January 2012 Archives

You sure as heck can't land there, let alone build a base

You have to love those crazy anti-science troglodyte RINOs and liberal Democrats in Washington. If they had their way, we'd turn back the clock and all live in 14th Century fiefdoms (under their control, of course) in mortal fear of fire and the Plague. US Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich offers the only way forward for the human race; the rest can go read Obama's eighth grade-level SOTU address. Am I suggesting that Mitt Romney and his kind are dullards? Dumb as rocks, yes. Dumb as geese that look up when it rains so they drown, yes!

They also realize that Newt's vision will benefit the American people and perpetuate this greatest country "on God's green earth", as Michael Medved puts it. I was a bit serious when I said they want to turn back the clock, but they want to turn it back to before 1776 when rights were not seen as unalienable and no one anywhere on earth knew they could clamor for them. To the effete, the golden years were the millennia that went before our time - the American era. Put succinctly, we're dealing with a bunch of Dark Age revanchists.

Can you just imagine what the technology gained from such a project as a return to the moon and beyond would mean for the average American and for our country as a whole, particularly as we face down this decade the emerging need to defeat a new evil empire, Communist China?  If it's true that every NASA dollar has a seven-fold ROI on what would then be just a percent or two of the annual budget, what rational person would object? I'll tell you: the same regressives who killed the Apollo Program in 1973, that's who. RINO Richard Nixon - a who literally slept with a Chinese honey trap while on a business trip before his presidency - and the liberal Democrat Congress. They killed the program promising to end poverty once and for all by spending all the NASA money and everything else they could find at it so that today we have more poor and none of the improvements a 40-year continued presence on the moon (to say nothing of Mars by now) would have brought us.

And I imagine that doesn't even factor in the economic benefits of people who become more productive as a result of the augmented quality of life experienced due to the phenomenal new technology in every sector. The return is literally exponential, just like everything else that is quintessentially American - and everything else the RINO-Democrat cabal seeks to regulate to death or outright kill.

There have been few truly visionary presidents or presidential candidates in the past century. John F. Kennedy took us to the moon but never lived to see it. Ronald Reagan fought to revive our space program and oversaw a successful shuttle program that was meant to do so much more - and almost never lived to see it. Newt Gingrich today sees it, gets it, and forges ahead to make it happen, and the establishment is doing everything it can to destroy him politically so that he will never see his vision fulfilled. 

You have to hand it to the real knuckle-draggers like Caveman Mitt, who seem to live in a world devoid all of human history and the nature of progress - and thus an understanding of why we enjoy the benefits. It's as if they believe we were suddenly plopped down here with our cars, our microwave ovens, and lasik by some marvelous act of the cosmos (which we dare not profane by exploring). Anyone who loves science, progress, and wants to see man reach to the stars - and who doesn't want a terrorist regime like China to be our ambassadors to the heavens - I implore you to put aside your politics and obsession with social issues that have hardly budged in 40 years anyway. Let's make this happen.

Who wouldn't volunteer if given the opportunity to go, to explore the moon, Mars, and beyond, even if they could never make it back? Is this not the necessary next step for the human race? Those of us who get the importance of reaching out to the next frontier sense very deeply how much we simply can't not do this. It's the next step and the next "giant leap" - and one whose time has come to take. Let's put one foot in front of the other and see where it takes us; and we can start by electing the only man who can - or will - support that vision: Newt Gingrich.

"So there's the choice in life: one either grows or one decays - grow or die. I think we should grow." -- Robert Zubrin, Aerospace Engineer

Martin is a master's student in national security studies and is the executive director of Samizdat International, a genuine human rights concern. He currently serves with the Newt Gingrich campaign as Texas Chair for Students with Newt (posts at Blogbat are personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the views of the campaign). Martin undertook his internship with the London-based Henry Jackson Society in the summer of 2009 and misses the irradiated sushi at his favorite sushi haunt Itsu. He hates the Turabian style format.

"The first to plead his case seems right, until another comes and examines him." -- Proverbs 18:17

Okay students, we know this better than most, don't we? I had to question Elliott Abrams' personal integrity two days ago after his failure to cite sources and offer context in the now-infamous and refuted hit piece against Newt Gingrich. In his article, Abrams pulled cherry-picked bits of qoutes out of thin air and used them to accuse Newt of being anti-Reagan, which sparked an avalanche from all directions  - including a video of Nancy Reagan from 1995 - proving otherwise. If I had conducted a research project the way Abrams has, It's quite possible I would have been cited for plagiarism and expelled from my MA program. Plagiarism is more than stealing someone's words and failing to put quotation marks around them; it's also a failure to properly attribute them, which is where Elliott grossly erred apparently with malice.

