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Consider this an open thread.

The article profiles a number of people who take advantage of the federal social safety net and are increasingly resentful of it. The solutions on fixing it vary. The angry, for some, may or may not be misplaced. The article reads as a Rorschach test on your ideology — liberals will read it and find the people hypocritical. Conservatives will read it and find it all maddening.

The key paragraphs of the whole article comes toward the beginning:

The government safety net was created to keep Americans from abject poverty, but the poorest households no longer receive a majority of government benefits. A secondary mission has gradually become primary: maintaining the middle class from childhood through retirement. The share of benefits flowing to the least affluent households, the bottom fifth, has declined from 54 percent in 1979 to 36 percent in 2007, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis published last year.

And as more middle-class families … land in the safety net …, anger at the government has increased alongside. Many people say they are angry because the government is wasting money and giving money to people who do not deserve it. But more than that, they say they want to reduce the role of government in their own lives. They are frustrated that they need help, feel guilty for taking it and resent the government for providing it. They say they want less help for themselves; less help in caring for relatives; less assistance when they reach old age. [Emphasis added]

In other words, the United States is increasingly taxing the middle class to subsidize the middle class. All the talk about the poor and what the safety net is designed to do for the poor overlooks that the government has taken it upon itself to keep the middle class from falling into the poorer classes of society.

It reminds me of this Robert Heinlein quote:

“Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as ‘bad luck.’”

We seem to be on the cusp of that in this country and the middle class realizes what is happening. The creators in the country who come up with the ideas, take the risks to capital and reputation, and possibly get ahead are more and more being labeled the bad guys. But there is more to it than that. The middle class is coming to terms with the idea that upholding its principles will put it at a competitive disadvantage and they are seething about it.

It is a long held principle in this country that the individual is supreme above the collective and the government. Tied to that is the principle espoused by Abraham Lincoln back in Kalamazoo, MI back in 1856, that in this country, unlike so many others, “every man can make himself.” It is less and less true.

More and more, the Middle Class has become dependent on the federal social safety net. It was a slow and creeping dependence the Middle Class did not recognize until it was too late. Now suddenly their principles have come into conflict with their lifestyle.

The Middle Class believes that with hard work it can move up the ranks of society. It is not content to and does not expect to stay in the Middle Class. At the same time, the Middle Class recognizes its current dependency. It also recognizes that if it does break through it will be despised by government. Even more troubling, it does not know how to break through. Due to lobbyists, regulators, and legislators, the process of inventiveness and creativity has been shut down.

The tax code and regulatory structure are too complex for a small businessman to become a big businessman. Major corporations have, through carving up the patent laws to suit themselves, made it impossible for a small business to compete creatively without running afoul of a process or software patent that never should have existed. The entire nature of the tax code for small businesses is designed to prevent capital formation and growth. A sub S corporation faces a Hobson’s choice at year end, and forming a sub C carries so many compliance costs it staggers the mind. A large company or one with angels can afford this game; the average small business cannot.

In short, individuals in the Middle Class recognize that if they cut the strings on the safety net underneath them and take their own risks to make their way in the world, they are putting their own family at a competitive disadvantage to their neighbors who refuse to cut the strings. The government has forced the Middle Class to put the livelihood of its families ahead of its principles. That is where the resentment comes from.

We see this everyday. We see this in the New York Times article. Should someone dare to suggest that student loans are driving up the cost of higher education — an economic fact — someone will attack the person for having taken student loans. When someone laments paying out 99 weeks of unemployment, they too will be attacked if ever they took social security disability, unemployment benefits, or the like. And when the person rebuts that they had to do it so as not to fall behind in a world turned upside down by the government, their complaints will fall on deaf ears by the conformists who embraced their federal masters.

A stable society depends on a stable Middle Class. A subsidized Middle Class is inherently unstable. When the really rich and the really poor are upset, rarely does the society apple cart itself get upset or overturned. But when the Middle Class is upset, you can bet the apple cart will be overturned. And in Washington, DC, neither the Democrats nor the Republicans are offering policies to put the Middle Class back in ownership of their own lives.

