1. The Zogby poll shows erosion in both Giuliani’s and Huck’s support in Florida, and McCain with a narrow lead over Romney. It’s now clearly a two-man race in Florida, and probably both John and Mitt will continue to gain in the closing days. I don’t know who’s going to win. I do know that Romney needs the win more.

The liberal backlash against the Clintons continues to mount. Exhibit 1 this morning is NY Times columnist Bob Herbert:

Bill Clinton, in his over-the-top advocacy of his wife’s candidacy, has at times sounded like a man who’s gone off his medication. And some of the Clinton surrogates have been flat-out reprehensible. . .

Still, it’s legitimate to ask, given the destructive developments of the last few weeks, whether the Clintons are capable of being anything but divisive. It makes one wonder whether they have any understanding or regard for the corrosive long-term effects — on their party and the nation — of pitting people bitterly and unnecessarily against one another. What kind of people are the Clintons?

Okay, so we know Herbert is a slow learner, since most of the rest of us know the answer to that last question.

Exhibit 2 is WaPo columnist Colbert King, who writes today of "that superficially charming, self-absorbed couple Billary, ever so possessed with an outsize sense of entitlement." More:

If they make it there -- a big if -- the only unanswered question is where Bill will choose to hang his hat. Will it be in her old space in the East Wing, or will he set up shop in the West Wing? Smart money is on Billary settling in the Oval Office with "his" and "hers" desks. Who would have thought, eight years ago, that the country might get back Billary, two people reeking of self-pity and spoiling for fights with anyone who has the temerity to stand in their way?

Now, both Herbert and King are columnists who, as the old trope might go, "happen to be black," and so no doubt some Clinton surrogates will dismiss them for merely sticking with racial solidarity. But who is that has fostered this kind of racial solidarity, and sense of "entitlement," in the first place?

“Sen. Clinton, if you are elected president, will you have the power to stop your husband from making public statements that could be harmful to your administration? Could you, for example, prevent him from deriding the arguments of a foreign leader or a prominent Senator as a ‘fairy tale?’”

If a journalist or an opponent asks this question the answer is certain to be something that cannot be parsed to yield a recognizable “Yes” or “No.” We’ve known since 1991 that the first principle of Clintonian metaphysics is the rejection of false dichotomies. It’s a sound principle, as far as it goes – they’re called false dichotomies for a reason. The problem is that in the parallel universe the Clintons inhabit, there are no true dichotomies. It is possible there for Bill to smoke marijuana without smoking marijuana, and Hillary to vote for a bankruptcy bill as a way to register her opposition to it. Poor John Kerry voted for things before he voted against them. The Clintons, however, break through the space-time continuum to be for and against things, to do and not do things, at the same time. No wonder the meaning of the word "is" goes up for grabs.

Hillary can hardly run on the promise that her husband will be the loose cannon of her administration, acting as minister without portfolio and political commentator at large. Ronald Reagan didn’t think the voters or the Constitution could allow former Pres. Ford to become “co-president” in 1980, and the idea doesn’t sound any more promising 28 years later. But if she insists that Bill Clinton will be subdued starting next January in a way he hasn’t been this January, she is either endorsing his over-the-top Obamaphobia, or making the weird claim that she’ll have more control over her presidency than over her presidential campaign.

Inevitably, Hillary wants to have it both ways, to distance herself from Bill’s attacks and avail herself of them. “I’m here, not my husband,” she said in Monday night’s debate. “This campaign is not about our spouses, it’s about us. . . . At the end of the day, voters are going to have to choose among us.” Yet her campaign advisors made clear to Patrick Healy of the New York Times that, “Mr. Clinton is deliberately trying to play bad cop against Mr. Obama,” leading Healy to observe that “the Clintons are all but openly running together as a power couple ready to take office in 2009.”

The tenor of the criticism of Bill Clinton’s role in his wife’s campaign since the Iowa caucuses could lead to the conclusion that the vast right-wing conspiracy has picked up some surprising new members. Joe Klein calls it “desperate,” “unprecedented,” and accuses Clinton of making “a spectacle of himself.” Clinton’s “transition from elder statesman, leader of his party and bipartisan ambassador to ward heeler and hatchet man has been seamless — and seamy,” according to Maureen Dowd. E.J. Dionne laments “Clinton’s Depressing Assault on Obama.” Michael Tomasky says that Clinton has “done himself a tremendous amount of damage” by campaigning “against a fellow Democrat no differently than if Obama had been Newt Gingrich.”

It’s clear that the Clinton campaign is willing to pay the price of diminishing Bill, as long as it diminishes Barack Obama even more. James Carville, of course, is happy to give the Times the pugnacious take-away snarl: “This is not Williams College students electing a commencement speaker. This is a huge deal. Does the president risk going overboard? Sure. But Obama runs a risk of being wussified.”

