Pipes and Theories

Maddow Does DW-NOMINATE

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:53:00 +0000

Rachel Maddow dives head-first into political science nerdery.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Excellent.

Some Thoughts on Posthumous Baptism

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 22:45:00 +0000

In real life and on Twitter, I have been having a lot of conversations about the Mormon practice of posthumously baptizing non-Mormons including Jewish Holocaust victims. Some people, like Ari Kohen (a professor of Political Science at the University of Nebraska), are offended by the practice.

I, on the other hand, am not bothered by the practice.

Part of my lack of offense at the practice is my belief that it does not affect the souls of the deceased. I am Jewish, so I don't believe that the baptism of the dead (or of the living that matter) is consequential for people's souls (although the experience of baptism is clearly meaningful for many people's lives). So, if Mormons want to baptize the dead, or members of some other faith want to pray for the souls of the deceased, no one is harmed in any way.

But, this isn't exactly Kohen's problem with the practice. Kohen agrees that posthumous baptism does not matter to the dead. His complaint is that posthumous baptism is disrespectful to the religious beliefs of others.

At bottom, no one thinks that what the Mormons are doing really matters to the dead people who are being baptized. But it does matter to me.

My problem with posthumous baptism is that it’s disrespectful. Assuming that the dead people don’t know that they’re being disrespected, we can nonetheless assert that it’s disrespectful to the group deemed to be in need of posthumous baptism. Indeed, I’d say it is about as clear a statement as we can get of one group’s belief in the inferiority of the beliefs of another group. It amounts to an invalidation of the choices that people make in their lives and a direct paternalistic challenge to their agency: “We know better than they do and, thankfully, we’ll be able to help them out.”

I agree with Kohen's assessment of the attitude of the Mormon Church toward non-Mormons. Mormons, indeed believe that their faith is a unique statement of God's truth. So, while you probably won't see it put like this in any official LDS documents, “We know better than they do and, thankfully, we’ll be able to help them out [after they die]” isn't especially unfair.

I do not share his emotional response, though.

Almost all Western religions claim unique knowledge of God's truth and explicitly reject important tenants of other faiths. Jews deny the divinity of Christ. Catholics reject the doctrine of salvation by faith alone. Protestant reject transubstantiation and the necessity of good works for salvation. People of any given faith, by definition, believe that they have something right that others have wrong.

Mormons are not unique in their belief that Jews and others who have not accepted Jesus as their savior are punished for their sins in the hereafter. Catholics, Lutherans, Baptists, Methodist, and every other denomination and nondenomination of traditional and evangelical Christianity (officially, at least) believe the same thing. Mormons are only unique in their belief that the dead can be saved by posthumous baptism. Most everyone else believes that damnation is permanent.

These beliefs are not in and of themselves disrespectful, though.

Even if I disagree with someone else's beliefs, I can still respect their faith and their right to believe as they wish. As a Jew, I can respect that someone has come to believe that faith in Jesus can save his soul even if I disagree with his belief. A Christian can believe in the necessity of faith in Jesus and respect that I have come to a different conclusion. Jews and Christians can both respect the choice of atheists to reject faith in God altogether. So long as we acknowledge that others have a right to choose their faith and take no action that interferes with the faith and worship of others, disagreement about religion is not synonymous with disrespect.

This still leaves the question of whether the act of baptizing the dead is worse than the belief that a baptism could redeem the souls of dead non-Mormons. This distinction is important to Kohen.

But the posthumous baptism makes my skin crawl so much more than the people who wander the streets carrying their holy books precisely because it’s unseen. I’m on a list somewhere to have my soul saved and there’s nothing I can do about it; there’s no door I can shut, no one to whom I can say, “No thanks, I’m all set.”

One of the real keys to living in a pluralistic society is to accept that others will have different beliefs from one’s own and thus to avoid constantly thrusting one’s beliefs in the faces of those others. You think I’m wrong? That’s just fine. You can think whatever you’d like to think. But when you attempt to do something about it, then it seems to me that you’re crossing a line that liberal pluralists don’t cross.

In shutting the door on the people who wants to talk about their faith with me, I assert my agency; I choose for myself and, even if they think I’m wrong, they have to get off my front porch. The rules of our society force them to leave me alone to believe whatever I want, just as I have always left them alone to do the same. With posthumous baptism, people are actively refusing to tolerate me and others like me. That is what makes it unacceptable.

First, the Mormon practice of baptizing the dead and other Christians' practice of praying for souls that have not been saved are almost always either secret or private. If anything, I am sure that the Mormon Church would just as soon have us all not know this is something they do at all. So, Mormons are hardly thrusting anything in anyone's face.

More broadly, though, there is a question of whether proselytizing the living or dead is disrespectful.

Kohen seems to think that acting on a belief that someone is unaware of your faith's version of the truth is inherently disrespectful.

Again, I disagree.

While I have certainly had people be disrespectful to me because of my faith, I have also had countless completely respectful interactions with people of other faiths (almost universally various kinds of Christians, including Mormons) who initiated conversations with me to share their faith. These people have been close friends and total strangers, and, the rare exception aside, they have approached me and engaged me in conversations about faith out of love for me (or people in general) and concern for my soul.

Raising a question of faith is not in and of itself disrespectful.

