So, watching the debate last night with Matthew, my 12 year old, he was sitting there anxious that they talk about SOPA. Reminded me of being at the Apple Genius bar yesterday, talking to the, um, Genius about an iPad problem. Turns out the Genius had been homeschooled, and said that it really helped him, because his learning style is so individualistic. He said he learns so much more by himself than in a classroom.

I told him that my homeschooled son is the same way. Mentioned that I had no idea how much he had taught himself about Apple computers, and about the web, until I chanced to hear him conversing with a computer programmer at a neighborhood garden party. Blew me away. “Within 30 seconds, he was talking way over my head,” I told the Apple guy.

“Yeah, these kids,” he said, with a sigh. “They’ve grown up with this stuff. They know so much more. I probably shouldn’t even be behind this counter.”

“Hold on,” I said. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

Imagine that. Guy is 22 years old, and all washed up, because he’s pretty sure 12 year old geeks can kick his butt. This old world, I swear…

OK, folks, here we go. With Gingrich and Romney even in South Carolina, according to some polls, this is going to be a hugely consequential debate.

Romney hits early, talking about what a family man he is — knowing that the Marianne Gingrich bombshell is going to fall later tonight. Newt reminds the South Carolina crowd that he is a fellow Southerner.

UPDATE: Newt on the open marriage. He’s making this about the news media. “I am appalled that you would begin a presidential debate on a topic like that,” he growls at John King. Standing ovation from the partisan audience.

Gingrich says asking this question “is as close to despicable as anything I can imagine.” Really? Closer to despicable than asking your first wife for a divorce while she was in her hospital bed, as Gingrich did so he could marry his mistress Marianne?

“I am tired of the elite media protecting Barack Obama by attacking Republicans,” he said. The Limbaugh line. Brilliant — but, well, despicable.

UPDATE.2: I’ve just seen that the Gingrich divorce story isn’t wholly true. The divorce was in the works before his hospital visit. It’s not clear what he said in the hospital.

UPDATE.3: I don’t understand why Romney is continuing to go after Barack Obama. If he hopes to face Obama down this fall, he’s got to get through Gingrich first. He gave a rhetorically strong answer, defending “capitalism.” But if Romney had any sense, he would remind people that Gingrich’s Super PAC produced the Michael Moore-like video attacking Romney. Romney’s lines defending capitalism are powerful, but he’s missing an opportunity to hang the anti-capitalist albatross around Gingrich’s neck.

Good Reagan Democrat lines from Santorum: “I believe in capitalism for everybody … capitalism that works for the working men and women of this country.”

UPDATE.4: We’re half an hour into this debate, and Romney is pretty much inert versus Gingrich. True, Gingrich hasn’t attacked him, but Gingrich has momentum now. What’s his thinking here? I don’t understand it. What is Romney afraid of? Or perhaps more relevantly, given his calculating, disciplined nature, what is he thinking? I’m not seeing the ads airing in South Carolina; is it the case that he thinks his paid media will do the dirty work for him in SC, while he can maintain a cleaner image nationally via this televised debate? What do you think?

UPDATE.5: Michael Brendan Dougherty says the debate is over and Gingrich won with that fiery response. Excerpt:

It was obvious that Gingrich was ready for the question, and absolutely ready to pounce all over it. The surprise here is that his accusation that the media makes it “harder to govern” this country, and harder to attract “decent” people was so easily swallowed by the audience from a twice-divorced, two-timer like Newt Gingrich.

Santorum is on fire against Romney and Gingrich on the health care question. Clearest, crispest thing I’ve heard him say in ages.

UPDATE.6:MBD tweets:

It’s pathetic that conservatives are cheering a twice-adulterer implying to them than HE’S the decent one.

UPDATE.7:  I’m not entirely clear on something. Is Ron Paul suggesting that we redeploy US soldiers to bedpan duty for Medicare recipients?

UPDATE.8: Why does Gingrich think that his starting a healthcare lobbying outfit makes him an expert on healthcare?

UPDATE.9: Santorum: “Grandiosity has never been a problem with Newt Gingrich. … I don’t want a nominee that I have to open the morning papers worrying about what he’s going to say next.”