It’s really good.

1. Thanks to all the CHANGE AGENTS who came out last night at Georgetown to hear my message of hope and love. My apologies to Dr. Pat for being so hard on his furniture, although my lawyer’s story is the table attacked me.

2. The latest studies show a dead heat in FL, and that means Romney has slipped a little. Huck has stopped slipping. Giuliani remains at 18% (which is about as interesting at this point as Francisco Franco is still dead). (That’s just a joke; I’m not calling Rudy or anyone else a fascist.)

3. Nationwide, McCain is not extending his lead, although he still leads. Huck is still a strong second and is apparently not slipping. Romney is third and probably needs some mo’ (in addition to all his money) to show well enough on February 5.

4. I didn’t see the debate last night. But the best comment I read is that it was dull and substantive, and so naturally Romney prevailed.

5. In talking to various experts in DC, I learned that conservative lawyers and other constitutional types really don’t want McCain. They’re pretty sure he’d appoint a Kennedy or Souter type to the Court just to show his integrity and freedom from conservative prejudice. I’m not saying they’re right... And the few who say they’d prefer even Giuliani are clearly suffering from deranged hostility to McCain syndrome.

6. Other inside-the-beltway types are for McCain because they think the deranged attacks on him are deranged. Or at least that’s what they say. Most people actually don’t think Romney can win, and it’s possible John could.

I offer it here.

Update: Well, he’s not a Southern pol, but Duncan Hunter has endorsed Huckabee. Don’t laugh; he has one convention delegate.

And while we’re at it, opinions are all over the place on what Thompson’s departure does to the race. My bet: voters might follow their hearts, but activists and politicians are looking for a winner.

I’ve been visiting taverns lately, and last night I gave a talk to about 50 men, followed by a long conversation. The vast majority are still unenthusiastic about the GOP field. Yet, patterns are starting to take shape, more complete and thoughtful opinions are starting to form. They have seen enough to think the following: 1) Guilliani is finished; he shouldn’t have tried to pull the inside straight. 2) Too bad that Thompson couldn’t make a go of it, but there is something to be said about ambition, and he should have revealed more of it; also, he should not have let his wife get involved in his campaign; he should have acted like the man he appeared to be before his campaign started. 3) Even his initial supporters now admit that Huckabee is too incomplete to be president, although they liked his feisty ability to gab. 4) The more moderate and business oriented conservatives are moving toward Romney; they are now saying that his steady competence is worth something. 5) Those that are most deeply concerned about the terror war like McCain, for the reasons Rich Lowry notes; heroic character will keep us safe, besides, he’ll probably be forced to move right for the general campaign (including having a more conservative running mate) and he will keep his promises. Anyway, they are convinced that after Florida they will have to choose between Romney and McCain.

In response to the comments on this post, I thought it worthwhile to do a little digging. Here’s a site detailing Obama’s record on this issue. From the pro-life point of view, it’s not pretty. He has, for example, voted against a partial-birth abortion ban that provided for an exception regarding the life of the mother because it lacked an exception for the health of the mother, an exception capacious enough to amount to pba on demand. He also voted against the parental notification bill. And his rating from National Right to Life is a big fat zero.

In other words, for all the agonizing in which he engages, his record is that of a garden-variety pro-choicer.

Indeed, consider what he says about his role as the father of two daughters:

“I’m all for education for our young people, encouraging abstinence until marriage, but I also believe that young people do things regardless of what their parents tell them to do and I don’t want my daughters ending up in really difficult situations because I didn’t communicate to them, how to protect themselves if they make a mistake. I think we’ve got to have that kind of comprehensive view that says family planning and education for our young people and so forth – to prevent teen pregnancies, to prevent the kinds of situations that lead to women having to struggle with these difficult decisions and we should be supportive of those efforts."

Note that he starts with abstinence and then moves to birth control (which undermines the abstinence message). But he’s willing to let his daughters "struggle with the issues," in the event they are confronted with "unplanned parenthood."

Note also that the Clinton campaign has attacked him, not in particularly good faith (of course), to which the Obama campaign has responded by emphasizing his ties to Planned Parenthood.

Interestingly, you can’t find much on Obama’s campaign website about abortion--only this. His reluctance to talk about it--despite a record that abortion advocates ought to regard as sterling--provides an interesting contrast with HRC’s forthright embrace of "choice."

This isn’t really news, though when Republicans engage in this sort of behavior there’s typically all sorts of worry about theocracy. Is there no worry in this case because no one thinks the Democrats are serious?