Needless to say, Abrams is unimportant in the larger scheme of things, but the machine that used him and his disposable lies will do it again. So as conservatives, as voters, and as Newt supporters what is the takeaway with all of this?

One of the more famous lines from Star Wars was by Obi Wan: "Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?" The next time Romney's sleazy Charlie Crist operatives launch a bogus attack on Newt, give it a day. Romney's mudslinging of lies is becoming old hat, and when you consider 2008, it becomes ancient.

• Mitt's isn't a campaign but a psychological warfare operation. Don't bring a knife to a gunfight unless your strategy is asymmetrical - in which case you'd better know what you're doing.
• Mitt promised an "October Surprise every day" until the convention. In reality, maybe not every day but every day before a key event, such as a debate or a primary -- so expect it. Don't wither; hit back hard but intelligently.
• These unsurprising surprises have proven to be factually bogus every time. Yawn. So we should stand confidently in the face of them. We must alert the American people that this is an old game that should be ignored. After all, aren't we as voters tired of this slanderous sleaze we can set our watches by when there are so many issues that really matter?
• Don't react - act! Romney is not a particularly stable or secure human being, in fact the only card he has is his bluff, which we have the power to call. Find what rattles his cage and rattle it often, but keep the issues that matter most to Americans the focal point of the campaign. Newt wants to be president because he truly loves this country and Americans and wants it to be a better place for his grandchildren, which is why Newt has honed in on the issues that will most impact us now and in the future. This is why Newt leads unwaveringly by a massive amount in polls in the category of who's the most presidential.

 As the saying goes, "fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."

Martin is a master's student in national security studies and is the executive director of Samizdat International, a genuine human rights concern. He currently serves with the Newt Gingrich campaign as Texas Chair for Students with Newt (posts at Blogbat are personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the views of the campaign). Martin undertook his internship with the London-based Henry Jackson Society in the summer of 2009 and misses the irradiated sushi at his favorite sushi haunt Itsu. He hates the Turabian style format.

Newt Gingrich is in good company: Garry Kasparov, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and Boris Nemtsov know what it means to be the dissident candidate and to face the darts of running against the establishment and its media. Stand strong, Newt. You are fighting for your grandchildren's future and for ours.

This is something I predicted would happen in 2009, that American statism without intervention would increasingly mimic the electoral authoritarianism of Putin's Russia.

As a boy I worked on Ronald Reagan's re-election campaign and read and watched everything that had to do with him. As I grew older, my love for the Gipper only grew as well. That's why I'm with Newt. I also know where Mitt Romney and his ilk come from: they were the ones who not only opposed Reagan but hated him - and hated the American people for wanting to be in control of their government.

In 2006 the establishment hit the first major wall of resistance since the era of Newt Gingrich as House Speaker. The American people were resolute to stop the amnesty legislation the Senate was seeking to pass that would allow millions of illegal aliens to cut in front of legal immigrants and American citizens and become a new voting bloc to ensure the votes of millions of Conservative Americans would be rendered inconsequential. In the height of the battle, Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter pounded his fist on the lectern on the floor of the Senate and exclaimed, "The will of the Senate will prevail!" But the American people had a different idea, an idea that was firmly based in the words of Thomas Jefferson: "The will of the people is the only legitimate foundation of any government, and to protect its free expression should be our first object." And so the establishment lost and not long thereafter, Senator Specter was primaried out of office and replaced by a more conservative Republican.

The battle won, the war waged on. Increasingly, the establishment media became more brazen with each passing year. They were caught and frustrated in 2004, when Dan Rather's forged documents revealed an attempt by CBS to alter the outcome of that year's presidential election. In 2006, MSM struck back, both with its nakedly biased coverage of mass protests by illegal aliens and events leading up to the fall midterm elections. By 2008, the establishment's media was back with a vengeance. It began by anointing weak liberal Republican Senator John McCain for the nomination, then dutifully torpedoing him the moment the nomination was clenched in favor of Barack Obama. The coverage was so slanted, it became the focus of several feature documentaries and countless other serious points of examination. The sad part about American establishment media is that unlike Russian media, which is compelled at the barrel of a gun, the US press subjugates itself freely.

With Nancy Pelosi firmly in control of Congress and after Barack Obama's election in 2008, the establishment set to subdue the American people as they did the Native Americans so many generations ago, and to punish us for asserting our fundamental human rights as expressed in the Constitution. One of the means by which they sought to do so was by enacting Obamacare, which gave the state complete control over whether each of us would live or die without a trial or even the accusation of having committed a crime. Socialized medicine, they knew, was like a death penalty for the innocent, and it was touted by supporters like Robert Reich as a way to kill off the feeble and elderly.