More: “I’m steady, I’m solid, I’m not going to go out there and do things that you’re going to worry about.” Excellent. Santorum identifies the big worry about Gingrich. He’s got to hit on this harder if he wants to have a shot.

Gingrich had an effective response, including: “You’re right: I think grandiose thoughts. This is a big country with big people doing big things.”

Santorum a great retort: “Four years into his leadership, he was thrown out by the conservatives.” Santorum reminds people that he was in the House working with Gingrich, and saw, “No discipline, no ability to be able to pull things together.” And he rips the hell out of Gingrich for his flawed Congressional leadership. Very, very strong stuff.

But Gingrich is unbowed. “I think long before Rick came to Congress, I was busy being a rebel… .”

Santorum gave it a great shot, and what he says is true. But Gingrich, being shameless, probably did okay.

Good grief, Romney, Santorum gave you a terrific opening to savage Gingrich, but all you can come up with are these idiotic robo-lines about needing a non-Washington person to be president! Look, there’s a great Romney line about how Gingrich didn’t show up in the Reagan diaries, which belies Gingrich’s claim to have been a big Reaganite — but Romney stepped on his own line. He’s awful.

UPDATE.10: Gingrich is rocking hard tonight. Unless the Marianne interview is a blockbuster — and Newt has done a good a job as he can insulating himself among GOP primary voters — I think he’s going to win South Carolina. Romney can’t lay a glove on him. Romney looks so weaselly on the tax return question, and he is weaselly on this issue.

UPDATE.11:  Newt, terrifically sarcastic on the SOPA question: “You’re asking a conservative about the economic interests of Hollywood.” And then he gives a good political answer about being for “freedom.” Gingrich is walking away with this thing tonight.

Santorum makes a decent point that property rights are important. His statement that the idea that the Internet ought to be a free for all is nuts surely comes out of the way he has been so disgustingly abused by Dan Savage’s internet campaign against him.

UPDATE.12: John Podhoretz tweets:

Not watching but based on what I’m reading, how is it that Romney has spent 5 years running without a strategy for talking about being rich?

UPDATE.13: Romney is such a tool, saying he wish he had talked about his opponents less and Barack Obama more. What a smarmy answer. Does he even realize he is in a race against Newt Gingrich? Does he realize that Gingrich is kicking his butt tonight?

UPDATE.14: Ron Paul is a non-entity tonight.

UPDATE.15: If Santorum had been as good earlier in this race as he’s been in these last two debates, he might have gotten a lot further by now. If he had whiffed tonight, I’d say it was a huge win for Newt. But he’s been good. I still believe that Gingrich wins this thing, because he’s had the applause lines tonight. This comment from an Andrew Sullivan reader caught my eye, though:

You know, in the end, Santorum just doesn’t have the balls to duke it out with Gingrich and Romney. He gets out there and throws that big first shots and they’re good ones, but when he gets hit back, he starts to falter a little. You can see it in his body language. Newt and Romney throw their usual bullsh*t at him and it’s bullsh*t, but they do it with their usual arrogance and ego and it starts to overwhelm Santorum. He’s not long for this race.

UPDATE.16: I think Romney’s answer on the pro-life point was acceptable. But why on earth doesn’t he round on Newt? Santorum was terrific on the abortion question, both against Romney and Gingrich.

UPDATE.17: Good for the audience, forcing John King to let Ron Paul answer the abortion question. “Law will not correct the basic problem, and that’s the morality of the people” — Ron Paul, making a useful point.

I don’t agree with Paul’s view on abortion rights, but I do appreciate very much his consistency on Constitutionalism.

UPDATE.18: Gingrich’s final statement was completely hysterical and absurd, but as a matter of GOP primary politics, he made an effective case for why he’s the man to go up against Obama, not the uncertain Romney. Understand, I think Gingrich would be a disastrous candidate against Obama, but if one is voting on heart, not head, Gingrich wins.

Santorum made a very strong case for himself, as the kind of candidate who can win the Reagan Democrats.