Proselytizers can be disrespectful. They can try to continue conversations when people have asked to end them. They can invade people's space and time. They can be dismissive or rude. They can return to someone's home when they have been asked not to, they can yell at passersby from soap boxes. Religious practices and discussions are disrespectful when they fail to respect people's fundamental right to control their time, their space, and their life.

Proselytizers need not be disrespectful. When people's boundaries are respected, conversations about faith and conversion can occur with as much respect and dignity as any other conversation a person might have about their important life choices.

Praying for someone outside their presence or baptizing someone after they have died does not interfere with their time, space, or life in any way. So long as Mormons respect people's right to choose their faith (or lack of faith) in life, their belief in the salvation of the dead does not disturb me.

Are there two political realities?

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:16:00 +0000

Paul Krugman notes and comments on Chris Mooney's essay summarizing some recent research by political scientists showing that Republicans often provide survey responses indicating belief in information that is incorrect or unsound. Furthermore, the research indicates that better-educated Republicans more often express belief in untruths more frequently than less-educated Republican. Krugman quotes Mooney's key passages:

For Republicans, having a college degree didn’t appear to make one any more open to what scientists have to say. On the contrary, better-educated Republicans were more skeptical of modern climate science than their less educated brethren. Only 19 percent of college-educated Republicans agreed that the planet is warming due to human actions, versus 31 percent of non-college-educated Republicans...

But it’s not just global warming where the “smart idiot” effect occurs. It also emerges on nonscientific but factually contested issues, like the claim that President Obama is a Muslim. Belief in this falsehood actually increased more among better-educated Republicans from 2009 to 2010 than it did among less-educated Republicans, according to research by George Washington University political scientist John Sides.

The same effect has also been captured in relation to the myth that the healthcare reform bill empowered government “death panels.” According to research by Dartmouth political scientist Brendan Nyhan, Republicans who thought they knew more about the Obama healthcare plan were “paradoxically more likely to endorse the misperception than those who did not.”

Krugman chalks this up to the triumph of ideology over information in American politics and concludes with a vaguely threatening statement about the limited prospects for rational debate in American politics.

Highly educated political conservatives — and this includes conservative economists — are going to be less persuadable by empirical evidence than the man or woman in the street. The more holes you poke in doctrines like expansionary austerity or supply-side economics, the more committed they will get to those doctrines.

This debate isn’t going to be won by rational argument.

Leaving aside how Krugman thinks he is going to win a debate without rational argument, there is a question about whether surveys are really showing what it looks like they are showing, i.e. that more education and more exposure to information leaves Republicans and conservatives less well informed about the world. As I have argued here before, I don't think this is the case. Instead, I think anonymous telephone or internet survey responses investigating respondents' belief in this or that politically salient fact is going to be strongly contaminated by people's attitudes about the person or policy in question.

So, was the president born in the United States? I suspect that people who dislike the president or disapprove of the the job he is doing in office will be more likely to tell a stranger on the phone that he is not a natural born citizen than someone who supports the president whether or not that person really believes the president was born abroad. Likewise, if I oppose environmental policies like cap-and-trade, I might express my disapproval of that policy to a survey take by expressing disbelief in the facts of man-made global warming whether or not I think human activity influences the climate.

Chris Good wrote about this kind of message-sending survey response last spring for The Atlantic:

We've all said things we don't mean.

If it's not "maybe this was a mistake," or "your sister is the pretty one," it's something else, like, for instance, "I think Barack Obama was born outside the United States and is constitutionally ineligible to be president."
That's one theory we can apply to birtherism -- and it's the theory offered up by respected pollster Gary Langer, who heads up Langer Research Associates and directs polling for ABC News.

A wave of recent surveys have shown that doubts about Obama's birthplace are stunningly prevalent. In a CBS/New York Times poll, 25 percent of all respondents and 45 percent of Republicans said they do not think Obama was born in the United States. A total of 18 percent said they weren't sure. According to Fox News, 24 percent do not think Obama was born in America.

Maybe, just maybe, those poll respondents don't actually think what they say they think, Langer suggests. Maybe they say all this for some other reason -- such as that they just don't like the president.

"I'd suggest that it's dicey at best to evaluate measurements on questions such as the president's birthplace as a 'belief,' as opposed to, for at least some respondents, merely an expression of antipathy," Langer wrote in an email. "We have called this 'expressed belief,' in contrast with 'affirmed belief.' The latter is an assertion of perceived factual reality; the former, message-sending."

In fact, if a person believes that politicians will use evidence of the public's belief in a particular fact as a justification for a policy with which she disagrees, she every incentive to misrepresent her beliefs in a survey. Likewise, if she believe that evidence of an unfounded opposition to a particular policy that she opposes will still scare politicians away from supporting it, she has the same incentive to say she believes something that she does not.

The upshot of this is that directly asking people about their beliefs in surveys will not do a very good job of telling us about the state of knowledge around politically charged facts. By extension, the extent to which Republicans and Democrats really disagree about important facts (and the extent to which that disagreement is greater than in the past) is probably exaggerated by simple survey data and overly-earnest analyses of them. Polarization in the mass public is very real, of course, but by and large it seems to me to be motivated by the mass parties' different responses to the same political reality rather than much serious disagreement about what that reality is.