What resulted, however, was probably not anticipated: a backlash that spawned the Tea Party, which became a movement so vast that one of its protests on the Washington Mall exceeded in size the total present for Barack Obama's inauguration, which itself had set the record for crowd size on the mall.

By November 2010, the movement had gained maturity, leading to the largest sweep of House seats in US history, as well as those in state houses. The establishment scrambled and quickly appointed stalwarts like Speaker John Boehner to manage the damage.

In 2012, the establishment is determined to use whatever means necessary to destroy any candidate who is a serious reformer, as we see with incomparable bias in MSM as well as Fox News and Drudge. And in the noise of the chaos of seeking to destroy Newt Gingrich, another negative side effect of all this nasty campaigning by Romney is that we might forget about our Tea Party candidates running in congressional races. Therefore we must both stand strong with Newt while giving of our time to the other races that matter, too. It's a good deal of work, but it is still so much less than that which those who wear the uniform must so often face.

This primary season we have a choice to make. We will either choose a man who stands with the far left and looks at you and me with contempt or we can choose Newt Gingrich - a proven Reagan conservative bold enough and moral enough to stand up to the establishment and carry the torch of the people - and Reaganism - into the White House. Let's go with Newt.

In our country, the lie has become not just a moral category but a pillar of the State. -- Alexander Solzhenitsyn

Martin is a master's student in national security studies and is the executive director of Samizdat International, a genuine human rights concern. He currently serves with the Newt Gingrich campaign as Texas Chair for Students with Newt (posts at Blogbat are personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the views of the campaign). Martin undertook his internship with the London-based Henry Jackson Society in the summer of 2009 and misses the irradiated sushi at his favorite sushi haunt Itsu. He hates the Turabian style format.

Below is a reposting of an article I wrote for the Henry Jackson Society back in 2009 on July 27th. I am reposting it here for two reasons. The first is that the database server at the original website has lost the article; the second reason is why I thought you should read it in the first place, which is that today we are at a crossroads. If we go in one direction we will embrace progress and a future full of wonder with technological advances that will boggle the mind, to say nothing of improving our quality of life in every area, from health care to transportation and communication. History of human progress demonstrates that we must push outward against the boundaries of the unknown or we begin to die. If we take the other road, however, we face being surpassed by enemy regimes like Communist China, the strategic implications of which alone should cause great worry. We as a people will regress through history until we are little more than a byword. Today the visionary is Newt Gingrich. His plan to have a base on the moon by the end of his second term in 2020 is ambitious but well within our reach if we would just decide to do it. Those who oppose him - the same cadre of anti-science, regressive liberal Democrats and establishment Republicans who killed the Apollo Program who today manifest in the likes of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney - mock his vision. But ask any NASA scientist, any serious astronomer and you'll notice they aren't laughing. Newt at times will quote Proverbs 29:18, which wisely advises that, "Where there is no vision the people perish..."

Without further ado:

The Moon and Mars: Vision is as Necessary as Technology 
July 27th, 2009


This week marks the 40th anniversary of mankind's first landing on the moon. It is a journey that began long ago when mankind first set out to explore the nearby hills and trees and then stretched across the millennia. In the course of so many lifetimes, we began our first voyages across the ocean by boat and later by plane, followed by that giant leap on 16 July 1969, though it was also but another small step in many.

Progress has been the primary element to our survival since the beginning; it has been greatly valued by those societies which have managed to thrive even when great sacrifice was involved. Unfortunately, the tale of progress does not have a happy ending as yet. For, in the mid-1970s the U.S. Congress astonishingly voted to cut funding to NASA's lunar program, which by now would likely have spawned a host of great discoveries and possibly even a few manned missions to Mars and perhaps beyond. We will never know what could have come of that lost half century, but it is safe to assume much would have been the reward, because that has been the eternal nature of mankind's pattern of exploration and discovery.

Ironically, members of Congress who voted to kill the Apollo moon program in favor of expanding social welfare programs that many predicted would be a disaster and now we see were complete and total failures like for others to think of them as "progressives". During the same period such self-appointed "progressives" allocated funds like drunken sailors to a plethora of counter-productive social programs, they embarked on starving the two areas most necessary for survival: defense and space; the former allowing Soviet expansion to regress human rights around the world and the latter even endangered what was in the early 1970s a nascent space shuttle program. (1) (2) (3) (4)

There has been nothing progressive about enduring the backward thinking with regard to any of these things. And there is nothing progressive about essentially continuing for another half century in the same direction. Instead of being "progressive", such in Congress instead became "regressive", obsessed only with looking back to outmoded ways of running government, to organizing mankind based on race rather than character, and of course by halting mankind's journey to new frontiers.