The resentment will continue until it boils over or changes are made to put the social order back as it was intended — using the social safety net to help the poor, not subsidize the Middle Class.

Stephen Glass was a fabulist. He made up stories and eventually he was caught. I read somewhere he wants to be a lawyer now, but his contrition is in doubt.

One of the things he made up was a story on CPAC. He may have made it up, but I think he got it right nonetheless.

After RedState got started in July of 2004, blogging on the right became all the rage, though it was correlation and not causation. By 2005, CPAC had a Bloggers Row and I went for my first time. The event was held that year at the Reagan Center in Washington, D.C. Most of the attendees stayed across the street at the JW Marriott. It was not an ideal venue, but it was my first time and I did not know better.

Being the good, intrepid blogger, I ran across the street to a CVS to buy a notepad, having left mine in my office back in Macon, GA. There in line were a half dozen young men, each with CPAC credentials around their necks and each buying condoms.

That is part of life on the college circuit. Young men, regardless of political persuasion or ideology, are intent on having sex, being boys, getting drunk — doing what young men in college often do. All to often there are also a few young ladies willing to shame their parents if their parents only knew.

But — and I wouldn’t be writing any of this had I not had a series of email exchanges on this subject in the past few days — I am more than a bit shocked by the young men at CPAC this year who just seemingly refuse to grow up or act their age. More troubling, while in 2005 it seemed to be just college kids, as the years have passed it is not just the 18 to 21 year old set, but the twenty and thirty somethings who just can’t seem to grow up. It’s like they started out at CPAC this way in college and each year at their CPAC reunion descend back to their freshman year rush week.

This is more and more common in society and none of us should expect that a behavior increasingly common in society should not spill over into any event including CPAC, but just because something is common does not mean it is responsible or acceptable.

We can be thankful that CPAC is not like the communications war room at Media Matters. But it should be much more than that. The young men and women who go to CPAC are often present or future leaders on their college campuses and within the conservative movement. They go to CPAC and are often on near equal terms at CPAC with people much older than themselves. Unfortunately, too many treat CPAC like spring break.

More than a few of the twenty and thirty somethings who go to CPAC seem to treat it like an extension of their college days doing their best to hook up before passing out. It’s not the majority to be sure, but it is a noticeable minority.

I am not even sure that there is a solution to the problem. But we should not think it is anything but a problem. It is not every young man, but there are many. They risk dragging the whole affair down to some bawdy, rowdy distraction. They risk embarrassing themselves and the conservative movement. They risk the perception premised on their own actions that conservative men of a certain age think that good manners and decorum around women of the same age is unneeded or unwanted.

This is not to say CPAC cannot and should not be fun. This is not to say that CPAC cannot and should not be a party. But it is to say that I hope the college groups bussing in students next year, the out of college set there to network, and CPAC itself encourage behavior we all too often don’t talk about anymore in our society — the behavior of gentlemen. Eat, drink, smoke, be merry, but be chivalrous too. There really is, regardless of your age, no need to play the cad at CPAC to score points with conservative ladies.

Conservatives should, first and foremost, want to conserve the basics and good behavior should remain a basic characteristic of the conservative movement. As conservatives, we believe in self-government. With that belief comes the duty of personal responsibility. We should accept that duty as the opportunity to do what is right, not as license to behave like fools.

It really is time to embrace again the concept of growing the hell up.

It is sad that we have gotten here, but House Republicans, including conservative stalwarts like Jim Jordan of Ohio, are set to pass Barack Obama’s latest stimulus plan. Except they are calling it John Boehner’s “Highway Bill.” Consider, however that Barack Obama’s budget, unveiled yesterday, calls for much of the same infrastructure spending the House Republicans want.

There is a reason the Heritage Action for America, Club for Growth, Competitive Enterprise Institute, and other conservative organizations are opposed to this spending spree. It is not conservative. It should not be Republican. It is Barack Obama style spending. Call your Congressman today at 202-224-3121 and tell him to oppose H.R. 7, the American Energy & Infrastructure Jobs Act.