OK, debate over, and here’s my quick take: Romney lost badly. But because Santorum and Gingrich were equally good, it might well have meant a Romney win on election day — this, if it divides the anti-Romney vote. Because Gingrich has the momentum, I have to think he helped himself the most tonight. I think he did a terrific job insulating himself with GOP voters against the Marianne bombshell — and that’s going to be the biggest talking point of the next news cycle.

CNN just going through a highlights reel right now. There were a number of powerful lines from Santorum and Gingrich. All the Romney highlights are unfavorable to himself. I just can’t see anybody who is for Romney being excited about this cat.

Frank Beckwith recalls a story in which an Evangelical is supposed to have said that a man could commit adultery or even murder and not lose his salvation, but if he became a Mormon, he might be hellbound. Frank, an Evangelical who returned to the Catholic faith of his youth a few years ago, points out that the Evangelical’s view could easily have derived from solid theological convictions. While the unnamed Evangelical might be commended for holding to a theological belief despite its unpopularity, there’s something else going on here:

But in another sense–tying a believer’s eternal fate to overt cognitive assent to a set of doctrines without regard to whether in fact the believer’s life reflects Christian virtue–seems not very Christian at all. It, ironically, reflects an acquiescence to the flip side of the spirit of the age: it treats the human person as a bifurcated being consisting of an all-important mind that consents to doctrine and an unimportant body that is alien to the “true” self.

This has political implications, Frank continues. That the Evangelical leadership gathered in Texas (the group that endorsed Santorum) considered the supposedly reformed adulterer Newt Gingrich fit for consideration for their endorsement, but not the family-man Mitt Romney, who reportedly was never in the running, sends a terrible message, according to Frank:

 Consequently, the message that our Mormon friends will hear from this is the same one heard by Bob Millet’s friend: better to be an adulterer than a Mormon.

This is the message that will be heard not only by Mormons, but by many others in the broader culture who may not have anything good to say about Mormonism, but who may find Evangelical ideas about politics and personal character to be weird and offensive. If a man like Gingrich, with a long and undistinguished character record in public office, is not disqualified from office, simply because he claims to have repented, but Mitt Romney, who has had a relatively exemplary life, is not, only because he professes a heretical theology, it calls the political judgment of Evangelicals into question.

Dave Weigel tweets:

Limbaugh now discussing Newt/ABC News: “Everybody’s had an angry ex-spouse.”

Yes, everybody. Man of the people, that Rush. It’s so hard to get good help wives these days.

Sheesh.

UPDATE: Rush favorably quotes friend calling Newt a “victim” of the Sexual Revolution. Rush adds that Newt is victim of liberal media, and insists that Newt’s asking Marianne for permission to have a mistress is not the same as asking for an “open marriage,” as Marianne claims.

Really.

Or else! Angelina Stanford confesses:

I am a bona fide city girl. I don’t like being outside. I don’t like animals. And I don’t want to know where my food comes from. As far as I am concerned the boneless skinless chicken breast is the ultimate expression of the triumph of modernity. At least that all used to be true of me.

I am only one generation away from a line of farmers that stretch back to ancient times. That changed when my father moved to the city, became a professional and passed all of his disdain of rural life and its presumed intellectual backwardness to me. I was an excellent disciple.

And yet, here I am, all these years later, daydreaming about living on a farm and plotting out my latest agrarian endeavor—raising live chickens. What happened? Wendell Berry happened.

Read the whole thing. It’s really true. Wendell Berry is dangerous. In a good way. Best to stay away from his work, if you don’t want to risk being profoundly changed.

By the way, you might consider going to this Kentucky conference in July. It’s honoring Wendell Berry, but will also be about classical homeschooling. I do believe Mrs. Dreher will abandon her little chickens here in St. Francisville for these days, and head on up for this thing.

“Did you have a good day with Pawpaw, Lucas?”

“Every day is a good day with Pawpaw.”

Yeah, we did the right thing, moving to Louisiana.

In conversation a couple of nights ago, a bunch of us were talking about localism and chain stores. I was reminded of something I saw a decade ago, when we lived in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. There was a locally owned and operated coffee shop in the neighborhood, but it struggled for business. The coffee was good there, and the interior was attractive. But the owner was unwelcoming, especially to moms with strollers. Back then (and, I imagine, today), there are no small number of stay-at-home moms pushing babies around the neighborhood. My wife was one at the time, and she, like her mom friends, wanted a place outside the home to get together for talk and coffee with each other.