While limited-thinkers continue to live in yesteryear and remain determined to keep the rest of us there also, the frontier calls. If the frontier of space is anything like all the other frontiers before it which we have faced, it will ultimately prove invaluable to our survival. Those hopelessly sentimental who do not understand this continue to lie down in the roadway, accusing us of being heartless for having the need to move forward. This farce serves no purpose and is the reason why today we have moved backward in our space program instead of being much farther along than we were half a century ago. Fans of the television series Star Trek might be dismayed to discover there would be no "Enterprise" in the 23rd Century had such regressives run things in the fictional space of that story's narrative. Indeed, the future history of the real world in which we live would be equally as bleak.

Today, astronomers and other scientists, small children, and the entire world wistfully gaze up into the stars and wonder if in our lifetimes a human being will ever set foot on Mars, return to the moon or even if we will be able to put another space station up, so far backward have we moved. Mankind, once the heirs to a bright future measured by great leaps now must sit content to watch re-runs of Star Trek or live in a make-believe galaxy far, far away. Meanwhile our own saga of space flight becomes one of long ago and the tools and resources we will need to thrive in our future as a species remain untapped by a disastrously retrograde mindset.

Martin is a master's student in national security studies and is the executive director of Samizdat International, a genuine human rights concern. He currently serves with the Newt Gingrich campaign as Texas Chair for Students with Newt (posts at Blogbat are personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the views of the campaign). Martin undertook his internship with the London-based Henry Jackson Society in the summer of 2009 and misses the irradiated sushi at his favorite sushi haunt Itsu. He hates the Turabian style format.

It's hard to believe but there are still some who discount the threat posed by Iran to the West once the regime acquires and readies nuclear weapons. But why is Iran a threat? To answer that question we must ask some others:

• Would Iran like to see the West destroyed? Yes
• Is Iran willing to take action to bring this about? Yes
• Is Iran currently taking action to bring this about? Yes
• Would the end of this course of action legitimately threaten the West? Yes
• How seriously could Iran hurt us? A single nuclear weapon detonated above North America would emit an electromagnetic pulse capable of frying our electrical grid and nearly everything utilizing electronics. This could literally lead to the extermination of 90% of the population within a year.
• Can Iran be deterred? No
• Can the threat be defended against or mitigated? Not yet. The technology exists but it has not been implemented.
  
• What is being done to defend and mitigate? Too little
• How long before Iran's nuclear capability is operational?  Estimates vary from a few months to a couple of years at the optimistic end of the spectrum.
• How long before defense and mitigation techniques are operational? A few years.

As you can see, there is already a frightening gap between when many believe Iran will possess nuclear weapons and when we will be able to defend against them or reduce their impact.

Iran has already promised to "wipe" the US and Israel off the face of the earth. Newt Gingrich makes a very good point on this, as well. If a person believes it is a good idea to blow himself up with a suicide vest in order to kill just a few of his enemies, why wouldn't he want a nuclear bomb and be willing to accept the consequences of retaliation after launching a devastating attack on his enemies? But the threat is even worse than that of a single - or even a few - cities being destroyed by nuclear attacks at ground level. Presently, Iran's nuclear weapons program is being developed in conjunction with missile tests that include delivery systems being detonated at apogee to simulate an EMP attack. A single EMP event over North America could be sufficient to knock out our entire electrical grid, which may take up to a decade to replace.

Within the first year after such an event due to starvation, dehydration, and disease, up to 90% of the US population would be dead. That's from a single EMP from a single, fairly low-yield bomb, and Iran's leadership has talked openly both within political circles and internal military white papers and other documents about the desire to make an EMP strategy their top priority.

Furthermore, there is no deterrent as there was with the Soviet Union because the official form of Islam propagated and adhered to within the regime believes that they will herald in the era of the 12th Imam (their messiah) once Armageddon begins; furthermore, this is also the same belief system that glorifies the suicide bomber as a martyr for Islam.

The Iranian regime is willing to accept heavy losses by any retaliation and they believe it is their God-given purpose to obliterate the United States, and soon they will have the capability to do so. Furthermore, the US would be so badly weakened - if it exists at all - that retaliation and certainly any sustained conflict with Iran and its axis partners would be impossible from a resource standpoint. The best we could do is drop a few nukes on Iran, which Iran is willing to accept. I would say that is quite a real threat.

We must begin to accept reality on its terms rather than how we wish it to be, and in so doing ensure that no attack from Iran, its axis partners China and Russia, other allies or terrorist groups will be capable of inflicting serious damage.

Martin is a master's student in national security studies and is the executive director of Samizdat International, a genuine human rights concern. He currently serves with the Newt Gingrich campaign as Texas Chair for Students with Newt (posts at Blogbat are personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the views of the campaign). Martin undertook his internship with the London-based Henry Jackson Society in the summer of 2009 and misses the irradiated sushi at his favorite sushi haunt Itsu. He hates the Turabian style format.

