PPP just came out with a trio of new polls for the contests today. I did not anticipate Santorum to keep his lead considering the national polls show him firmly in 3rd place, with Mitt being far ahead.

CO-2012 Caucus: 37% Romney, 27% Santorum, 21% Gingrich, 13% Paul (PPP 2/4-6)

MN-2012 Caucus: 33% Santorum, 24% Romney, 22% Gingrich, 20% Paul (PPP 2/4-6)

MO-2012 Primary: 45% Santorum, 32% Romney, 19% Paul (PPP 2/6)

It could be a good night for Santorum. Unfortunately for Gingrich, this could be where the non-Romney supporters turn away from him, especially if he ends up in 3rd place in both CO and MN. Which could be a good thing for Romney since Santorum is a much weaker candidate than Gingrich, or Romney for that matter.

I am hoping for Romney to at least keep it close in MN and MO. Should be an interesting night.

I’ve thought about this for a while and until tonight was only thinking of Santorum. Santorum is not really a viable presidential candidate. He is a big government conservative which is not a major problem for electability (see GWB), and he is also too conservative socially to frighten many of the centrist voters away. I think he would lose to Obama in a landslide. But that’s all theory since he is running far behind Romney and Gingrich. However Santorum’s performance in the debates, and his ad campaigns against Newt Gingrich have made me believe that though outwardly it seems like he is fighting Newt for the same conservative voters and 2nd place, in reality he is trying to keep Newt from catching up to Romney. Sure, he also throws in powerful attacks on Romney, especially the debate attack on Romneycare, but in his mind that could be the reason why people would think him a good complement to Romney – someone who would keep Romney from going left if elected.

Is there an upside to Romney’s picking Santorum for VP? I think there are definitely better candidates. But Santorum does shore up the social and anti-Romneycare conservatives. Or so he might be hoping.

Moving on to Paul. Paul has defended Romney in very personal terms recently – did you see his defense of Romney’s not caring about the very poor?

“”I don’t believe for a minute that if Mitt Romney was sitting here, that if he released everything in his heart, he (would say): ‘You know what, the truth is, I really don’t care about poor people.’ That isn’t–I just don’t believe that,” Paul said in an interview on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight.”"

Ron Paul has also often been very lenient on Mitt Romney, and backing Mitt up in debates by attacking Newt Gingrich. That’s been fairly obvious and somewhat of a mystery, considering there isn’t that much difference in Mitt’s and Newt’s professed stances on various issues where they differ from Ron Paul. I know it is not that much to go on, but let’s see what Ron Paul can add to the Romney’s ticket. Well, Ron Paul is very popular with a significant segment on the independents, and even some democrats. Ron Paul is seen as a different kind of politician. He speaks his mind, he backs his views with his voting record, and he has very devoted followers. If he can bring a decent chunk of those voters with him, it will bump up Romney’s electability.

Now, I am a Romney supporter and I am also ethnically Jewish. Paul’s anti-Israel views and general foreign policy views offend me. Additionally, I think there is genuine concern over charges of racism in his past. That is why I never considered Paul as a Presidential candidate. However I could partly overlook those views if he was Romney’s VP, because let’s face it, VP slot is not really instrumental in setting policy, and there is no way Paul could ever influence Romney on Foreign Policy enough to significantly matter. Also of course Paul is older than the quite robust and healthy Mitt Romney, and there is not that much danger of him becoming president.

I think many republicans who could never consider voting for Ron Paul to be President, would not be turned away by him being on the ticket. Plus we would potentially gain a host of RINOs, independents and democrats in November. I think those things are on Paul’s and Mitt’s minds and makes the scenario at least a possibility in my mind.

So both Paul and Santorum are continuing in this race and trying to block any possibility of Newt gaining a majority, could be their plan to win Romney over to the possibility of them being on the ticket.

Your thoughts?