Last week, when I pointed this out, I handed the front page over to Brendan Buck, Speaker Boehner’s Press Secretary, to rebut my claims. I would say he more than proved that this is, in fact, Barack Obama’s latest stimulus scheme hiding behind John Boehner’s name.

Consider first that this highway bill “expands domestic energy production and puts in place a long-term plan for America’s infrastructure that is controlled by the states and completely paid for –without raising the gas tax.” Why would a highway bill focus on energy production? Well, first because it is called a sweetener designed to woo conservatives to vote for it. Second because “the gas tax does not generate enough revenue to meet all the infrastructure needs in America.”

There you have it. Instead of opening up American land to energy production and using that energy production to pay down the national debt, we will instead jack up highway spending, bankrupt the highway trust fund as a result, and then use the energy taxes to offset the project funding. Oh, and even better, the House GOP has an accounting “score” that claims they won’t bankrupt the Highway Trust Fund. How’s that? Well, just like how Democrats took all the major budget busting provisions out of Obamacare and put them in separate legislation so it looked like Obamacare actually decreased the deficit, House Republicans have decided to take mass transit funding and pay for it out of the general fund of taxpayer dollars instead of paying for it out of the Highway Trust Fund. So it makes it look like the Highway Trust Fund won’t go bankrupt!

Accounting gimmicks — they’re not just for socializing the American healthcare industry any more.

This is the key. As noted in the rebuttal to my original claims, “the gas tax does not generate enough revenue to meet all the infrastructure needs in America.” But rewind the clock to just last July when Congressman John Mica (R-FL HAFA Score 66%) passed a highway spending bill out of his committee that spent no more than what the gas tax raised. In other words, House Republicans have taken us from being able to spend as much as the gas tax raised to bankrupting the Highway Trust Fund and requiring domestic energy production fees to offset the spending binge.

This is what smaller government looks like to House Republicans.

Even worse, in the rebuttal we learn “Currently, only about two-thirds of federal highway dollars go back to the states for them to control. Under this bill, it will be 93%. What’s more, for the first time in three decades, ALL of the gas tax revenue – the user fee paid by every motorist on the highways – will go to core highway programs.”

The first question is if we can get to 93%, why not 100% and get Congress out of the business of dictating local and state highway projects? But more so, note that all of the gas tax revenue will go to core highway programs. All of it. And Congress will keep spending beyond all the gas tax revenue.

This is madness. This is Barack Obama style stimuli and Barack Obama style accounting. It reminds me of the unemployment chart showing where unemployment would be with and without Barack Obama’s stimulus plan. After the plan passed, unemployment was even higher than Obama said it would get without his stimulus plan.

The House Republicans are relying on five year estimates of revenues generated from energy production to hide just how bankrupt they will leave the Highway Trust Fund with this spending binge. And in five years, none of us will be surprised when reality comes in less than the estimates.

My radio producer Shane Backler cut up his speech and put them all together.

Download audio here

Byers himself cited Media Maters bashing Dana Loesch.

He repurposed a Media Matters hit job on George Will recently too.

He makes sure we all see both Greg Sargent and Media Matters targeting the New York Times.

But here’s the one I’m most fascinated by and highlights the exact pattern described by Tucker Carlson. On January 31, 2012, at 6:20 p.m.,Dylan Byers linked to a Buzz Feed story about me that had been posted at 4:10 p.m. The Buzz Feed story itself was nothing more than a straight regurgitation of a Media Matters hit job posted at 1:52 p.m. In fact, the Buzz Feed story was the first link to Media Matters and the Politico was the second according to my Google News Alert that day. You will be unsurprised to learn the Huffington Post was third.

Tucker Carlson described Media Matters’ operation pattern and that story about me, in addition to the others, fit perfectly. Carlson noted:

“The entire progressive blogosphere picked up our stuff,” says a Media Matters source, “from Daily Kos to Salon. Greg Sargent [of the Washington Post] will write anything you give him. He was the go-to guy to leak stuff.”