UPDATE for yesterday's post: As it turns out, Mitt Romney as governor was a wholly-owned subsidiary of China. Rep. Duncan Hunter, member of the House Armed Services Committee excoriated Romney in 2008, advising voters then to steer clear of a pro-China Romney. To this date Romney has failed address the problem, demonstrating further how unserious a candidate he is for Commander-in-Chief - although there's very lttle anyone could say to save himself from the inevitable disqualification this type of footsie with a hostile regime that has called for "exterminating the US population" brings.



From Newsmax, 2008:

"As the founder of Bain Capital, Governor Romney has an obligation to utilize his influence within the company to terminate the proposed merger between 3Com and Chinese defense contractor Huawei," said Hunter. "In light of China's refusal to port several American naval vessels last week, it is increasingly more important that American military technology be protected from foreign companies, such as Huawei, that are closely aligned with the Chinese government."

Hunter refused to endorse Romney in 2008 for this specific reason.

"This proposed deal, which Governor Romney can work to terminate should he choose to do so, is unpatriotic and damaging to national security," continued Hunter. As further detailed in a resolution introduced in the House of Representatives, Huawei has close ties to the military of communist China and allegedly aided Saddam Hussein and the Taliban. 

As mentioned yesterday, "Huawei [is] linked by the Pentagon and other key figures in national security as an espionage front group of Beijing's Ministry of State Security (MSS)." In 2007, the tech-industry news site Cnet noted that Huawei is run by a former PLA officer by the name of Ren Zhengfei.

Meanwhile, Ren has gone about building Huawei into a success story disregarding the usual corporate niceties. In 2000--three years before the WMD craze got us all nutso about taking out Saddam--the CIA accused Huawei of secretly selling a communications system to Iraq. In the final report of the Iraq Survey Group, Huawei and two other Chinese companies were singled out for carrying out "extensive work in and around Baghdad"--mainly telecommunication switches and the installation of fiber-optic cable.

The article goes on to mention Romney's involvement:

[...]Friday we learned that Bain Capital is paying $2.2 billion to acquire 3Com. Part of the deal involves China's Huawei Technologies, which will acquire a minority stake in 3Com.
And, oh, by the way, Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor running for the Republican presidential nomination--he headed Bain Capital for 14 years.
Six degrees of separation. In this case only 2--but who's counting.

In a later interview with Fox News, Hunter went farther and told Chris Wallace, "I think Mitt Romney's a no-go for that reason alone".



A note of disclosure: As a Newt guy, I'm not telling you to vote for Newt, although he is the best candidate on national security and I do recommend you do; however, I think as long as you stay away from Romney, Huntsman, and Paul, your choice will not be a candidate who potentially does direct damage to our national security interests. I personally think Newt would agree with the principle that one of the most important things we can do as Americans is to keep more bad actors out of the White House.

Martin is a master's student in national security studies and is the executive director of Samizdat International, a genuine human rights concern. He currently serves with the Newt Gingrich campaign as Texas Chair for Students with Newt (posts at Blogbat are personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the views of the campaign). Martin undertook his internship with the London-based Henry Jackson Society in the summer of 2009 and misses the irradiated sushi at his favorite sushi haunt Itsu. He hates the Turabian style format.

During the 26-minute penalty box phase in Sunday morning's New Hampshire debate where far-left NBC host David Gregory banned Newt Gingrich from taking part in some of the most crucial parts - parts where 1%-ers like Huntsman and Perry and all the other candidates all far less qualified were heartily invited to opine - Willard "Mitt" Romney and Jon Huntsman fell into a dustup over China. Huntsman, the official spokesperson for the most genocidal regime in human history in a stunning are-you-serious display of ignorance for a supposed Sinophile stated that we should not seek to protect our interests in responding to China's trade war against us because it would cause a trade war. Come again?  Meanwhile, Romney - now brought up to speed only in sound bites by one of his advisors who seems to be a closet fan of Donald Trump - doesn't know about this trade war stuff, but he sure would like to raise taxes on China because that's what he's had so much experience doing to people in his own state and it's safe - he knows how to do it. Play your strengths.