I’ve supported Romney from the start of the primary season. However I’ve felt good about other candidates and flirted with switching my #1 many times. Like many other conservative republicans (yeah yeah I am somewhat socially moderate but I do support social conservatives with no problems) I’ve desired the most conservative possible candidate that was also intelligent, viable, and attractive to the American electorate. Thus I’ve supported, sometimes as #1 both Newt and Perry, and was positive towards Cain and Bachmann. Like many other conservatives, I disliked Huntsman’s campaign style, and well he obviously wasn’t viable.

As other candidates disappointed me in turn, I kept turning back to Romney. I’ve explained why I supported him in my previous diary “I support Mitt Romney”. However what frustrates me on Redstate is not the obvious lack of support for Romney, he certainly does not have a great track of conservative accomplishments, given that he was a governor of MA, but the amount of denigrating and insulting invective being thrown in both his and his supporters direction.

Romneybots is one of the milder descriptors being used towards people like me, simply for being a part of 20-30% consistent Republican supporters of a Republican presidential candidate. It’s often a lot worse. Do you think that we would be persuaded to support your candidate if you cast doubt on our own personal conservative credentials, and claim that we are blind and unthinking?

Also Romney is seemingly the only candidate that some of you claim you would never vote for, including the general election. In the various public polls, of the Republicans in the general population, outside of this site, it is the opposite as Romney is the most acceptable candidate with the smallest percentage of Republicans not willing to vote for him if he is the nominee.

Some examples of what is said about Mitt Romney:

“He is mr. 1 % incarnate.” 

“Why does the GOP go to the last loser? Loser should be the last one you would want to run this time?”

“Romney, on the same hand, wears a deceptive and vile mask which can and does fool the uniformed.”

“He’s scum.”

“…no conservative should vote for Romney if he is ordained by the establishment with the nomination.”

 ”We should always vote for the candidate with the most conservative principles – that will be the libertarian in the above race if it is Romney”

“You Romney supporters are increasingly making it clear who your candidate is: a lowlife thug in an Armani suit… Mitt Romney is a scumbag, and his methods are beneath the office he seeks.”

“So, I’m wondering: where’s the bounty on Magic Underwear RomeyCare’s sex scandal. Is he really that squeaky clean?”

“Romney is a lying, liberal scumbag who is buying the election and is being added by the moderate filth in the Republican Party that has sold this Country to the leftist traitors like Reid, Pelosi and the Marxist Obama. May they all burn in Hell.”

I could go on, but I think I’ve got enough – and that’s just in the last few days. I understand it was a lot worse a few weeks and months ago. Pleasant stuff. I feel a tingle up my leg to quickly dump Romney and move on to the true conservatives in the race.

A lot is said of Romney’s negative attacks and of his surrogates and supporters, but if you just step outside your narrow view and think of how all this stuff is playing to the Romney’s Republican (many conservative) supporters, perhaps you will watch what you say when you try to persuade us to support your candidate.

For the record, I will support Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum if either one becomes our nominee. I will even be enthusiastic about Gingrich, water under the bridge and all that. But for now it’s game on and Florida here we come!

Romney leads Newt Gingrich by 15 points, 42 percent to 27 percent in the crucial state. Rick Santorum is third with 16 percent, followed by Ron Paul with 11 percent. Just 4 percent said they were undecided.

A New NBC/Marist Poll in FL shows that Mitt Romney is potentially heading to a crushing victory. There is a big gender gap, and Romney is running even with Gingrich among Tea Party supporters. The polls a couple days before this one showed Romney ahead by 8-9 points.

As for Santorum factor:

But Gingrich would have a hard time arguing that a majority is voting against Romney, and that if Santorum were not in the race, he would win. When Santorum is removed from the equation, his vote splits off evenly between Romney and Gingrich — and Romney leads Gingrich by an even wider 16-point margin, 49-33 percent.

If Romney wins this convincingly, it could be what it takes for an easy path to nomination. Then we can all unite and focus on the real enemy.