“If you can’t get it anywhere else, Greg Sargent’s always game,” agreed another source with firsthand knowledge.

Reached by phone, Sargent declined to comment.

“The HuffPo guys were good, Sam Stein and Nico [Pitney],” remembered one former staffer. “The people at Huffington Post were always eager to cooperate, which is no surprise given David’s long history with Arianna [Huffington].”

“Jim Rainey at the LA Times took a lot of our stuff,” the staffer continued. “So did Joe Garofoli at the San Francisco Chronicle. We’ve pushed stories to Eugene Robinson and E.J. Dionne [at the Washington Post]. Brian Stelter at the New York Times was helpful.”

“Ben Smith [formerly of Politico, now at BuzzFeed.com] will take stories and write what you want him to write,” explained the former employee, whose account was confirmed by other sources. Staffers at Media Matters “knew they could dump stuff to Ben Smith, they knew they could dump it at Plum Line [Greg Sargent’s Washington Post blog], so that’s where they sent it.”

It is humorous to read Byers demanding examples from Carlson when he should be able to just pull up his own blog at Politico to find them. But the most laughable line of Dylan Byers’ denial/non-denial is this line:

In publishing those quotes without providing evidence, the Daily Caller has put accusations on the public record regardless of whether or not they carry any weight.

This is the Politico. Surely they have heard of Herman Cain.

He should win it.

He is losing it.

He is losing it to Rick Santorum.

A PPP poll now has Santorum 16 points ahead in Michigan. An ARG poll has Santorum ahead by 6 points.

If Romney pours money in to Michigan to win, he will do it the way he has won the other races — through destroying his opponent, not building himself up. Romney knows the value of negative advertising. Santorum winning will cause abject panic among the powers that be in Washington, DC because they don’t think he can win a general election. They are sure he cannot win a general election. They are sure all the things he has written about women working outside the home, gays, beastiality, etc. will come back to bite him in the general election.

If Romney wins, the conservative base will panic because he will be one step closer to wrapping this thing up and they don’t want him to wrap it up. They want him beaten. They just aren’t sure they want Santorum, or Gingrich for that matter, to be the one to do it.

So everybody sit back and panic. It’s panic time in the GOP. In a race they should be winning against Barack Obama, the only winner seems to be sepuku.

One day last week, Media Matters posted one of their typically outraged outrageous posts about it. Within two hours, BuzzFeed had posted on it. Two hours or so after that, the Politico had it up too. A couple hours after that, the Huffington Post had it. It was like clockwork. It was as if they were on a Journolist or something coordinating their outrage and timing to circulate the story. Every few hours a new outlet chimed in with outrage, all going back to the original Media Matters story.

It is no secret that a lot of folks in the Media read Media Matters and rely on it in a way they never would a partisan site of the same kind on the right. But today, Tucker Carlson and Vince Coglianese along with Alex Pappas and Will Rahn are shedding new light both on the operations and coordination between Media Matters, the “objective” press, and the White House.

This sounded rather familiar:

“The entire progressive blogosphere picked up our stuff,” says a Media Matters source, “from Daily Kos to Salon. Greg Sargent [of the Washington Post] will write anything you give him. He was the go-to guy to leak stuff.”

“If you can’t get it anywhere else, Greg Sargent’s always game,” agreed another source with firsthand knowledge.

Reached by phone, Sargent declined to comment.

“The HuffPo guys were good, Sam Stein and Nico [Pitney],” remembered one former staffer. “The people at Huffington Post were always eager to cooperate, which is no surprise given David’s long history with Arianna [Huffington].”

“Jim Rainey at the LA Times took a lot of our stuff,” the staffer continued. “So did Joe Garofoli at the San Francisco Chronicle. We’ve pushed stories to Eugene Robinson and E.J. Dionne [at the Washington Post]. Brian Stelter at the New York Times was helpful.”