New Forthcoming Article:

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 15:53:00 +0000

Public Opinion and Conflict in the Separation of Powers: Understanding the Honduran Coup of 2009

Michelle M. Taylor-Robison
Professor, Department of Political Science
Texas A&M University
E339MT@politics.tamu.edu

Joseph Daniel Ura
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science
Texas A&M University
jura@politics.tamu.edu

Abstract: Constitutional systems of separated powers often fail to sustain meaningful systems of checks and balances in presidential democracies. What conditions support balance in the separation of powers, and what conditions provoke instability and conflict? We draw on Madisonian political theory and research addressing the separation of powers in the United States to develop a game theoretical model of inter-institutional stability and conflict within a separation of powers system. Two factors emerge as catalysts for institutional instability and conflict among the branches of government: high stakes institutional rivalry combined with uncertainty about the public‟s relative support for various branches of government. We apply the model to the experience of Honduras in 2008-09 that resulted in the coup ousting President Zelaya which illustrates the difficulty of developing credible checks and balances.

The accepted (but not yet proofed) version of the paper may be viewed here.

The Payroll Tax Deal is a Disaster for the GOP

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 21:13:00 +0000

Off the top of my head:

1. Instead of being able to campaign against the president's fiscal irresponsibility, the Republicans decided to join him in it.

2. It legitimizes the idea of economic stimulus.

3. Tens of billions of dollars in new debt.

4. By increasing the deficit, the deal will inflate demand for government services and benefits, which will undermine the Republican Party's electoral competitiveness and its ability to enact public policies that reduce the size and scope of federal government's domestic policy programs.

Given both parties' utter unwillingness to face up to the country's evident fiscal problems, I can't help but conclude that this pretty well sums up where things stand:

Political Science Valentines

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 17:34:00 +0000

Just in case anyone needed additional evidence of political scientists' eagerness to emulate economists, John Sides has announced the political science Valentine contest over at The Monkey Cage.

My submission:

The status quo is irrelevant. I always prefer to “spend more” time with you.

A Tyranny of Paperwork and Processing Fees

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:01:00 +0000

So, over the last couple days, I have run across two separate stories in major media outlets about the trials and tribulations of two women, each trying to do something completely legal.

The first is the story of Juliet Priess, who spent two years and "hundreds of thousands of dollars" to open an ice cream parlor in San Francisco.

Ms. Pries said it took two years to open the restaurant, due largely to the city’s morass of permits, procedures and approvals required to start a small business. While waiting for permission to operate, she still had to pay rent and other costs, going deeper into debt each passing month without knowing for sure if she would ever be allowed to open.

“It’s just a huge risk,” she said, noting that the financing came from family and friends, not a bank. “At several points you wonder if you should just walk away and take the loss.”

Ms. Pries said she had to endure months of runaround and pay a lawyer to determine whether her location (a former grocery, vacant for years) was eligible to become a restaurant. There were permit fees of $20,000; a demand that she create a detailed map of all existing area businesses (the city didn’t have one); and an $11,000 charge just to turn on the water.

The second is the story of Emily Miller's effort to legally acquire a handgun in the District of Columbia. I should say "stories," in this case, since Miller has documented her travails in a blog for the Washington Times since last October.

Law-abiding citizens have to take a five-hour class that is only taught outside of the District, pay $465 in fees, sign six forms, pass a written test on gun laws, get fingerprinted, be subject to a police ballistics test and take days off work.

And that's just to get the gun. Miller notes that the District of Columbia prohibits her from possessing her gun anywhere other than her home (or in a locked box in transit to the firearms registration office) and places further onerous restrictions on the sale of ammunition.

In each of these instances, the subject wants to do something perfectly legal. (In Emily Miller's case, she merely wants to act on constitutional right that was explicitly confirmed by a recent Supreme Court decision.) Yet, each woman is subjected to extensive costs, hassles, and bureaucratic inefficiencies. Each woman was successful in doing something perfectly legal only because she had the time, intelligence, and resources to overcome these barriers.

(Just in case reality is too abstract for you, you might recall Cutty's tortured efforts to open a boxing gym for troubled youth on The Wire.)

These stories leave me deeply angry.

First, these kind of permitting regimes invert the basic relationship between citizens in a free republic and their government. In a free society, we typically presume that a person is acting in compliance with the law---that he is innocent---unless there is an affirmative demonstration that he is not---until he is proven guilty. Requirements to demonstrate your compliance with the law flip that equation. Absent an ability affirmatively demonstrate one's lawfulness, a person is presumed to be in violation of the law; a person is guilty until he proves his innocence.

Second, obtuse bureaucracies discriminate against the working, the simple, and the poor. A woman who cannot take time off of work, afford a $465 processing fee, or understand the paperwork and procedure for becoming a licensed gun owner in the District of Columbia is less free to defend herself, her home, and her family than a educated, salaried, middle-class newspaper editor. A person without "family and friends" capable of helping finance $31,000 in fees for permits and starting water service is less free that someone who can call on these kind of resources. For all the recent chatter in the world about inequality, there has been embarrassingly little attention paid to the ways in which the government creates and exacerbates differences between classes of people by erecting barriers to personal safety, innovation, and economic opportunity that exclude those who stand to gain the most from self-protection, invention, and entrepreneurship.

