Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

*    Romney had spent more in South Carolina, more than any other candidate.  It is dope-slappingly obvious that more ads weren't likely to persuade still balky Christian conservatives that a vote for him was not a vote for the anti-Christ.

*    Team Romney had been criticized recently for going negative on Huckabee.  It's possible the forthcoming ads were deemed too hard on the former Southern Baptist preacher.

*    He needed the cash to ensure a win in Michigan, where he was born and raised and his dad was governor.  It worked and the win produced priceless publicity and, finally, momentum.  

*    Romney surely preferred to make the ad suspension decision in private so as not to tip his hand to the competition. But notoriously leaky advertising departments at newspapers and television stations forced him to act publicly.

*    Pouring money into Michigan raised the ante and put the screws to cash-strapped McCain and Huckabee.  McCain's win in New Hampshire has not triggered a cash landslide. Huckabee's resources seem limited, too, because smart Republican money knows he's unelectable.

Was he reeling from the early upsets in Iowa and New Hampshire, or  just pained that religion has played such a crucial role?  Or, annoyed  that while he played footsie with Christian evangelicals who generally despise Mormons,  he ceded the middle ground to the likes of John McCain? Or, frustrated that he is no longer recognized as the fiscally responsible, social progressive he once was and may still be?

Romney convincingly says he has "the staying power to go the distance in all 50 states." Wouldn't it be good for America if, for a change, everyone was involved in picking the finalists for President of The United States?  

Insiders say the setbacks in Iowa and New Hampshire, followed by the big win in Michigan reshaped the campaign strategy. The aim now is to concentrate capital and people in states where he has strong organizations on the ground and reasonable popular support.  It goes light in states where his religious beliefs present major problems and often get coupled to persistent worries that his pragmatic social policies are so open-ended that they could turn downright liberal in the blink of an eye.

New York, New Jersey and, especially, California loom large as the major battleground states before the survivors move on to Texas for the final shootout at the Alamo, perhaps.  

POST SCRIPTS

Connecting the Huckadots:  Turns out that Chip Saltsman, the national campaign manager for the self-proclaimed champion of the common man, is a fellow who made a small fortune helping clients prey upon poor working stiffs every single pay day. Saltsman, once an operatiave for Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, was also once a lobbyist for predatory payday lenders, those legal loan sharks who have persuaded a couple dozen legislatures - Arkansas included -- to exempt them from usury laws. The interest rates they charge soar up to 390 percent annually (this is not a typographical error). The Arkansas statute -- The Check Cashers Act of 1999 was adopted despite the fierce objections of consumer advocates and signed into law by none other than the "populist" Governor Huckabee himself. Presumably, Saltsman's former clients do not use baseball bats to persuade deadbeats to pay up.

Swift Boating Barack :  As Barack Obama rises, the personal attacks intensify. One nasty e-mail makes something of his middle name -"Hussein"--and his connections to Islam through his late father and former step-father.  

Another rather scurrilous "Swift Boat"-like post notes that Obama's parish in Washington touts itself  as "unabashedly black," with a  "non-negotiable" commitment to Africa, implying there's something inherently un-American in offering sustenance to poor people on a far off continent.  

Another spam questions Obama's youthful use of recreational drugs, gripes that the news media has given him a free pass. The complainer forgets that the media reported then let slide George W. Bush's drunken and coked-out indiscretions at Yale. Or, that Reporters winked at Bill Clinton's disingenuous "I didn't inhale" confession.  

By contrast, Obama wrote candidly about his indiscretions in his riveting autobiography: Dreams From My Father, which has to be the most unapologetic autobiography ever written by a Presidential candidate, not to mention the most literate too.

Pillory Hillary:  Hillary is constantly being bashed about for same old, same old. The nastiest are electronic pieces that trade on her alleged bitchiness. Last week brought a PhotoShopped full frontal nude of her as hermaphrodite: shapely breasts, slender waist, taut hips and a rather distinctive male sex organ.  

In Search of The Inner Jew:  Romney and Mormons, Barack and Hillary too, need to discover their inner Jew; learn to laugh at themselves, their cultures and peculiarities, and the bigots who attack them.  

Mo Udall, the last Mormon to make a serious run (1976) for the White House discovered his "Inner Jew" early on: "I'm a one-eyed  Mormon Democrat from conservative Arizona.  You can't get a higher handicap than that." No surprise, Mormonism was not the issue for him that it has been for Mitt Romney.  

Like Obama, Udall wrote most of his own material.  He didn't need a marketing guru  to package him like a newly concocted premium Vodka -- good straight up or with any mixer -- and a proctor to keep him on message.

Misty-eyed Senator Clinton learned in New Hampshire that letting the "real you" shine through makes all the difference, even if your enemies make you out to be a hermaphrodite.