Confession time: I hate thinking about money. I hate thinking about the details of investing and taxes and really, generally, anything that’s got to do with my lifelong enemies: numbers. I don’t think that makes me an unusual person or even a deeply flawed person. Indeed, in most ways, I think that makes me a healthy person. In any event, I’m pretty sure that if nothing else, it makes me a typical person. Still, even healthy and widespread habits (of body or mind) can be overdone. You can exercise yourself to death and you can "not worry" yourself right into poverty and all the evils that come with a state of financial embarrassment.

The last week on Wall Street has had a way of re-focusing the mind on the details of one’s financial future--rather like the proverbial two-by-four across the forehead might have a way of waking a person out of pleasant slumber. But leaving aside the details of this or that investment and bromide filled promises to "stimulate" the economy, the big picture remains that economies and markets cycle, things (particularly housing prices) were puffed up, and all the old rules about having appreciation for the real value of your dollar will always apply--no matter how creative your financing is.

But given this reassertion of the old rules of economy into the forefront of our minds, which presidential candidates are best equipped to help us see the bigger picture in these times? We know what the Dems are going to say and it’s certainly going to be something that enhances their power and our dependence on government. Steve Forbes, on the other hand, thinks Rudy Giuliani is exactly the man with exactly the proposals that will help Americans understand that "self-government, not centralized government, makes America great." His combination of tax cuts and tax reform with strong incentives for middle class savings is, indeed, a breath of fresh air. Much, much more needs to be said to Americans about savings these days. Conservatives have been derelict in neglecting that aspect of conservatism (at least as long as I can remember). Tax rebates may get the economy going for a short hop . . . but all we’re really doing is hoping that people spend more money they may not need to spend. Spending is important to keep the economy moving. But savings and investments are important to keep the economy healthy in bad times and to keep the people self-governing rather than dependent.

In addition to the speech on which I posted, Obama has given two interviews on religion and politics in recent days. In addition to a kind of personal testimony about his life as a man of faith, there are some interesting comments about abortion and about the faith-based initiative.

Here’s Obama on abortion:

Ultimately, women are in the best position to make a decision at the end of the day about these issues. With significant constraints. For example, I think we can legitimately say — the state can legitimately say — that we are prohibiting late-term abortions as long as there’s an exception for the mother’s health. Those provisions that I voted against typically didn’t have those exceptions, which raises profound questions where you might have a mother at great risk. Those are issues that I don’t think the government can unilaterally make a decision about. I think they need to be made in consultation with doctors, they have to be prayed upon, or people have to be consulting their conscience on it. I think we have to keep that decision-making with the person themselves.

On the faith-based initiative, he says he’s solicitous of the freedom of the groups with which the government cooperates to deal with social problems (clearly one of the principal tasks Obama sees for the church, with or without government assistance). In one iterview he says this:

One of the things that I think churches have to be mindful of is that if the federal government starts paying the piper, then they get to call the tune. It can, over the long term, be an encroachment on religious freedom. So, I want to see how moneys have been allocated through that office before I make a firm commitment in terms of sustaining practices that may not have worked as well as they should have.

***

There’s always a danger in those situations that money is being allocating based on politics, as opposed to merit and substance. That doesn’t just compromise government. More importantly, it compromises potentially our religious institutions.

In the other, he distinguishes his position from Bush’s:

I am much more concerned with maintaining the line between church and state. And I believe that, for the most part, we can facilitate the excellent work that’s done by faith-based institutions when it comes to substance abuse treatment or prison ministries…. I think much of this work can be done in a way that doesn’t conflict with church and state. I think George Bush is less concerned about that.

My general criteria is that if a congregation or a church or synagogue or a mosque or a temple wants to provide social services and use government funds, then they should be able to structure it in a way that all people are able to access those services and that we’re not seeing government dollars used to proselytize.

That, by the way, is a view based not just on my concern about the state or the apparatus of the state being captured by a particular religious faith, but it’s also because I want the church protected from the state. And I don’t think that we promote the incredible richness of our religious life and our religious institutions when the government starts getting too deeply entangled in their business. That’s part of the reason why you don’t have as rich a set of religious institutions and faith life in Europe. Part of that has to do with the fact that, traditionally, it was an extension of the state. And so there is less experimentation, less vitality, less responsiveness to the yearnings of people. It became a rigid institution that no longer served people’s needs. Religious freedom in this country, I think, is precisely what makes religion so vital.