Mostly, though, stories like these just make me think about the countless, invisible ways that we are all worse off because of this kind of crap. How many ice cream shops (restaurants, gyms, factories, mines, farms, bakeries, charities) will we never be because someone's entrepreneurial impulse was smothered by the tyranny of paperwork and processing fees? How many people might have started businesses, gotten better jobs, or otherwise lived a better life if the costs of starting a business were just limited to the costs of starting a business? How many people will be terrorized or victimized in their homes because they where overwhelmed by the government-imposed costs and hassles of purchasing the means to defend themselves?

Tyranny can come in a lot of forms. It is easy to recognize when it's wearing jackboots and carrying a gun. It's a bit harder to spot, though, when it comes carrying a clipboard and manilla folders, but the difference between the two is a matter of degree and not of kind. The rights to act in any manner consistent with the law and the rights of others, to be presumed innocent, and to be treated equally by the law are fundamental elements of a free society. We are losing them, and we are worse off for it.

Majorities Do Not Suck

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 20:27:00 +0000

In a post at Kids Prefer Cheese, Mike Munger gets down on majoritarianism in general and as it applies to Proposition 8 in California. He writes:

Majorities suck. There is no reason to let majorities define morality for the rest of us. Even if I get Kos-trated, I'll still say it.

That's why we have the Bill of Rights. That's why we have the 14th Amendment, to ensure that the state governments, like the Feds, cannot use the tyranny of the majority to abuse individual rights. A key part of the 14th Amendment says: "no state shall ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

That should have been the basis of the court decision blocking Prop 8 in California. Equal protection. The majority wanted Prop 8. The majority can go jump in the lake.

...Majorities suck. Why would anyone expect to find rectitude in the multitude?

And if we don't trust majorities to choose morality / religion / restrictions on speech for the rest of us, why would anyone trust voters to pick the right candidate? After taking these abuses, I'm warming to the Electoral College....

The US is not a democracy. We don't trust majorities, because of stupid stuff like slavery and the Alien and Sedition Act, and the Patriot Act, and Prop 8. There is nothing special about the majority will, it's just what most people happen to believe.

Munger's post expresses a pretty common libertarian suspicion of popular majorities. But, both that generic coutermajoritarian streak and its application to the case of Proposition 8 are misguided in some ways.

To start with the specific case of marriage equality, you have to take an awfully narrow view of what constitutes a majority to invoke a decision by the most popular branch of the federal government to invalidate a state law under the terms of an amendment to the federal constitution (which was created by a supermajority) to enforce a policy position which has majority support in the country as a whole.

More generally, all of the institutionalized protections of personal freedom and individual equality we have---including the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the 14th Amendment---were created by majorities and continue to enjoy majority support. Likewise, the institutions most directly charged with enforcing the boundaries of personal liberty and equality against encroachment enjoy extensive public support and, indeed, must enjoy majority support to persist.

So, when a transient majority makes a law contrary to the wishes of a persistent majority in favor of the principle of free speech, for example, and that law is invalidated by a court, it is, at best, an oversimplification to say that the majority has done something that "sucks." Yes, one majority made a sucky law, but another majority (and perhaps a majority with a great deal of overlap with the law-making majority) created and sustained the institutions that prevented the law from taking effect and supports the principle used to overturn the law. The good majority and the bad majority are both majorities, and the law infringing on free speech and the court decision overturning it are both, likewise, majoritarian.

When Munger writes, "The US is not a democracy. We don't trust majorities..." the "We" in the sentence is a majority. He is correct that we don't trust ourselves to act always in a manner consistent with our principles, so we precommit to making (or not making) some kinds of decisions. Ignoring the initial, principled majoritarian commitment and focussing only on the later, unprincipled majoritarian failing sells majorities short.

Likewise, jumping ship on majoritarian institutions just because they don't always work may be a cure worse than the disease. Munger writes "We don't trust majorities, because of stupid stuff like slavery and the Alien and Sedition Act, and the Patriot Act, and Prop 8." These are actually some pretty good examples of the perils of countermajoritarianism.

The importation of slaves was constitutionally protected until 1808 despite the existence of a national majority against the practice (that acted to ban further importation as soon as the relevant constitutional provision expired). Slavery in the South was protected politically by the Constitution's guarantee of equal state suffrage in the Senate and extended into the federal territories by a decision of the Supreme Court overturning a statute excluding slavery from them.
The Alien and Sedition Acts were the effort of a party in government to stem the tide of their own electoral demise. The Federalists did not enjoy the support of a majority of the electorate and the legislation was a naked attempt to limit the ability of the Democratic-Republicans to press their majoritarian advantage in national elections.
The Patriot Act was most prominently supported by a president who was first elected by a majority of the Electoral College despite his failure to secure a plurality of the national popular vote.

Munger is right, of course, that "There is nothing special about the majority will, it's just what most people happen to believe." There is, of course, nothing special about anyone or any other group's will, either. It's just what whoever happens to believe.

There is danger, of course, in democracy, but it is the same danger inherent in all government---that power will be abused to interfere with the essential rights of the people. By and large, though, the record of history indicates that democratic systems do a much better job of protecting those rights and liberties than other institutional arrangements. And, for nearly every instance I can think of a transient majority trampling the rights of a minority in this country, I can think of a case in which majorities have enhanced or extended the rights of minorities or a case in which countermajoritian institutions have enabled minorities to undermine the rights of majorities.

Majorities do not inherently suck, and a reflexive belief in their suckiness is probably just as wrong as a reflexive faith in their wisdom.