Mr. Huntsman certainly is not inexpert on the topic of China. He has spent many years in China first as a businessman and then as Obama's China ambassador - and his company has over $9 billion tied up in China (surely no conflict of interest there).  Huntsman is incredibly knowledgeable on the topic, which again makes his blunders on the topic so stunning. Where he may be faulted is in the area of his affections, or at best, his understanding of what motivates the regime and what its implications are for the world - particularly in light of similar regimes throughout history, which is our only guide. Huntsman falters in part because he's no historian, no philosopher, and certainly no political scientist, but no amount of education can make up for a gut that is seemingly off its axis (or in the case of the Axis of Evil, riding high atop it).  Fairly recently, a husband and wife team of highly acclaimed researchers Jung Chang and Jon Halliday embarked on a project which became a New York Times best-seller. The book, Mao: The Unknown Story - now banned in Communist China - was an unofficial biography like no other in terms of scope and attention to detail. Along the way, the book mentioned that in the 1960s RINO Richard Nixon made numerous trips to China on business. During his trips he fell in with a beautiful young honey trap who used her influence to affect a friendlier outlook on the regime and may have brought about Nixon's shortsighted and naïve misadventure of "ping pong diplomacy". That policy in turn opened the US up to the most genocidal regime in human history that despite all rainbow and unicorn talk by the administration continued to find ways to destroy us, and most likely played an important role in our defeat in Vietnam along with the genocide of millions in Southeast Asia. To put a nice spin on things, it seems high-school dropout Jon Huntsman is the very best imitation yet of Nixon, albeit with a better tan and a smidgen more personality. But I'm sure he will tell you he's not a crook.

On the other hand, Mr. Romney is in many ways the opposite of Huntsman and in other respects, quite similar. Breathtakingly inexperienced in foreign policy and up until very recently, almost as inarticulate as Rick Perry on the topic until a few of his advisors came to the rescue. Up until this year for Romney, "China" was only something stamped on the bottom of most of the products sold in his Staples office supply stores, covered in the fingerprints of the five-year-olds who were forced to assemble them. So one of the few areas that Huntsman and Romney shared in common with respect to China was that both men had a big money stake in preserving the status quo at all costs - even against the long term national security interests of the United States (though they might both be men of denial rather than malice). Another thing the two share in common is that both men as president would likely continue the failed China policies of the last four presidents, albeit for somewhat different reasons - one because he thinks he's clever, the other because he doesn't know a thing and therefore thinks it must not be important. One thing in Romney's (and almost everyone else's) favor, however, is that he never announced to the world that China's telecommunications company Huawei - linked by the Pentagon and other key figures in national security as an espionage front group of Beijing's Ministry of State Security (MSS) - was a great company or that it had a terrific "worldwide reputation", as Perry once had. But at this point we are only nuancing shades of fail here.

UPDATE: Actually, Romney was totally in bed with Huawei. We mosted more information about it here. And as far as not being a crook as Huntsman may be able to claim and Nixon wasn't, well...

By contrast, Newt Gingrich understands the China threat, its historical context, the nature of communism - and China's flavor of Marxi-fascism deliberately patterned after Nazi Germany - and the finer points of geostrategy, the need to be proactive, the value of covert operations, the importance of morale, and the importance of recognizing proxy wars for what they are along with all manner of asymmetrical warfare. Newt's playing for the right team and understands why and how to do it. The biggest travesty of Sunday morning's debate was not the predictably shallow aping of advisors by Romney or Huntsman's faithful wearing of the red (China) team's colors, it was the exclusion of the only practical, competent, trustworthy, and much-needed Newt Gingrich from this discussion. Nevertheless, Gingrich is the only one to have endorsements by the greatest minds and strategic thinkers of the Reagan era or today, including former Reagan National Security Advisor Robert McFarlane and Dr. Thomas Sowell. Speaker Gingrich's exclusion from the discussion in the last debate is a sad example of biased networks putting politics over national interest. It is important for all Americans that he be allowed to partake in the discussion of national security - an area in which we must have our best leaders step forward.

Martin is a master's student in national security studies and is the executive director of Samizdat International, a genuine human rights concern. He currently serves with the Newt Gingrich campaign as Texas Chair for Students with Newt (posts at Blogbat are personal opinion and do not necessarily reflect the views of the campaign). Martin undertook his internship with the London-based Henry Jackson Society in the summer of 2009 and misses the irradiated sushi at his favorite sushi haunt Itsu. He hates the Turabian style format.

I wrote a piece a couple of years ago detailing Russia's disappointing departure from rather short-lived aspirations of democracy in the 1990s and how Vladimir Putin's concept of a managed, electoral authoritarianism (to borrow from Francis Fukuyama) meant that by controlling the media he controlled the elections. As a result, Putin's government managed to guarantee the outcome because he controlled the information the voters needed to make their decisions.

So Newt Gingrich faces a confluence of things which for a host of disparate reasons seeks to have him lose to Romney. On the part of the pro-Obama media, we see an unflinching advocate with a bullhorn in on hand and duct tape in the other so it can both talk over and silence the opposition. With the bullhorn, the media strategically chants whatever it must at any given time to protect the administration. It then brings the duct tape into the GOP presidential debates and silences any it wishes to marginalize.

