Newt messed up the debates, Santorum will take at least four more years to visit all the counties of Florida, and Ron Paul is still Ron Paul. It’s time to build up the enthusiasm for the general! So here’s my list of eight conservative accomplishments for eight years with Romney:

1. The deficit will be slashed in half, after the repeal of the investment income tax, by increasing speeding and parking fines 500%.

2. All former opponents will receive perks. Bachmann will run Education, Santorum Homeland Security, Gingrich will join the astronaut program, and Ron Paul will get a better fitting eyebrow toupee.

3. All 50 states will receive waivers for Obamacare on day one. The waivers will not become effective until 2017, unless Romney’s Massachusetts team finishes the new healthcare bill before then.

4. A compromise with Democrats will allow hunters to cross roads with a gun, as long as it’s after sunset and they’re wearing a deer costume.

5. There will be a special yearly Presidential speech on abortion, alternately drafted by Republicans and Democrats.

6. NASA will be spun off as a GSE that makes its own money – the Freddie Mac of orbital housing.

7. Commercial gambling will be allowed in all states, minimum bet $10K.

8. The death tax will be repealed for those undergoing proxy baptism.

(Add your own in the comments!)

All of TV and the blogosphere were abuzz today with discussion of Newt’s immigration proposal. The initial take of commentators was that Newt had an excellent debate night, and then slipped near the end and possibly destroyed his campaign. Even Rush this morning said that the proposal had potential and it’s too bad Newt didn’t work out the details before blurting it out.

And then, a few hours later, this shows up on Newt.org:

10 Steps to a Legal Nation

Take a look at that detailed plan and tell me it was done overnight – because it wasn’t. Romney has been running for four years, and doesn’t have an immigration plan. Make no mistake, ladies and gentlemen: this was all carefully laid down, and we’re witnessing one of the greatest political masterstrokes in recent years.

First off, consider the timing: all over the country, people are today travelling long distance to be with family. It’s a time when we count our blessings, a time of gratitude and generosity. It’s hard to imagine a more receptive setting for such ideas than the discussion around the Thanksgiving table.

Second, the delivery was masterful. With all the caveats, with all the talk of taking the heat, Newt made it sound as though he was reviving the Bush/McCain amnesty proposals. Romney jumped right in, and missed the crucial detail that there was no path to citizenship involved. A path to citizenship that, as the Gingrich campaign serendipitously (yeah right!) found out and tweeted minutes after the debate, had been in fact supported by Romney himself a couple of years back. I’d almost feel sorry for Mittens… if it wasn’t for the poetic justice of him being caught in exactly this kind of trap.

Because, my friends, to stand against Newt’s (truly modest) proposal on rigidly doctrinaire “no amnesty” ground is simply untenable. Consider: there is somewhere, right now, an old undocumented grandma cooking a turkey for two generations of American citizens. Gingrich is saying that, if grannie passes a local citizen review board, has no criminal record, and pays a fine that’s at least five grand, he wants to give her a legal status with no path to citizenship. The only way to disagree with that is to say that no, grannie deserves instead to be dumped by herself into Ciudad Juarez; care to make that case to the American public?

Newt has thus brilliantly exposed that there is a line to be drawn somewhere among the twelve million. Some may draw it very narrowly, and only leave a few thousand old grandmas on the legalization side; others may take more roots into account; there is, in any case, a vivid debate to be had about the exact criteria. But Newt has shown very eloquently that it’s politically impossible (and morally indefensible) to put absolutely all illegal immigrants into the same bin.

Now you may wonder why would Newt bring up such a thing and possibly create confusion among conservatives at a time when we’re supposed to be preparing Obama’s change of residence instead. And I believe the Romney-baiting was a nice side benefit, but it is the general election that was the real point – specifically, of course, the Latino vote.

It’s been said many times, and by people far smarter than yours truly, that the Latino voters’ family and religious values and their work ethic make them a very natural constituency for the Republican Party. And yet even Bush only managed to get 44% of the Latino vote. Now why would the average Jose vote against his values like that? The truth is, I think, that he doesn’t: he votes for his family values, and he has family, friends, or friends’ family who are here illegally. All the Democrats have to do to scare poor Jose is to say that look, Republicans will enforce the existing laws, and if they get elected then the Border Patrol will swoop down upon your friends and relatives and take them to the land of the Zetas.

What gives these accusations the ring of plausibility is that many Republicans these days will refuse to even talk about anything else except “securing the border” and “enforcing the existing laws”. And it is true that the border needs to be secured first; but as long as we do not also come forward with a plan for what to do afterwards about the twelve million, the Latino voters will keep assuming the worst and believe these Democrat innuendos.