"Texas A&M researchers reject 'starving the beast' theory"

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 16:39:00 +0000

My paper on the behavioral consequences of budget deficits (coauthored with A&M grad student Erica Socker, who is currently working at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities) got a nice little write-up in The Eagle, which is the local newspaper here in College Station. Here's a highlight:

But despite major tax cuts under the presidencies of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, the U.S. is now $15 trillion in debt and political intransigence is preventing even the first steps toward addressing what both parties agree demands urgency.

A pair of Texas A&M researchers now have a theory about the behavioral mechanism that has led the U.S. into its current hole. And the researchers say starving-the-beast policies have not only been unhelpful, but hurtful.

The researchers -- Joseph Daniel Ura, an assistant political science professor, and a doctoral student, Erica Socker -- say the theory seems to make intuitive sense: Cutting taxes naturally has to lead to reduced spending.

But it hasn't worked that way because of deficit spending and the "fiscal illusion" that it creates. This spending, like putting a purchase on a credit card, obscures the true price of government services, making them seem cheaper and, perversely, increases demand for even more government spending, the researchers say.

"The paper doesn't have a dog in the fight about what the right level of government spending is," said Ura, who specializes in mass political behavior. "It just says we will do a better job of making an intelligent choice about what level we want when there's a more clear connection between revenues and outlays."

Reports indicate that my mom and dad are very impressed.

The Gingrich Paradox: "Searching" as Minority Leader and as a Presidential Candidate

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:23:00 +0000

Newt Gingrich is trapped in a political paradox that simultaneously animates and undermines his search for the presidency.

Gingrich's political standing is built on his assault on the Democratic House majority that culminated in 1994. Backed by The Contract with America, Republicans achieved a majority in the House for the first time since the Eisenhower administration. It was a tremendous achievement, due, in no small part, to Gingrich's decades-long efforts to identify a set of policy proposals that could win a national electoral victory over the incumbent Democratic majority.

Gingrich is a perfect leader for a minority party, especially a minority party with dim prospects for near-term success. He has an apparently boundless capacity for generating endless streams of policy proposals and a knack for shuffling and reshuffling them into clever-sounding packages (the conservative opportunity society, Contract with America, winning the future). He is, in essence, some kind of human search algorithm programed to find a policy platform that can defeat the incumbent party's status quo in a complex policy space.

This is obvious a valuable skill for the leader of a legislative party in the "wilderness." Each iteration of a Gingrich "search" for the winning platform is, in some respects, costless. The party is in the minority in a majoritarian institution, so marginal changes in the size of its minority are not especially important. As a minority leader, Gingrich can experiment over and over again until he finds the right platform, which can then be presented by locally attractive candidates in each district rather than by the prickly Gingrich himself.

The situation is obviously very different for a presidential candidate entering a race that is likely to be incredibly competitive. Republicans don't need a Gingrich search to be competitive in 2012. Sure, Gingrich's propensity for trying out new ideas might yield an alternative that defeats Obama, but it might also lead to a runaway Obama victory in a race that should have been tight. Alternatively, a candidate more committed to a set of standard conservative policy prescriptions starts off and ends in a statistical tie with Obama. The choice for GOP voters then becomes a choice between a close, winnable contest, and a long-shot lottery that hinges on Gingrich's propensity to identify a winning alternative. If a Gingrich search is less that 50% reliable (give or take), it's a bad bet in this electoral climate.

Gingrich's problem then is his fundamental riskiness. Many GOP primary voters sense Gingrich's volatility and shy away from investing in him when predictable short-run returns are much more important than the chance of a big, one-shot payoff somewhere down the road. In the end, the same thing that makes Gingrich competitive in the Republican primary---his achievement in leading the Republican Party to a House majority in 1994---was motivated by precisely the same personal qualities that work against him as a presidential candidate.

Google Insights Forecast: Romney Takes Florida with 45% of the Vote (Gingrich 2nd with 24%)

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:06:00 +0000

Using Google Insights search index data to track expressed interest in the GOP presidential field in Florida shows Mitt Romney emerging as the solid leader in web search volume among the remaining Republican presidential candidates. As of January 28, Romney was attracting 38% of the daily web search volume in Florida dedicated to the Republican primary field. The candidates' relative web standing since December 1, 2011 is illustrated below.

Extrapolating linear trends in the last seven days of available data forward three days through tomorrow's primary yields these final Google Insights predictions:

Romney: 45%
Gingrich: 24%
Santorum: 19%
Paul: 12%

For comparison's sake, Nate Silver's final 538 poll-based forecast is:

Romney: 45%
Gingrich: 29%
Santorum: 13%
Paul: 11%

Obviously, both predictions indicate a Romney victory of approximately the same magnitude. However, the web search data indicate a somewhat greater decline in support for Gingrich (benefiting Santorum) than the poll data. More importantly (for me), though, the web-search data continue to produce election forecasts that are roughly comparable to polling data, indicating that, in the absence of traditional survey data, web search volumes may be an appropriate proxy for support or other kinds of affective attachment to candidates and other kinds of political objects (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).

The Moneyball Metaphor in Higher Education Administration

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 19:05:00 +0000

In a post on National Review's Phi Beta Cons Blog, George Leef writes:

Cal State trustees...think that they must increase pay levels for CSU presidents so they will “attract top talent.” Read about it here.