Indeed, the media's strategy at the moment is to see to it that the weak, threadbare liberal Mitt Romney wins the nomination. One might be a bit tongue-in-cheek and say that last night's debate was an ABC-orchestrated infomercial for a worthless product called Mitt Romney, although at least ShamWow had "wow" in its name.  And it is true that Willard "Mitt" Romney is an incredibly flat dullard - although President Obama may arguably come up even shorter in that area - which is why both he and the left in general realize they must not only promote Romney but destroy his opposition beyond recognition, at least until Mr. Romney secures the nomination. What Alexander Solzhenitsyn once noted about the 20th Century seems just as true today about candidates like Romney, which is possibly another reason why the media prefer him: "Hastiness and superficiality are the psychic diseases of the twentieth century, and more than anywhere else this disease is reflected in the press."

The reality, however, is far more serious than a comical dysfunctional former governor with a 34 percent approval rating who abuses his dog and only talks about saving the life of the unborn if it saves his career. As we've learned, this is the way an MSM "debate" works in the modern era: Silence Newt, give Romney all the time, pronounce Romney the winner. Hello Vladimir Putin. And that should be the worrisome part. In effect, the American media is doing exactly what Russian media has been doing for twelve years since Putin took power with the exception that at least Russian media had to be coerced. American media hasn't had 300-plus journalists murdered by the regime - no, all it needed was some common ground and a few fancy invites to the White House. The shameful and perhaps most disturbing part about Romney (or perhaps evidence of his sheer stupidity) is that he's perfectly okay with this as long as the Obama media takes out Mitt's enemies, too. Even with the guy endorsing Mitt who tried to ride that ride back in 2008 only to have it turn around and bite him once he clenched the nomination, Mit seems utterly oblivious to the fact that being last to be lead to the slaughterhouse still means you're being taken to the slaughterhouse. It seems we have learned very little from the McCain disaster four years ago. But RINOs have been trying to inoculate themselves against conservatives ever since the Reagan Revolution, which is part of the reason why they so willingly join forces with Democrats and the liberal media to destroy conservative candidates.

Will Newt win it or is he somehow destined to become the next Garry Kasparov? I believe he will win, but it will be difficult. Newt is truly an historical figure of a potential magnitude of greatness that he may well go down as one of the actual top-four presidents in US history. So why would it be so hard if Newt finds natural resonance with the American people if he is such a gigantic figure? Again, the answer: the gatekeepers in the media. The American people cannot vote for someone they do not realize even exists, instead believing the evil cartoon character the media has created in his stead. Judging by the debate last night in which Newt was limited to fewer chances to speak than even Jon Huntsman who sits at the bottom of the polls, it's clear that the media realize Newt's initial surge came about by his ability to speak directly to the people much as Reagan did. The media would like to see Romney nominated because they believe he will lose to Obama, but even if Romney somehow defeats Obama, he is by far the closest thing they have to Obama outside of Hillary Clinton. So the media is working overtime to cut off Newt's mic while creating a host of fables about him that would be easily dispelled by any direct contact. So far, they've succeeded somewhat with help from the usually-right leaning but pro-Romney Drudge Report, Fox News, and over $10 million in false attack ads by Romney and his wingman Ron Paul, which the media have apparently forbidden Newt form defending himself against.

To borrow an idea from Speaker Gingrich himself, Newt plays chess, Romney plays checkers, and Barack Obama plays tic-tac-toe.* And right now both the checkers and the tic-tac-toe guy are playing "get the guy with the chess set". So we shouldn't by any stretch see this cabal of anti-Newt media or the virtual blackout during the debate last night as a nail in the coffin. Newt is smarter than all of them put together and I have no doubt that the champion of great solutions will solve this challenge, as well as the next, which is defeating Obama. Newt's sights are set and we need to stay behind him as he fights to restore the greatness of America, and certainly with each new step along the way, we begin that restoration, or to borrow from Newt's own words, "Nothing will turn America around more than Election Night when Barack Obama loses decisively." But as we seek to return the reins of power to the people, we also need to take time to reflect on the values that made us great. The media must also return to the values of integrity and fairness so that our great and free society can thrive and its people prosper. The media has been headed down a very dark path in which the lie has increasingly "become a moral category but a pillar of the state", as Solzhenitsyn also noted about life in the Soviet Union. He also famously said that "the strength or weakness of a society depends more on the level of its spiritual life than on its level of industrialization. Neither a market economy nor even general abundance constitutes the crowning achievement of human life. If a nation's spiritual energies have been exhausted, it will not be saved from collapse by the most perfect government structure or by any industrial development. A tree with a rotten core cannot stand."