“Ben Smith [formerly of Politico, now at BuzzFeed.com] will take stories and write what you want him to write,” explained the former employee, whose account was confirmed by other sources. Staffers at Media Matters “knew they could dump stuff to Ben Smith, they knew they could dump it at Plum Line [Greg Sargent’s Washington Post blog], so that’s where they sent it.”

Along the way, the White House Chief of Staff is getting his facts wrong.

As President Obama prepares to unveil his FY2013 budget Monday, White House chief of staff Jack Lew this morning was asked by CNN to defend the Senate’s refusal to pass a budget in more than 1,000 days.

“You can’t pass a budget in the Senate of the United States without 60 votes and you can’t get 60 votes without bipartisan support,” Lew said. “So unless… unless Republicans are willing to work with Democrats in the Senate, [Majority Leader] Harry Reid is not going to be able to get a budget passed.”

That’s not accurate. Budgets only require 51 Senate votes for passage, as Lew — former director of the Office of Management and Budget — surely must know.

Of all the things this White House should get wrong, budget reconciliation rules, etc. should be the very last thing considering how they passed Obamacare. But there you go.

No budget for a thousand days — it really is not difficult to understand why so many Americans keep their money on the sidelines when their own government can’t tell them a spending plan for the next year.

He ad-libbed one particular portion of his speech that just may give away the game for him with the CPAC crowd. He threw in this line:

“I fought against long odds in a deep blue state, but I was a severely conservative Republican governor.”

What the heck is a severe conservative? The man who likes to fire people should probably fire Miriam-Webster, in addition to whoever came up with his strategy for Minnesota, Missouri, and Colorado.

A severe conservative? It sounds more like a critique of conservatives from the left than that of a conservative himself. In fact, if you want to read only one thing on Mitt Romney’s views of conservatives, I actually think Chris Orr of The New Republic captures the situation best.

Orr writes on Quentin Tarantino’s view of Superman as discussed in the movie Kill Bill 2.

Superman was born Superman. It’s Clark Kent that is the invented alias, the pose, the “costume.” And in the way Superman plays Kent–weak, self-doubting, cowardly–we see his critique of the human race.

It occurred to me that the same is true of Romney’s desperate, if never terribly persuasive, impersonation of a conservative Republican. That persona–angry, simple-minded, xenophobic, jingoistic–is exactly what Romney (who is himself cultured, content, and cosmopolitan) imagines the average GOP voter to be.

I think that is perhaps one of the most accurate reads on Romney today and why so many of us think he is not what he claims to be.

Just randomly, on the actual issue of Superman, Jim Pethokoukis is correct that Quentin Tarantino got Superman wrong. I think what he means is that Mitt Romney is actually Bruce Wayne, a shallow playboy super rich businessman. (Kidding)

He is right.

Yet the Republican Party has decided instead of finding a new guy to do what it can to get Romney across the finish line no matter how bad the limp.

On Tuesday, Santorum swept. Romney came in third in Minnesota. Counties he won big in Colorado turned on him overwhelmingly. Our “frontrunner” has won three of the first eight. With the exception of Florida, he has shown he can only win states with strong family ties like New Hampshire and states with strong Mormon participation like Nevada.

That may give him Michigan and Arizona, but it spells trouble elsewhere.

This is the seventh CPAC I have been to. The crowd is the least excited I have seen. On the first day, before the candidates have had a chance to bus in their supporters to stack the deck and straw poll, this is the least excited I’ve seen them. The crowd’s heart is with Santorum. But in their mind they do not think he can win.

Today, Mitt Romney must convince the crowd he is one of them or at least won’t betray them. Rick Santorum must convince them he can beat Barack Obama. Newt Gingrich must convince them he is still viable.

Along the way a funny thing has happened. Romney supporters are starting to be openly critical of him. The business whiz has failed to restructure his own failing organization. His support is a mile wide and an inch deep.

And he has been replaced as front runner by the crowd. They are with Rick Santorum in heart, but also in money and votes. On the horizon looms a brokered convention.