I recently saw the movie Moneyball, in which the general manager of the Oakland Athletics (Billy Bean, played by Brad Pitt) defies the conventional wisdom that you can’t field a competitive team without spending a fortune. In view of California’s terrible financial condition, shouldn’t they at least try to find people who can capably lead universities and are willing to do so at the substantial compensation that’s already offered?

Leaving aside the issue of compensation for the California State University System's campus presidents for the moment, Leef's is merely the latest in a long string of blog posts, articles, and essays I've run into over the last few months that attempt to make a metaphor out of Moneyball for whatever the hell the person wants to spend less money on.

Look, the "conventional wisdom that you can’t field a competitive team without spending a fortune" does not really exist; it is a straw man. The lesson of Moneyball is not that cheap baseball players are just as good as expensive baseball players; that's silly.

The lesson of Moneyball is more complicated if ever so slightly less sexy. Moneyball points out that useful skills and attributes are sometimes undervalued in the marketplace, and that, when such inefficiencies exist, they can be exploited by those who are aware of the inefficiency. The Moneyball As know that OBP is much more important than either BA or SLG for actually winning baseball games even though the marketplace values the latter two indicators of players' performance more than the first. So, the As can use their limited resources to hire a roster of players with high OBP that are, as a group (in expectation), better at winning baseball games on a dollar-for-dollar basis than a team that spends more money to max out BA or SLG. (Of course, as soon as word gets out about OBP, big money teams will just buy up the high OBP players and drive poor little Oakland out of the market it discovered.)

Is there Moneyball potential in higher education administration? Maybe. It depends on whether the marketplace for university presidents, provosts, and deans systematically undervalues qualities related to performance or overvalues qualities that are unrelated to performance. For example, if universityies value hiring alumni of elite institutions as administrators but administrators' undergraduate education is unimportant for their performance, then any given university could get better value for their money by hiring administrators who went to less prestigious colleges since they, on average, command lower market wages than their tweed-clad peers while performing just as well at deaning or provosting.

The trick, of course, is the ability to identify useful metrics of university administrators' performance and to have good models of of those indicators of success. Once those are in place, potential employers can more accurately assess the prospects for any given job candidate's success and can make more objective and efficient hiring and salary decisions. A particular decision to raise or lower funds available for a particular set of university presidents, though, gives us little information about how that money will be spent and whether Moneyball principles would be applied in hiring decisions.

Gingrich Deflating in FL?

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 21:39:00 +0000

CNN's latest poll of likely Florida GOP primary voters shows some softness in Newt Gingrich's post SOuth Carolina surge. Overall, the poll indicates that Romney narrowly (and within the poll's margin of error) leads Gingrich, 38% to 36%. However, the poll's cross-tabs show Romney (32%) losing to Gingrich (38%) among those polled on Sunday (January 22), the day after Gingrich's South Carolina victory. That give Gingrich about 54% of the two-candidate, Romney-Gingrich support. Among those surveyed on Monday or Tuesday (January 23, 24), Romney wins 38% to 29%. That gives Romney about 57% of the Romney-Gingrich poll share.

The Google Inisghts search data I have been hawking (see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here), which is only available through Monday (January 23), shows the start of a similar Gingrich decline. The time series of the relative web search volumes attracted by Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich in Florida over the last two week are shown below.

If the CNN poll's dailies are, in fact, indicative of a downward Gingrich spiral in Florida, then I would expect to see continued relative decline in the public's interest in Gingrich expressed in web searches.

Surge in Web Searches for Gingrich in Florida

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 18:06:00 +0000

At 538, Nate Silver summarizes Newt Gingrich's surge in the polls leading up to next week's Florida primary, He also offers an updated forecast of the Florida primary based on those polls, showing Gingrich winning that state with 41.1% of the vote against 33.4% to Mitt Romney with Rick Santorum (11.3%) and Ron Paul (10.7%) splitting the remainder. This gives Gingrich about 55% of the two-candidate, Romney-Gingrich vote.

As part of my continuing efforts to figure out whether and how reliably web search volumes are indicative of positive affective attachment to a political figure or object (see here, here, here, here, here, and here), I am tracking the competition between Romney and Gingrich in Florida expressed through web search volumes associated with each candidate measured by Google Insights index scores (see here for a bit about how I use the Google data to evaluate candidates' relative standing).

Through Sunday, January 22, the day after the South Carolina primary, Gingrich has amassed a huge lead over Romney as an object of Florida-based web searches. The following figure illustrates the two candidate's share of their combined standing in Florida web searches from December 1, 2011 through January 22, 2012.

As late as January 16, Romney was attracting more than 80% of the two-candidate web-search volume leaving Gingrich with less than a fifth of the candidate's combined web searches. In the run up to and aftermath of Gingrich's win in the South Carolina, those figures have almost completely reversed. Gingrich now attracts almost three quarters of the two-candidate web search volume with Romney drawing only 26%.

Of course, these data end this past Sunday, so they capture the peak of Gingrich's South Carolina victory bounce without any subsequent natural decay or decline due to his sub-par debate performance or the sharpened criticisms leveled against him by his opponents. Still, these data reinforce the polling data that indicate that Romney's once-strong lead in Florida has utterly vanished and that Gingrich is now the Florida front-runner.

For me, the interesting question moving forward is whether subsequent polling and web search data show Gingrich continuing to surge upward in the polls towards the levels of relative support suggested by the web search data or whether his web-search standing declines to levels nearer his standing in the polls. Time will tell.