So as we elect Newt Gingrich as the 45th President of the United States next November, let's remember what Newt himself has told us: we also have much work to do. Health starts on the inside and works its way out, not from the top down. We have no way to predict what will become of Russia but we are in full control of what we as Americans become.


*"It's one thing if the White House can't play chess. It's another thing if the White House can't play checkers. But if the White House can't play tic-tac-toe..." - Newt, January 7th, 2012

Martin is a master's student in national security studies and is the executive director of Samizdat International, a genuine human rights concern. He currently serves with the Newt Gingrich campaign as Texas Chair for Students with Newt. Martin undertook his internship with the London-based Henry Jackson Society in the summer of 2009 and misses the irradiated sushi at his favorite sushi haunt Itsu. He hates the Turabian style format.

Like Obama, Romney is a reflexively liberal empty suit. Empty suit or not, both men are strongly ideological. In point of fact, every man has an ideology - whether it is shallow or deep, in contact with the real world or not, and that view of the world shapes his behavior. Romney essentially has the depth of a baking sheet but it is a rather liberal baking sheet. Being shallow for both these men means they are not only wrong but incompetent.

As for the election, I think we all realize that Romney almost certainly will lose to Obama, as RINOs have always done against liberal Democrats. In fact, it's really built into this campaign season and is part of why Romney is the establishment's anointed one. Romney's major backers back him because they have already embarked on a senate-first strategy. They believe him to be a suitable throwaway candidate who will not rock the boat for the effort to retake the senate. Certainly, the crusty and perhaps bigoted establishment would not be game for having a Mormon serve in the White House, so that alone is your first indicator he is a diversion. Others indicate his lackluster record as governor of Massachusetts and his inability to connect with voters - particularly southern voters - even as well as Al Gore or George H.W. Bush had. The establishment has concluded it will be impossible to defeat Obama, so the desire instead is to focus efforts on Congress and pick an unserious presidential candidate, saving better ones for another time. I fundamentally disagree with this approach and believe history bears this out, although his cynical backers most certainly are right about Romney's chances.

Let's take a look at just a few of the historical patterns.

First, only three of the last nine Republicans to win Iowa went on to win the Nomination. Of those, two were sitting presidents and unopposed and the other was the liberal Bob Dole who lost to the Democrat Clinton in the GE. In 1980, Ronald Reagan was one of the candidates who was beaten badly in Iowa by George H.W. Bush (the Romney of the day) and the campaign was nearly destroyed. For most of us, Paul Harvey doesn't need to read us the rest of the story.

Furthermore, no Republican presidential candidate running as a liberal like Romney has won the general election in the past forty years:

Ford 1976 (running as a liberal): Lost
Reagan 1980: (running as a conservative): Won
Reagan 1984 (running as a conservative): Won
Bush 1988 (running as a conservative): Won
Bush 1992 (running as a liberal): Lost
Dole 1996: (running as a liberal): Lost
Bush 2000 (running as a conservative): Won
Bush 2004 (running as a conservative): Won
McCain 2008: (running as a liberal): Lost

One reason for this is sheer demographics. Conservatives make up close to 50 percent of the US population as well as the majority base of the GOP. By contrast, self-described liberals comprise roughly 20 percent, with independents, the confused, the apolitical, and convicted felons making up the difference. Of those in that 30 percent who can legally vote, a candidate would be lucky to secure a third, i.e. 15 percent of the original pie. So it is vital for any GOP nominee to carry the base in order to win and we can see what happens to those who don't just by having another look at the list above.

Finally, Romney has consistently failed to garner more than the mid-20s - far less than even his mentor Bush 41, the 1980 frontrunner at this point in the race. New Hampshire will almost certainly go for Romney, but the political terrain suddenly changes as they head south. South Carolina almost always votes for the eventual nominee, and both SC and Florida favor Newt. By this time Bachmann and possibly Santorum will have dropped out, adding their supporters and key percentage points to those also left by Perry who suspended his campaign tonight. That support isn't going to Romney and I predict this will cascade in Newt's favor. But no matter which conservative chess piece you place as the sole competition to Romney, Romney loses. The numbers are just there; they're diffuse among several candidates at the moment, but those numbers will be reaching critical mass just when they're needed. Make no mistake, 2012 is another Tea Party election and Newt is the strongest Tea Party candidate and conservative candidate in essence to take it to the general election.

Martin is a master's student in national security studies and is the executive director of Samizdat International, a genuine human rights concern. He currently serves with the Newt Gingrich campaign as Texas Chair for Students with Newt. Martin undertook his internship with the London-based Henry Jackson Society in the summer of 2009 and misses the irradiated sushi at his favorite sushi haunt Itsu. He hates the Turabian style format.