The great defender of Medicare (Newt Gingrich is a man of many hats) strikes with a despicable new ad in Florida, full of unproven allegations directed at Romney.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jVUQuJDEs04#!

Really Newt?

Newt already sank pretty low with his Bain documentary, full of misleading information, but this current piece of trash designed specifically for Florida stinks of desperation and of a unscrupulous mindset that should be never let close to the presidency of the United States.

Newt Gingrich has to answer for the garbage his people are spewing out while he pretends to be a victim of the “establishment”.

A little background about myself:

I emigrated from USSR as a child, work as IT director in NY, reside in FL where I own a house with my wife. I’ve voted republican since 1996 (first able to vote), but paid attention to politics since 1992 or so. 1994 will always be synonymous with Newt to me. He was my hero. It was about that time when I, as a college freshman joined College Republicans. Back then I was socially conservative but slowly moved away from that on the issues of abortion and gay marriage, especially in the recent years. I’ve always been conservative on Economics and Defense and like I said, I’ve never voted Democrat. I also never considered myself a moderate republican. As I was strongly influenced by objectivism, I would consider myself quite right wing on the morality of capitalism and strong national defense in our, American, interests.

I supported Mitt Romney in 2008 as an alternative to McCain for all the many reasons other conservatives supported him back then. He was a successful governor of a leftist state who did not govern as a leftist. That told me that given hostile waters he can swim, and swim strongly against the current. He was a pro-business, competent executive who also implemented an individual mandate health care reform back when many people on the Right supported it. I did not see it as a problem then, and I don’t see it as a problem now.

When our country is slowly sliding towards a statist socialist government, led by a president of a party whose electoral success is dependent on making more people carried and supported by that government, I see no better candidate than Mitt Romney to defend capitalism. Defense of capitalism is crucial to our survival as a nation as most of our problem are caused by an ever growing and encroaching government, destroying our businesses ability to compete on the global stage. We don’t need aspiring populists to carry the torch for the so-called “destruction of the middle class” or try to make alliances with the worthless Occupiers. We need someone who embodies the morality of capitalism as the best economic system on Earth.

As someone who is both a businessman, and governed as a capitalist, Mitt Romney is infinitely more qualified as a Top Executive than any of the other candidates. We don’t need to start off with ideological solutions of tax cuts or new tax codes. What we need is a pragmatic managerial mind who can think of how we can start dismantling all the new layers of government that Obama created, and start diminishing the size of our government again. We don’t need sharp one liner sloganeering for the base, but we need non-ideological solutions that work.

Mitt Romney is not as ideological as Newt Gingrich, it’s true. But I don’t want him to be. Our problems are not simplistic and we are in a world full of hurt. We need someone who can think and devise solutions. Mitt Romney is the executive we need.

I supported Mitt in 2008 and I support him now, without any reservations. Sure I will vote for Newt if he is our nominee, and I love all the red meat coming out of his mouth as much as the next guy, but I prefer a better candidate and a solid conservative on the issue that matters – defense of Capitalism.

Poor Newt! Gingrich Threatens to Skip Debates if Audiences Can’t Participate.

Mr. Gingrich, a former House speaker, on Tuesday morning threatened not participate in any future debates with audiences that have been instructed to be silent. That was the case on Monday, when Brian Williams of NBC News asked the audience of about 500 people who assembled for a debate in Tampa to hold their applause until the commercial breaks.

In an interview with the morning show “Fox and Friends,” Mr. Gingrich said NBC’s rules amounted to stifling free speech. In what has become a standard line of attack for his anti-establishment campaign, Mr. Gingrich blamed the media for trying to silence a dissenting point of view.

Apparently Newt needs applause, just like the dimwitted sitcom comedies on TV, to instruct people watching at home when he scores a rhetorical or demagogic point. That way people don’t need to actually think about the substance and can laugh and clap along with his witty zingers.