This guy’s militantly localist coffee shop was not that place. If memory serves, he had a “no strollers” policy.

So, word gets out that Starbucks is planning to open a store a couple of blocks away. Local Guy goes nuts, raising holy hell about how we can’t allow this corporate chain to defile our neighborhood with its industrial coffee and cookie-cutter aesthetic. Mind you, Cobble Hill was the kind of place where that kind of argument stood a decent chance of gaining traction, given the cultural mores of the neighborhood. But it didn’t. Why? Because the new Starbucks welcomed moms with strollers, and you didn’t get attitude from the baristas there. It really wasn’t any more complicated than that. I don’t remember exactly how long pissy Local Guy lasted, but he had to shut his doors. And nobody I knew missed him one little bit.

I thought my iPad hadn’t updated properly this morning when I sat down to read the morning paper and saw a headline saying Santorum was ahead of Romney in Iowa. But a recount of caucus votes shows that Santorum actually won the thing. Er, wow. Does this change anything in SC? Does it matter more than the fact that Rick Perry is, as of this morning, dropping out and endorsing Gingrich? 

The latter is far more important news. Perry has polled in the single digits in SC, but with Gingrich emerging from the Tuesday debate with momentum that’s starting to close the gap with Romney, the six points or so Perry has polled will push Gingrich within clear striking distance of Romney. Tonight’s debate will be critical. Gingrich is going to go pit bull on Romney. If Santorum turns in a less than four-star performance, I suspect that many of his supporters will defect to Gingrich before Saturday’s vote.

If ABC airs its supposed blockbuster interview with ex-Newt wife Marianne tonight, as reported, will that affect people’s decision? Will SC Republicans be angry not at the dirtbag husband Newt, or at the media for what Newt will plainly say is their attempt to move the election to Romney by reporting personally compromising information on the eve of the SC vote?

Suddenly, like a Southern family reunion, this mess has gotten a lot messier, and a lot more interesting.

Thumbs up to Christianity Today editor David Neff’s analysis of the Religious Right macher meeting that resulted in an apparently meaningless endorsement of Rick Santorum. Excerpt:

The 150 evangelical leaders who met behind closed doors on January 14 to anoint a Republican candidate for President were wise not to have invited me.

I believe that Christians have an urgent duty to engage the social, economic, and moral threats to a healthy society. That requires a wide variety of political action. However, one thing it doesn’t call for is playing kingmaker and powerbroker.

By conspiring to throw their weight behind a single evangelical-friendly candidate, they fed the widespread perception that evangelicalism’s main identifying feature is right-wing political activism focused on abortion and homosexuality. In truth, it is hard to imagine the Religious Left in 2008 doing something similar: holding a conclave to decide whether they would throw their collective weight behind either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, unwilling to leave the Democratic primary results to the voters.

More:

When evangelicals are confined to a partisan kennel, it is easy to think we are exercising real power. In fact we are, to use the old Soviet phrase, serving as “useful idiots.” Christianity Today founder Billy Graham discovered this had happened to him. Out of an abundance of enthusiasm and good will, he tried to aid Richard Nixon in his campaign. Later, when Watergate transcripts revealed the true Nixon, Graham realized he had been used.

We are tempted to think we can be kingmakers and powerbrokers, that we can deliver or withhold the support of a voting bloc. But if there is any lesson in the story of this year’s primary elections, it is this: evangelicals have not voted as a bloc and many are not following their leaders.

True. As I observed yesterday, in the heavily Evangelical state of South Carolina, Rick Santorum’s numbers have declined since the endorsement, as the anti-Romney vote moves toward Newt Gingrich. This is obviously a response to Gingrich’s debate performance, but the point is that it plainly means nothing to South Carolina Evangelical voters that their national leaders anointed Santorum. This will be noticed in Washington.

In the 2010 book “American Grace,” the political scientists Robert Putnam and David E. Campbell reported findings that not only do American Christians not vote the way their religious leaders tell them to, they actually choose their churches based on political orientation. Which is the tail and which is the dog here?