In fact, in his stimulus speech before Congress in 2009, his States of the Union in 2010, 2011, and 2012, and his Jobs Act speech of late 2011, the President repeated referred to spending government money to create jobs to fix America’s infrastructure.

Congressman Jim Jordan (R-OH), leader of the Republican Study Committee, is confirmed to be leaning toward supporting the plan. His public pronouncements that he is leaning toward supporting the plan is leading House conservatives as a whole to support this new stimulus plan — a stimulus plan to create jobs fixing and expanding America’s infrastructure.

The plan will most likely necessitate a federal bailout of the Highway Trust Fund, which is typically funded through the gas tax and is used to pay for highway projects. But Obama’s new stimulus busts the cap on the trust fund and, like social security, gets into general fund money to pay for the spending binge.

With the House bill, as is typical of Barack Obama’s legislation, spending will outpace income over the next five years by $69.6 billion. Moreso, as is also typical of President Obama’s stimulus schemes, Washington would retain the bulk of control, even though the money would be going to state transportation projects. Federal strings and federal money will come with the legislation.

Oh, and if the House goes along with the Senate’s version of this stimulus plan, Americans could see new taxes on their IRA’s.

So why is Congressman Jim Jordan leading conservatives to support Barack Obama’s latest job creation scheme with federal tax dollars to fund a temporary infrastructure spending binge?

Part of the reason is because highway spending is kryptonite to conservatives. You want to undermine conservative principles, just throw a roads building scheme into legislation.

But the biggest reason conservatives in the House are lining up to bust the budget, bankrupt the Highway Trust Fund, and spend $69 billion more than will come in in revenue is because this is John Boehner’s stimulus scheme, not Barack Obama’s.

It busts the budget, just like Barack Obama.

It raids government trust funds for pet projects, just like Barack Obama would do.

Over five years, it adds to the federal debt, just like Barack Obama’s schemes.

But the letter next to the plan is an “R” and not a “D”, so conservatives will yet again sell out their principles because John Boehner and not Barack Obama asked them to bankrupt the country.

With leadership like this is it any wonder we’re at $16 trillion in debt?

In fact, it is striking to find Salem’s radio hosts so in the tank for Romney when the top radio shows in the country from Rush Limbaugh to Sean Hannity to Glenn Beck to Mark Levin to Neal Boortz to Laura Ingraham have all either stayed on the sidelines or gone largely against Romney.

And if being out of step with the larger conservative movement on this issue weren’t enough, Michael Medved has decided to trot out the newest pro-Romney talking point with some serious condescension. You see, it is not Mitt Romney. It is you hicks, rubes, and idiots that are to blame. “Dammit, why won’t you like him??!!??” Medved comes close to asking.

Mitt Romney has not changed. You people have! This follows an earlier Michael Medved lament where he threw out every straw man he could at both Rush Limbaugh and me in the name of defending his Massachusetts Moderate.

Most interesting, in that earlier opinion piece Medved claimed the Republican Party had to abandon conservatism to win in 2012. This time around, Medved claims Romney actually is a conservative. It’s just conservatives have become radically conservative. He seems to be shifting positions as often as Mitt Romney.

To paraphrase Bertolt Brecht’s “The Solution,” it seems a lot of Romney’s ardent supporters have viewed the base of the Republican Party and decided the base should be replaced with a new base rather than admit the their candidate is the problem.Many Romney backers, as indicative of Medved’s latest column, do seem to want another conservative base instead of the one that exists since the majority of the one that exists keeps rejecting their candidate of choice.

To believe Michael Medved we must accept that Mitt Romney has not changed since 2008, but rather the party has changed. Except Romney has morphed on immigration (again), taxes (again), has scaled back his language on conservatism and is, in fact, running very much as John McCain did in 2008.