How petulant! Can’t your words stand on their own? You think Americans are not smart enough to figure out when you outdebate your competitors? It’s weak to hide behind the bogus “stifling free speech” excuse. Best debates are when it is your words that decide if you’ve done well, and not cheap applause lines.

This is shameful.

Not much coverage of any positive Romney developments here, so as one of the at least 30% of the partisan GOP electorate supporting Governor Romney I’ll post this good news:

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell announced he was backing GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney Friday, saying his support could help Romney win Saturday’s hotly-contested South Carolina primary.

“I’m a Southern governor endorsing Mitt Romney in the first Southern state primary,” McDonnell said on CNN’s “Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien.”

McDonnell is campaigning with Governor Romney in South Carolina today. We all know it’s going to be close and these kinds of news help even if a little bit. Hope tomorrow’s results are positive as well.

Monmouth 1/12-1/15

33% Romney    22% Gingrich    14% Santorum   12% Paul    6% Perry   4% Huntsman

We Ask America 1/15

26% Romney   21% Gingrich     13% Santorum     8% Paul    5% Perry   4% Huntsman

Insider Advantage/Newsmax  1/15

32% Romney   21% Gingrich     14% Paul   13% Santorum  6% Huntsman   5% Perry

Ipsos 1/10-1/13

37% Romney   16% Paul    16% Santorum   12% Gingrich   6% Perry   3% Huntsman

Also national polls from Fox News: 40% Romney 15% Santorum 14% Gingrich 13% Paul  6% Perry 5% Huntsman

and CNN: 34% Romney 18% Gingrich 15% Paul 15% Santorum 9% Perry  4% Huntsman

Gallup also shows 37% Romney 14% Gingrich 14% Santorum 12% Paul 5% Perry

The SC numbers show that Gingrich ads slamming Romney have not worked, and are only putting more distance between them. Unless somehow his debate performance helps a bit, Romney will cruise to victory this Saturday. National numbers are showing that Romney is putting major distance between himself and the field.

New Rasmussen that came out today has:

28% Romney
21% Gingrich
16% Santorum
16% Paul
6% Perry
5% Huntsman

And new ARG has:

29% Romney
25% Gingrich
20% Paul
9% Perry
7% Santorum
1% Huntsman

The polls are similar in the 1-2-3 spots with Gingrich slightly behind, though more behind than some of previous polls, specifically Insider Advantage poll where Romney was only up by 2. Also Santorum and Perry are unstable depending on the poll, though no real surge is evident for Santorum. Huntsman also made no headway.

If after the initial negative anti-Romney attacks have not dented his lead, I am a bit more confident in his ability to fend off the Bain attacks and win SC. As a Romney supporter and a pro-capitalist conservative I fully agree with Rush Limbaugh, that attacks on Romney should be coming from the Right. Before Gingrich started the leftist attacks, I liked the man all the way from 1994. But he left a bad taste in my mouth.

I used to call myself a Conservative. Now I just call myself Rightwing. I still vote down the line republican for SoCons or FisCons. I am an atheist and after being socially conservative on gay marriage and abortion, I’ve done a 180 degree turn on both issues. Rationally I could not find a non-religious justification for opposing gay marriage or abortion rights in at the very least first trimester.

So the question is, how is opposition to letting two loving homosexual adults get married (or even just enter into a civil union) to receive the same rights as a heterosexual couple, relevant to being a Fiscal or National Defense conservative? Where is the correlation? Same for abortion. How is supporting gay marriage and abortion (with decent restrictions), aside from also being supported by the left, prevents one from being “conservative” or on the Right on everything else? And also how is supporting gay marriage and abortion logically inconsistent with being on the Right?

Just curious.

From the “non-extremists” on the Left who will get wiped out tomorrow:

It’s amazing! MSNBC posts a NYT article that is critical of Venezuela. Venezuela endures worse murder rate than Iraq. A lot worse. Who knew that things have not been going well in that Socialist Paradise to the south, that the liberals are so proud of?

