congregation join in.

‘At St Fursey’s it not an option, everybody is in the choir and everybody is in the congregation.’

I love England.