And, let us be realistic, the saddest part of the situation is that “enforcing the existing laws” is just empty talk at this point. They may have been enforceable once: that time is a few decades in the past. Strict enforcement of the law means expulsion for twelve million, which is, if nothing else, logistically impossible under any realistic time frame or budget constraints. The people who promote such a solution shout loudly and carry a tiny stick, with the only practical effect of irresponsibly pushing Latino voters, by the millions, into Obama, Pelosi and Reid’s arms.

This is where the genius of the Gingrich immigration plan comes in. He wants all the illegal immigrants who have strong ties to Latino voters to have a chance to make their case in front of a citizen commission drawn from the local community. This places no undue pressure on the enforcement agencies, and lets each community decide to what extent it’s been hurt by illegal immigration and which illegals are due on the first bus to Mexico, while also extracting fines to compensate for the economic damage and for unpaid back taxes.

Now this is what I call a solution. It finally lets us move forward on a problem that’s been around for decades. It’s easy to implement, has an excellent chance of working, helps the economy, and finally allows the average Latino voter to breathe easily about undocumented grandma’s status, and to vote for the party that best represents her conservative moral values instead.

I’ve barely covered a few of the issues here. There’s a lot more to Newt’s immigration plan and I really recommend spending half an hour and reading all of it. There are many other goodies I haven’t even mentioned, and the plan has clearly been a long time in the making. It is a practical, humane, efficient solution for the immigration problem, and a great Obama- and Democrat-destroying weapon for the general election.

Way to go, Newt.

My cool cat Mittens is quite a character. Some of my friends say he used to sound like a donkey. Others think he looks like a rhino. Now I know y’all will think I’m crazy, but Mittens actually talks to me: as far as he’s concerned, he’s always been nothing but a big fat elephant.

Oh, the stories Mittens and I have! One summer we drove to Mexico, and Mittens demanded that I tie him to the roof of the car for the trip. Needless to say, he made quite a mess up there; but each time we talked about it afterwards, he insisted that he thoroughly enjoyed himself, and jumped on the roof to prove it.

I first met Mittens in 2007, and before that he apparently grew up on a donkey farm. He always knew he was truly an elephant, of course; but back then he had to pretend to be a donkey, just like everyone else. I’ve seen pictures and boy, his ears did look quite long.

In 2008, Mittens took part in the National Elephant Conformation Show. He worked very hard, and made me support him, but that year the contest was won by a rhino.

He’s trying again this year, but I’ve had enough of his antics. Here you go, folks: I have one Mittens up for adoption. He looks sharp and moves smoothly. He’ll assume whatever shape you like, as long as you don’t mind the braying.

According to President Obama’s speech tonight, the one overwhelming reason for the Libyan intervention is that he “refused to wait for the images of slaughter and mass graves”. Normally, this should be an unfalsifiable argument, and that’s probably what the President aimed for when he made it the rhetorical centerpiece of his speech. It’s not that different from his support for the notorious “stimulus” policies, when again an impending, invisible “catastrophe” was supposedly avoided by heavy-handed intervention.

Unfortunately for Obama, he has left a glaring hole in his sophistry this time. I submit to you the curious incident of the dog that didn’t bark in the night-time or, by its Libyan name, Ajdabiya.

As far as Libyan cities go, Ajdabiya is a pretty big one at almost 100,000 population. Situated in East Libya, it was one of the first cities to revolt from Qaddafi in mid-February. A month later, it was captured by loyalist forces, and held by them for more than a week. This was the time when Qaddafi’s offensive seemed sure to succeed. Benghazi was on the verge of falling, and surely Qaddafi’s actions in Adjabiya were a dreadful foretaste of the impending genocidal massacres, which our heroic President stopped from occuring in Benghazi and beyond.

So what did the loyalists do in Adjabiya, during those heady days when it seemed like the rebels’ defeat was at hand? What are the horrors that the rebels discovered nine days later, when they retook the city, with a plethora of unrestricted foreign journalists on their heels? Judging by the heated rhetoric that our President just served us, I’d have expected to read some horrific stories of “slaughter and mass graves” in the recent news.

But instead the silence is deafening. The dog did not bark in the night; the mass graves are (thankfully) missing; and our President has just served us yet another bald, prime-time lie. (And no, I don’t expect him to actually intervene against the regime that perpetrated  ”the single deadliest act by any Arab government against its own people in the modern Middle East”, either.)

I’m a defense hawk and proud of it. I can recite the major events of WW2 and the Civil War forwards and backwards. I believe in spreading democracy and I believe that our armed forces are a great force for good in today’s world. I cheered when we went into Afghanistan, and double cheered when we toppled Saddam.

But I can’t cheer for Libya. It’s a stupid move that Obama made while vacationing in Brazil after being pushed around by Hillary. Let’s compare:

Afghanistan 2001:

• Objective: topple the Taliban and kick out Al Qaeda.
• Situation: tribal society in civil war.
• Tactics: embed Special Forces with the Northern Alliance to direct devastating air strikes.
• Outcome: Northern Alliance captures Kabul within weeks.