In Iraq, a country with about the same population as Venezuela, there were 4,644 civilian deaths from violence in 2009, according to Iraq Body Count; in Venezuela that year, the number of murders climbed above 16,000.

These numbers are about 3 times higher than what they were when Chavez took office and started reshaping the country towards his ideals. While mentioning the grim economic realities, NYT of course tries to mention the usual liberal garbage about rich and poor, but only in passing:

Reasons for the surge are complex and varied, experts say. While many Latin American economies are growing fast, Venezuela’s has continued to shrink. The gap between rich and poor remains wide, despite spending on anti-poverty programs, fueling resentment. Adding to that, the nation is awash in millions of illegal firearms.

Finally Chavez’s tactics are grudgingly revealed:

But some crime specialists say another factor has to be considered: Mr. Chávez’s government itself. The judicial system has grown increasingly politicized, losing independent judges and aligning itself more closely with Mr. Chávez’s political movement. Many experienced state employees have had to leave public service, or even the country.

More than 90 percent of murders go unsolved, without a single arrest, Mr. Briceño-León said. But cases against Mr. Chavez’s critics — including judges, dissident generals and media executives — are increasingly common.

Henrique Capriles, the governor of Miranda, a state encompassing parts of Caracas, told reporters last week that Mr. Chávez had worsened the homicide problem by cutting money for state and city governments led by political opponents and then removing thousands of guns from their police forces after losing regional elections.

The article is a good read and I’ll bet that there will be no mention of it anywhere on the Left. The anti-capitalists, dictators and demagogues, are their heroes and not to be criticized publicly. But the naked truth about socialist methods is out for all to see.

The liberal Daily Kos website got defrauded by the pollster they’ve used for quite a long time. Many people, especially on the Right, have been skeptical over their consistently liberal-favoring numbers, but I could not have imagined the scope of the fraud. From my somewhat mathematical, if not statistical, background it looks like the numbers have been either manually adjusted or completely made up without regard for good “fake” statistically possible results.

To Kos’s credit he lays the case out openly on the front page of his site – Research 2000: Problems in plain sight – where he explains the statistical incongruities, and More on Research 2000 with more information.

It is an interesting read. He will be suing the firm. Should he have looked at the results earlier based on their liberal bias? I am not sure, as any poll can be made to skew to a particular side depending on methodology. That does not make a poll invalid, just biased.

Considering the facts, I think he handled it well, and though I despise the liberal ideology and most of the stuff published on that site, I think the way he did this should be recognized.

WSJ reports that S&P downgraded Greece to Junk Status today severely limiting the proud Democratic Socialist nation’s options of getting out of its mostly self-inflicted crisis.

“The downgrade results from our updated assessment of the political, economic and budgetary conditions that the Greek government faces in its efforts to put the public debt burden onto a sustained downward trajectory,” said S&P credit analyst Marko Mrsnik.

Earlier S&P downgraded Portugal, and some other nations like Spain, Ireland, and Italy are potentially in trouble as well.

This is definitely not what Germany and France envisioned when they originally went all out for the brotherhood of European Nations. Germany especially was all for it while imagining a huge marketplace with happy countries producing amazing products non-stop led by the diligent German businessmen. It was that new internationalist spirit that flew over the concerns of some nations’ work ethics and philosophy being incompatible with the Free Markets and Capitalism.

As Germany is now having to consider bailing Greece out, with German citizens extremely wary of handing cash out to beggars with not much hope of getting it back, and the real possibility of taxes being raised, they are suddenly no longer singing the European Union ra-ra-ra song.

The few options facing the moribund Greek nation include defaulting on the debt, getting a bailout which would probably put Greek government out of business while European Union makes the decisions, pulling out of the Euro, or getting out of the European Union completely.

With so much invested in the European Union, it is hard for me to imagine that it would fall apart over this. However the severity of the problems facing Eurozone is so understated and the reluctance of the producing nations like Germany, Austria, England, and France to keep southern European Nations afloat could bring this house of cards down and drastically reduce EU membership letting the sinking ships float away on their own.

