Romney is asked about Mormonism wherever he goes. In my travels, I find his religious preference cited everywhere as the source of opposition to his candidacy. His response to the former CEOs that only reporters care about this issue sounded like a politician’s tired evasion. Romney was indicating that either he was too obtuse to appreciate his problem or was stalling because he had not determined how to deal with it. Contact with his advisers indicates the latter is the case. ~Robert Novak

This is surreal:

US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice has underlined the need for moderate Pakistani forces to join hands in order to resist extremism and continue economic progress and commended President Musharraf’s important role in “bringing Pakistan back from the brink.”

This comes in the same week that Bhutto is preparing to take her party out of parliament because of what Musharraf is doing, and there are already PML-N (Sharif’s allies) and MMA MPs pulling out of parliament to boycott the election.  They even have cricketing legend Imran Khan on their side–let Condi Rice put that in her “sport is a universal language” pipe and smoke it.  Musharraf isn’t bringing Pakistan back from the brink–he’s heading straight for it.  This confirms my impression that the administration has no idea what it’s doing in Pakistan. 

At the same time, the security situation in the northwest is deteriorating.  Clearly, something other than more of Musharraf’s clumsy and haphazard responses to crisis is needed.  It is probably too late to urge him to step aside now.  Washington has already publicly backed him too far to change.

Domenici’s expectedretirement opens up some interesting possibilities in New Mexican politics.  RCP notes that a political unknown and businessman from Santa Fe, Don Wiviott, has started a campaign for Senate on the Democratic side.  If either Udall or Madrid gets into the race, Wiviott’s chances are basically nil.  Since Wiviott prides himself on being a “green-friendly” businessman, there is always the possibility that he might switch and try to run as a Green if he was unsatisfied with the eventual nominee.  The New Mexico Green Party is quite strong as third parties go and it has created problems for state and federal Democratic candidates in the past.  Even without Wiviott, the Greens might make trouble.  Most of the Greens’ glory days were back in the ’90s before 2000 shocked many Democrats into resisting the impulse to split the vote on the left, but they could still play spoiler.  A lot of funny ideas float around in northern New Mexico.  A weak or unacceptable Democratic nominee could invite a significant Green candidacy that could manage to save the Republicans a seat.  I expect the state GOP is starting to think about how it can encourage a Green revival.

As I have said elsewhere, the New Mexico Democrats would be fools to nominate Patricia Madrid.  Whatever people may say, I have the impression that Patricia Madrid couldn’t find her way out of a paper bag (and I say this as someone who reluctantly voted for her last year).  Not only did she interfere in the Vigil bribery case and nearly sabotage the federal case against him (which Iglesias was busily messing up on the U.S. Attorney’s end), which makes her judgement and her ethics as questionable as those of Heather Wilson, but she stood mute, stupefied, by a simple question about whether she would vote for tax increases.  From what I’ve heard from people back home, this was the moment that saved Wilson from defeat.  She’s not very good in debates, while Wilson is honed and actually quite smart.  I’m sorry to say that Wilson would have a decent chance to save the seat if the Democrats pursued the Madrid option.

The GOP has unveiled the convention logo for next year:

Apparently the GOP is going to try to destroy 2008 before 2008 can destroy them.  They’re taking Giuliani’s message to heart–stay on offense! 

Is the message of this logo that the Republican Party is drunk (the stars)?  Depressed (hence the blue)?  Insane?  Perhaps the message is that the party’s being chopped to pieces, or gradually erased from existence and disappearing into the background?

Past GOP convention logos have never been what anyone would confuse with aesthetically pleasing, but no recent one has been quite so ridiculous.  Consider ’04:

While it does appear as if the elephant is possibly threatening to step on the Statue of Liberty’s head, the elephant itself appears quite normal.

2000 was a year of a tame, sane blue elephant, which was nonetheless trampling on the flag:

While the year itself loomed overhead, the ’96 convention had a much more subdued, reasonable-looking elephant.

I wasn’t able to find images for 1992 in Houston or for the 1988 New Orleans convention logo, but I did find this description for ’88:

It consists of the stylized three-star elephant used by the Republican National Committee since 1968, with its back reshaped to represent the Superdome where the Republican delegates will gather next August.

It doesn’t sound that great, but almost anything would be better than the blue rampaging freak of nature on display this time.

And those changes have brought us success, in local elections we have taken Plymouth, we have taken Lincoln, we took Chester, we took the council right here in Blackpool and as William reminded us in that great speech on Sunday we are back in the North of England, a force to be reckoned with in every part of our country.  ~David Cameron

Except Scotland.  Or maybe this was an intentional oversight?