Google Knew About Gingrich SC Blowout: Forecasting and Assessing Public Opinion with Google Search Data

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 03:01:00 +0000

Right now, CBS News reports that roughly three quarters of South Carolina's precincts have reported results and that that Newt Gingrich has won about 41% of the reported vote compared to 27% for Mitt Romney. Gingrich is winning 60% of the two-candidate, Romney-Gingrich vote (or about 1.5 votes for every vote won by Romney). Though several recent polls had shown Gingrich pulling ahead of Romney during the last few days, none had indicated the extent to which he had displaced Romney as the South Carolina front runner.

The most pro-Gingrich poll reported by RealClearPolitics in the last week before the election was conducted by Public Policy Polling from January 18-20. It showed Gingrich up by 9% over Romney (37% to 28%), winning about 57% of the two candidate vote. (PPP's one night returns for January 20 showed with 40% to Romney's 26%, or 61% of the two-candidate vote.) Other polls showed Gingrich up by 2% to 6%.

Conventional polling was able to capture the Gingrich surge if it continued right up until the last minute, but most polling organizations had stopped rolling samples by January 18. As it turns out, though, Google Insights search index data also captured the Gingrich surge. As I have blogged about elsewhere, I have strong suspicions that web search volumes are indicative of affective attachment to political objects (see here, here, here, here, and here.) Yesterday, I posted a forecast for the South Carolina based on Google Insights search index data through January 18 predicting Gingrich winning 55% of the Romney-Gingrich vote.

Google Insights data through yesterday, January 20, are now available. These show Gingrich's continued extension of his lead over Romney in the intervening two days' worth of data. Using the two candidate search volume data I described in yesterday's post, the relative Google Insights's standing of Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney over the preceding eight days (from January 13-January 20) is illustrated below.

The final day's results show Gingrich attracting 64% of the two-candidate web-search volume. Taking that as a forecast for today's primary yields a prediction that outperforms most individual conventional polls, poll averages, or poll-based models. (Also, it is important to remember that I am using the most crude, publicly available web-search data imagineable. If someone working with raw web-use data were so inclined, they could generate web-search volumes from users who fit profiles of likely voters, weight data from different types of users, or generally do something much more precise and sophisticated that whatever I can pull off through the regular Google Insights interface.)

The most important point, for me, is not that Google search volumes might be useful for forecasting, though that is a fun, potential implication of these efforts. For me, the important point is that web searches are indicative of public affect or political support (or some related concept) and that they, therefore, might be useful for making inferences about the public's support for or attachment to candidates or policies for which conventional survey data is simply not available, which is precisely the argument Sylvia Manzano and I advance in our forthcoming paper on Latino support for the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court.

Justice Stevens on Colbert

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:35:00 +0000

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Enjoy (h/t to @Bonneau_Says).

South Carolina Google Insights Forecast Through January 18

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 20:15:00 +0000

I have previously written about using web search volumes as a proxy for survey data to indicate support for political candidates or proposals as an alternative or adjunct to conventional polling data. My tentative position, that web searches indicate support, and that relative web search volumes can indicate relative levels of support (especially cross-sectionally) indicates potential for using web search volumes to forecast election outcomes. My efforts to use Google Insights index scores to forecast the GOP Iowa Caucuses produced pretty mixed results compared to conventional polling (and poll-based models).

I missed forecasting the New Hampshire primary while I was traveling, but I am back in action for South Caroline. (I also plan to go back and "forecast" New Hampshire over the next few days.) My intuition (and hope) is that search data will do better for forecasting in primaries than in caucuses (and better in open primaries than closed primaries, and better still in general elections than in primaries).

In any event, I have collected Google Insights scores from South Carolina over the past 90 days for Romney (the combined indices of "Mitt Romney" and "Romney") and Gingrich (the combined indices of "Newt Gingrich" and "Gingrich") through January 18 in order to develop a forecast of the relative vote totals of those two candidates, i.e. how well they do compared to one another (as opposed to how well they do among all votes cast for all candidates).

The first figure illustrates the combined index scores for each candidate since December 1.

The second shows the relative proportion of the total Google search volume dedicated to each candidate with the values for January 18 labeled.

As of two days ago, Romney's commanding lead in expressed interest in South Carolina has dwindled substantially. As of the 18th, he lead Gingrich by a margin of only 0.53 to 0.47. His proportion of the two web search volume has shrunk to just over half. It had been as high as 0.75 as late as January 13.

Moreover, if the recent trend in the data through January 18 has continued over the last two days, it is likely that Gingrich's web search prominence has overtaken Romney. Using data for the last seven observed days (January 12-18), a linear model predicts a decline of 0.04 points in Romney's proportion of the two candidate web search volume for each passing day, and an increase of 0.04 points in Gingrich's share. Extrapolating that estimate forward through today gives Gingrich a two percentage point lead in the head-to-head web search race, and extending it through tomorrow would give him a final advantage of 10% over Romney.

Taking that three-day extrapolation of the seven-day model as the Google Insights forecast, then, predicts that Gingrich will win 55.3% of the two candidate vote share in South Carolina with Romney claiming the remaining 44.7%. If Paul and Santorum take a combined 30% of the vote in South Carolina, this indicates total vote shares of 38.5% and 31.5%, respectively, for Gingrich and Romney. If Paul and Santorum take 20%, Gingrich and Romney's predicted vote shares increase to 44.0% and 36.0%.