In good economic times everyone is a brotherman, but in bad it’s everyone for themselves making the European Socialist promise a sham. The countries most neo-liberal in philosophy will survive. The decrepit socialist paradises will keep sinking.

And finally Czech president tells it like it is, as usual, blaming the Euro for helping Greek inability to help themselves -

Czech Pres Klaus:Euro To Blame For Greek Crisis:Germany Press

some choice tidbits:

The Greek crisis is the fault of the single currency system, which fails to allow the troubled southern European country to devalue its exchange rate, the president of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus said in an interview pre-released Tuesday…

As regards to economic growth and stability, the Eurozone has been dead for a long time, but given the large amount of political capital invested in the union, its politicians will never let it collapse formally, the Czech president told Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung…

It is the “euro that has caused this tragedy,” Klaus claimed. Without the single currency, the Greek government could have coped with the crisis by having a 40% devaluation of its currency, but in a currency union this is not possible, he reminded…

The president, whose euro-skeptic beliefs are well-known, said that he feared the crisis was being used as a pretense “for even more Europeanization” and “unification.” Indeed, the “freedom and prosperity” of Europe is already under threat, he claimed.

Yeah, that’s what we need… New World Order with one currency so we can all sink together.

We are staring into the abyss of Government controlled Healthcare and the Democrats are incredibly close to pushing us in. This weekend is like an emergency room visit and it is almost at a point where only our will and determination has any last chance to succeed in blocking this monstrosity. The Obama administration has had many opportunities in the MSM to present their point of view and to paint the situation on their terms. Has our side really had the same opportunity to present ours? Can we really compete with the power of the State of the Union or his previous major addresses to the country?

In my view the GOP has not had an equal opportunity to present an opposing view, at least not with the same potential power. The steady drumbeat of “something must be done to reform healthcare” has taken this despicable Bill to where it is today – just a few days away from being passed.

It is GOP’s last chance to present our point of view before the last democratic undecideds make up their mind under duress from their leadership.

GOP must immediately tell the media that the import of this legislation is so great, and the chance of affecting our culture and our way of life so huge, that we are owed one last Prime Time appeal to the American Public and indeed to the Members of Congress that is similar to what the Obama Administration has been accorded. Give us one more chance to describe how our country will be affected if this legislation is pushed through. GOP must demand, due to the critical and time sensitive nature of this situation, that they allow us to put someone likable, like Scott Brown, in front of the viewers on Friday or Saturday night on all the networks for this last appeal to the Nation. We must be able to make our case one last time – or are we not allowed our Closing Arguments? Fairness demands it.

I fear that if this step is not taken, our chances of stopping the healthcare overhaul are getting slimmer by the minute. Are we not owed equal time? GOP has to demand this.

A new <a href=”http://americanresearchgroup.com/“>ARG poll that just came out</a> for MA shows good news continuing for Brown.

Likely voters will vote 48% for Brown to 45% for Coakley. Additionally:

A total of 9% of likely voters say they have already voted by absentee ballot, with Brown leading Coakley 58% to 42%.

Can’t wait!

Very few people, aside from the leftist kooks living in the lala land, really believe that President Obama has done anything that merits a supposed honor that a Nobel Peace Price bestows. Putting the political joke of the Nobel Peace Price itself aside, as well as disregarding the previous recipients (Terrorist Arafat, Anti-Semite Carter, Environmentalist Fairy Gore, North Korean Peace Lover Kim Jong Il, etc), and knowing the true nature of the award being in the hands of serious America haters we should understand the potential real world implications of such an award given to our first Black President.

Not being one of President Obama’s biggest supporters I’d like to share a few of my initial impressions of what this means, and it definitely means something. President Obama has not done anything yet to advance the vacuous and disingenuous “cause of world-wide Peace” but there are quite a few big decisions on his enormous plate that are looming over our future.