Update: Alex Massie adds several solid observations on this point, and has more about the speech in an earlier post.

Here is a sentence from the introduction to the brand new Crisis of the Oikoumene:

Loyalty to the Empire that endured until the Monothelite crisis–involving a development on Monophysite Christology–prevented the [Three Chapters] schism from making a lasting mark on the African church.

Can I just tell you how troubling these lines about monotheletism are?  Every year there is some book that comes out about Orthodoxy, Christology, ecumenical councils or Byzantium and inevitably somewhere in such a book you will find a description of monotheletism like the one above.  It’s just not accurate, and yet it gets repeated on a regular basis.  I may have more to say about the book at Cliopatria in the coming weeks.  Christology buffs, stay tuned.  

Update: On the other hand, Richard Price’s chapter explaining the origins of the Three Chapters controversy is absolutely superb and definitely required reading for anyone interested in the question of the authority of Chalcedon and its supposed ‘Nestorianising’ tendencies on account of the reinstatements of Theodoret and Ibas.  I have rarely seen a scholarly treatment of this aspect of the controversy handled so carefully and thoughtfully.  Well worth the wait.

The Post‘s list of foreign policy advisors for the main candidates is fairly disturbing, albeit unsurprising stuff.  We have known about many of the big names associated with the leading candidates for a while now.  Edwards and Romney have assembled teams of people who are not nearly as well known.  That’s no guarantee that these advisors are any better at guiding foreign policy, but prominent screw-ups and known warmongers are mostly conspicuous by their absence from the Edwards and Romney camps. 

Also, Romney seems to have a peculiarly strong focus on Latin America policy at the moment: 10 of his 26 advisors belong to his Latin America policy group, and virtually all of the others are dedicated to counter-terrorism.  Judging by his current advisors, you’d get the impression that Romney believes Latin America to be the most important region in the world.

By continuing to use such terms as “Burma” and “Rangoon,” we refuse to be spooked. ~David Warren

I don’t mean to be a broken record on this.  By all means, condemn and denounce the junta, and expose its crimes to the world, but let’s stop pretending that we keep calling it Burma out of deep conviction.  Myanmar has been the Burmese name of the country since independence, so it is hardly “spooky” to apply that name to English usage.   The continued use of Burma and Rangoon and so forth simply means that English-speakers are using the same names they have used for a very long time.  Using these names is not a protest–certainly not an effective one–but a convenience and a habit.  The logic of this sort of argument is that continued use of a traditional colonial name for a place is a declaration of opposition to the current regime, in which case we had all better start talking about Rhodesia again instead of Zimbabwe, lest we taint ourselves with some supposed nominal obeisance to Mugabe. 

P.S. Warren’s calls for military strikes are typical and foolish.  Throwing the country into chaos and unleashing internecine conflict hardly seem desirable alternatives; cheap talk about having a ready-made opposition government is the same kind of recklessness that did so much to make Iraq the mess that it is today.

Longtime baseball fans know what the Mendoza line is (we won’t explain here) but what we mean here is that there may be a “Ron Paul line”: those candidates who couldn’t outraise Paul this quarter (he apparently took in approx. $2.4 million) ought to do some soul searching? So who couldn’t outraise Paul this quarter? Dodd, Biden? Huckabee? Every other GOPer not in the top four? ~Chuck Todd

In the event, Rep. Paul took in twice as much as Todd expected, which raises the bar even higher for the rest of the GOP field.  Hunter and Tancredo have vowed to stay in through the caucuses, but where do their supporters go when they drop out?  Ironically, Paul is alone among the others in being a reliable opponent of illegal immigration and trade deals such as NAFTA, which would make him the logical choice for these voters…if the war did not divide him so sharply from the majority of Republicans.

Update: Huckabee managed to bring in a whopping $1 million.  Ambinder ponders the significance:

There must be, within the Republican Party, a vein of anti-war libertarian sentiment. It is longer and deeper than many of us had suspected. The Paul movement is probably one part Buchanan bridage and one part fiscal hawk. It is clearly active in ways that most of us haven’t adequately understood? Paul may be in a position to be a giant killer now. Imagine if he finishes second or third in New Hampshire ….

Well, some thirty percent or so of Republicans have been opposed to the war for some time now, and there was always a small but hardy contingent of antiwar Republicans and conservatives.  It appears that they have begun mobilising.  Might it be enough to drag other candidates towards somewhat less crazy foreign policy views?