Someone should ask him if part of protecting religious freedom means permitting faith-based organizations to take mission (and hence religion) into account when hiring. Indeed, the most explicit consideration regarding religious freedom he offers is the freedom of clients from proselytization. To be sure, he says he doesn’t want fbo’s to be simply extensions of the state, but the only suggestion he makes in that regard is less entanglement. He apparently can’t imagine not attaching strings to money. So religious freedom would seem to require not taking government money. The Bush Administration’s thoughtfulness and creativity in this regard he dismisses as indifference to separation of church and state and/or political favoritism. This doesn’t give me much hope for anything from Obama other than the same old-same old.

Matthew Yglesias may have a sense that his defense of Roe v. Wade – all arguments that it is “legally dodgy . . . ought to be resisted” – is less than dispositive. He decides to outsource this bit of work, directing his readers to Scott Lemieux’s defense of Roe. If you’re going to succeed as a general contractor, though, you need to choose your subcontractors more carefully.

Lemieux, a political scientist at Hunter College, shows himself to be an unembarrassed practitioner of what Sanford Levinson derides as the “happy endings” school of constitutional interpretation: You decide what policy result you want to effect, then grab hold of any and every argument that shows your happy ending is mandated by the Constitution. Lemieux’s policy goal is legalized abortion, and he is not fastidious about resorting to any argument that shows the Constitution requiring it.

His defense of the democratic legitimacy of Roe – the justice and necessity of the Supreme Court removing abortion from the purview of elected legislators so that only life-tenured federal judges would determine policy – is particularly weak. Lemieux relies on Justice Harlan Stone’s suggestion that “prejudice against discrete and insular minorities” might leave their rights unprotected by “political processes” and may, therefore, call for “more searching judicial inquiry.” The democratic legitimacy of Roe, according to Lemieux, is based on the idea that women cannot protect their interests in the legislatures so the courts have to intercede to protect them.

Lemieux takes note of the strongest argument against this claim, which was put forward the late John Hart Ely, but doesn’t really grapple with it. Ely’s politics were pro-choice: “Were I a legislator I would vote for a statute very much like the one the Court ends up drafting,” in Roe. But he considered Roe “a very bad decision,” because “it is bad constitutional law, or rather because it is not constitutional law and gives almost no sense of an obligation to try to be.”

1. There’s a second study out of Florida that shows Romney in the lead and Huckabee fading, with McCain and Giuliani stuck in a battle for second. Huckabee has no money to spend there, and, he’s concluded, no real prospect of winning. In more or less "pulling out," he’ll probably benefit Romney more still. So, too, will the withdrawal of Fred, if only a bit--whatever Fred himself might prefer. McCain may soar if Rudy starts to slide in the days immediately preceding the primary, which seems pretty likely to me.

3. So it’s clearer than ever that Huck was probably defeated--however unluckily-- for good in SC. It’s hard to see how he’ll do that well on Feb. 5 with no money and no mo’. He may still carry Georgia, though.

4. We seem to have to choose between Romney and McCain and agree that the choice is not so bad. The Romney and McCain people are now accusing each other of deranged hostility to the other guy. As someone pointed out, though, someone might have accused the Jefferson guys of deranged hostility to Adams etc. etc.

5. McCain wrote a solid letter to the right-to-life people on the day of their march on how we can all agree that Roe v. Wade needs to be reversed. His clear and forceful statement distinguishes him in a fundamental way from Giuliani.

6. It’s hard to deny, though, that Romney has more credibility on the economic issues and on at least really believing that uncontrolled illegal immigration is real issue.

We’ve already seen the many ways Hillary Clinton can use her gender to her advantage politically--even when she seems to reinforce negative stereotypes and appears to put herself at a disadvantage. The tears of this clown were on call and came out on cue in order to help secure her victory in New Hampshire. Hillary the Strong . . . Hillary the Victim . . . Hillary the Triumphant . . . Hillary the Tried . . . Hillary named after the Everest climber before he climbed Everest . . . Hillary the wife of America’s first black President! Why not? If you want to lie, lie big! And so, according to Dick Morris, she is.

It doesn’t matter that the lie won’t be believed in the wide field of public opinion. In the cynical world of Hillary Clinton, it didn’t matter that her tears weren’t so believed. What matters is the way in which the lie can manipulate the reactions of particular groups of people to her benefit. So Bill Clinton can traipse around South Carolina in black neighborhoods and compare his civil rights record to Obama’s, bare his wounds to that multitude, suffer their scorn, and give his wife a victory in a defeat of their doing by spurring more white pity votes in Florida. It’s audacity incarnate. It’s cynical beyond words. But it’s beautifully and masterfully of a piece with Democrat logic. One can’t argue against that. The victims they purport to elevate have to know their place, after all. There is a hierarchy of victim-hood. The lesser victims (blacks and women) will always be sacrificed on the altar of the higher victim. And with the Clintons--as with all the most successful Democrat politicians--the highest victim is always themselves.