This award comes right before a hugely important decision on Afghanistan is due. We are at the fork where we will either slowly start abandoning our fight against the Taliban and Al Qaeda, or we will inject the much needed and requested troops into the fight where a chance of winning depends on manpower levels and proper unyielding strategy. This award (or rather the forces behind it) squarely aim to undermine the proper course as unpeaceful.

This award comes at a time when US is engaged on many fronts in the fight against Islamic Extremism and is designed to put a disingenuous thread of shame into any argument defending our war. It was given to undermine the pragmatic continuation of many of our policies from the Bush administration as if to say – “Hey Barack, you are better than this. Be a peacemaker and learn to live with the Islamic Extremists. They are not that bad.”

Ultimately this award is an advance on future policy. A fundamentally anti-American future policy as the people behind the award continuously demonstrated. We will now see how our President responds given this not so subtle push into a very wrong direction.

If you have a shred of decency Mr. President, do not follow on that path.

Two days ago I posted a A Modest Proposal for Social Change which was quite obviously not well thought out. I came up with the idea after talking to a liberal co-worker of mine. We were discussing the reasons for the drop of crime in New York City and he suggested (after reading Freakanomics) that legalizing abortion had a lot to do with it, of course in addition to increasing the police force and changing their tactics.

I did not buy that legalization of abortion had that much of an effect at all, but it brought to mind the point that millions of babies were never born, and what would be a more ideal, non-controversial, and positive way of achieving similar results (of not having poor babies suffering being raised in far from ideal households) without taking those lives.

Unfortunately the easiest way to achieve it is through government intervention and as a conservative I should’ve thought better than proposing such a intrusive, though voluntary, government incentive program that deals with quite sensitive and important reproductive issues. To give any government any control in such an area would be a serious mistake, no matter the initial benevolent intentions. It is a slippery slope and it pretty much amounts to ends justify the means, and the means could be fairly atrocious.

Lots of good civil arguments were made and I agreed with a decent amount of them, though of course being defensive, which prompted some less than sensible exchanges.

I apologize for bringing it up the idea, which while not “liberal/progressive” in nature, with the goal of saving money and reducing suffering, is still a big government utilitatarian program that is ultimately antithetical to my own conservative libertarian ideology.

Social Conservatives mostly oppose abortion, while Liberals mostly support the right to have one. There are few areas of agreement on the subject between the two sides. I have no interest in addressing the subject directy but have an idea that may appeal to most people no matter your views.

The idea of paying for someone else’s abortion is very objectionable to most people, but at the same time the idea of paying for raising someone else’s child that could not have been afforded is, while not as morally objectionable, very unfair and financially painful.

There is a both moral and financially conscious way of taking care of both problems. The government should offer $10,000 (amount modifiable) for any woman voluntarily deciding to undergo a Tubal Ligation surgery (surgical sterilization technique for women). The benefits of such an approach are great. Consider this:

• Lower Class women who have children and can barely afford to take care of what they already have will get a nice bonus and the government will not need to subsidize any new ones.
• Middle Class women who don’t want to worry about the future moral decisions in case of an accidental pregnancy.
• Those who oppose the choice of abortion on moral grounds will see the amount of abortions drop as the amount of pregnancies will drop.
• Those who care about the poor will see less suffering and less unwanted children.
• The taxpayers would benefit the most as the cost of raising a child is easily above a quarter of million right now, and will only go up. The amount of children our government has to subsidize is enormous.
• Crime would go down, since as we all know that a majority of criminals come from the kind of households that produce the most unwanted babies.

The voluntary nature of this proposal, applying to all American women, would ensure that no one could claim discrimination or population control, while providing a civilized way of reducing the number of unwanted babies, abortions, suffering, and governmental waste. It is much less controversial than trying to reduce child assistance to those who keep having babies, or to subsidize abortions. It will save taxpayers a huge amount of money as well as reduce crime in the future.

Tell me why this would not work?