We must also ignore the fact that more of the base was focused on Giuliani, McCain, Huckabee, and Thompson in 2008 than on Romney. Medved may have been consistently for Romney as a lot of Republican oriented opinion leaders have been, but the base never was. Romney supporters who claim Romney has been wholly vetted forget that in 2008 all eyes were on Giuliani till his collapse, shifted quickly to Fred Thompson, and then spent a good deal of time dealing with the unexpected rise of Huckabee.

Romney is only just now being more fully vetted by conservative voters. A lot of the opinion leaders who supported Romney in 2008 and reject him now supported him in 2008 as a way to stop McCain and also did not expect the post 2008 Romney to revert to a brand of Massachusetts moderation.

In fact, it is largely accepted that Mitt Romney is running from McCain’s play book this time while in 2008 he ran against and to the right of John McCain.

That the base of the party sees it, resents it, and has redoubled their distrust in Romney because of it, Medved not only does not see it, but drips with condescension at the base because of his willful blinders.

About the only thing we can learn from Michael Medved’s piece is that the Romney campaign serves up some powerful kool-aid. But hey, at least now Medved doesn’t think we should abandon conservatism in favor of moderation. No, now it is that Mitt Romney has always been conservative and the rest of us are just too radical now.

I’ve said since Sunday that yesterday would be the first day of voting that Mitt Romney’s “poor” comment to Soledad O’Brien would have an impact. It typically takes a week for comments like that to be digested by voters. Six days after Romney opened his mouth, Rick Santorum swept the night.

From Missouri to Minnesota to Colorado the Republican electorate sent a very clear signal — they want conviction over electability. They do not like Mitt Romney. They see Santorum as authentic. They see Mitt Romney as a fraud. Rick Santorum swept the races. Romney, the front runner, got crushed by conservatives.

The pattern has held up from Iowa to South Carolina to Florida to Nevada to last night. In every county that saw increased turn out, Not Romney won. In counties with decreased turnout, Romney won most often, but not always.

The real winner last night is CPAC – the conservative political action conference. At the end of this week, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney, and Newt Gingrich will, in that order, address the crowd. Conservatives in the heartland last night rejected Mitt Romney as inauthentic. CPAC will be a must win speech for Romney.

Considering how often Mitt Romney has lost in the past decade, you’d think he would have given a better concession speech last night. He did not and will need to up his game for his CPAC speech. He must now seriously woo the conservatives he thought he would not need.

But what of Romney vs. Santorum? My prediction is that Romney has nothing to lose and will go negative. He will suddenly become as noxious as his supporters are on twitter and in the Washington Post. It will backfire on him. He will seem Newtish and Newt’s recent complaints about Romney’s negativity will be looked at anew.

Gingrich is a big loser after last night. But I think the untold story is just how terrible Ron Paul did. He had a caucus strategy that has failed across the board. He has won no states. His strategy is failing him.

What a night.

A July 23, 2010 Rasmussen survey found “75% of Likely Voters prefer free markets over a government managed economy. Just 14% think a government managed economy is better while 11% are not sure.” But, among those considered the political class, which trascends party lines, “a government managed economy [is preferred] over free markets by a 44% to 37% margin. . . . [A]mong Mainstream voters, 90% prefer the free market. Outside of the Political Class, free markets are preferred across all demographic and partisan lines.”

Now Scott Rasmussen has taken the next step and written a book called The People’s Money. The subtitle is “how voters will balance the budget and eliminate the federal debt.” He goes straight into the great divide between the political class and most Americans.

Turns out all that polling that shows Americans are a rather conservative lot is true. It also turns out that the public is willing to make cuts and is willing to tackle social security and medicare.

The catch is that voters are necessarily in favor of a lot of movement conservative reforms to social security, etc., but are much more closely aligned to the conservative movement than to the left.

It makes a really fascinating read and could be a blueprint to get the serious discussions moving on our nation’s fiscal solvency. I am not nor have I ever been a fan of poll driven political platforms. But seeing where voters are and what they think provides a lot of insight and can help politicians build a workable platform to solve our serious problems.

You can get Scott Rasmussen’s The People’s Money right here. It is a very thought provoking read.