Update 4:05PM: For whatever it's worth, 538's final South Carolina forecast (based on a statistical model of polling data) is:

Gingrich: 35.6%
Romney: 32.5%
Paul: 15.8%
Santorum: 12.8%

For those of you keeping score, that forecast gives Gingrich 52.3% of the Gingrich-Romney, two candidate vote, which is 3% lower than my Google Insights-based forecast of 55.3%.

Ugly, Cheap, and Tawdry: Newsweek Goes After Santorum's Wife

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 22:25:00 +0000

I am no fan of Rick Santorum, but the various "news" stories circulating about his wife's romantic life before she met, dated, or married him are totally inappropriate. Reasonable people can disagree about how much attention a candidate for public office's personal life should receive. Yet, I see no reasonable public or journalistic purpose served by digging around into the private life---the twenty-three year old private life---of candidates' spouses. In fact, the net result of this kind of junk is that excellent people stay out of presidential politics. Rick Santorum is exactly right in saying:

It's ugly, it's cheap, it's tawdry... It has no relationship to the issues at hand in this race, and we're gonna treat it just like the ridiculous stuff that you see where you treat it for the value it is, which is zero.

So, congratulations, Newsweek, you just made me agree with Rick Santorum.

What did you do in 2011? What will you do in 2012?

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:47:00 +0000

I love this.

2011 from hey_rabbit on Vimeo.

New Conference Paper: The Public Administration of the Supreme Court: The Chief Justice, Management, and Consensus

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 22:57:00 +0000

My coauthor, Carla Flink, and I unveiled our new paper on the role of the Chief Justice on Supreme Court decision-making at last week's meeting of the Southern Political Science Association:

The Public Administration of the Supreme Court: The Chief Justice, Management, and Consensus

Joseph Daniel Ura
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
Texas A&M University

Carla Flink
Doctoral Student
Department of Political Science
Texas A&M University

In this paper, we draw on a prominent model of public management to develop a preliminary theoretical approach to understanding the role of the chief justice in Supreme Court decision-making. In particular, we argue that Court may seek legitimacy through greater unanimity and discuss how the leadership of the chief justice can facilitate that effort. We assess two hypotheses derived from this theory, showing that increased efficiency in the chief justice’s use of his formal powers over his tenure in office and greater agreement among the justices as the incumbent chief justice’s tenure in office increases. We argue that these results provide support for further attention to and development of a public administration-based approach to the study of Supreme Court decision-making.

The manuscript is still very much at the conference paper stage, but it is promising, and I hope we can wrap up a solid, publishable draft by the end of the spring semester. Professional comments on this version are most welcome. You may download the paper here.

100 Tennessee High School Students Suspended For Acting Like High School Students

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 16:41:00 +0000

So, in Hickman County, Tennessee, which is just southwest of Nashville and adjacent to Williamson County, where I grew up, county school administrators decided to "remand" a student to the county's "alternative school" for the remainder of the school year and suspend another 100 students for three days each for filming and participating in a video which had been posted on YouTube in which students are shown saying "bitch ass," apparently in reference to their high school principal. Here is the offending video:

Seriously?

Does this video merit anything stronger than a stern talking to punctuated with a, "Would you want your mom or your grandmother seeing you act this way?" These are children using some, frankly, pretty mild profanity (allegedly) to express frustration with their high school principal. (It's not clear to me that most of the students did anything more than say, "bitch ass," into the camera without any information about how the footage would be used.) Did the high school administrators who decided to suspend these kids not go to high school? Do they not remember suffering under the asinine and petty tyranny of a public high school? Do they not have more important things to do? Might the students who made and participated in this video have a point after all?

Sigh.

Google Insights Iowa Caucus Projections: Update Through January 2

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 22:48:00 +0000

Through my new Italian correspondent, I have learned that Google has updated its Insights search index data through yesterday, January 2 for Iowa. So, it's now possible to update the forecast for tonight's Caucus a bit. I will use the same assumptions that "other candidates in the Iowa race will get about 10% of the Caucus vote between them [which I now realize is probably too low] and that Google Insights scores are directly comparable to levels of electoral support, these data indicate the following vote percentages." I have, however, fiddled a little bit with the search terms used for this forecast compred to the ones I have rolled out earlier. Having now observed that some candidates last names alone, Santorum and Gingrich, return both unambiguous search results (e.g. not Katy Perry mixed in with Rick Perry when searching for "Perry") and higher Google Insights scores than the combination of all candidates first and last names (which I had been using in my previous posts).

The Google Insights scores from January 2 and the resulting forecasts are:

Ron Paul---100 (32.5%)
Rick Santorum---75 (24.4%)
Mitt Romney---49 (15.9%)
Newt Gingrich--- 31 (10.7%)
Rick Perry---22 (7.1%)

Subjectively, I think these data are over-reporting Ron Paul's standing a bit, since his supporters tend to be younger who are (probably) more likely to use the internet and under-reporting Santorum's standing since his supporters tend to be older social conservatives who are (probably) less likely to be online. Also, I am pretty sure I have over-stated the support for all of the included candidates since I have low-balled the estimate for "all others" at 10% total, but I can't include them individually since the public Google Insights tool limits users to seeking out five search terms at a time. Still, the data are consistent with my own baseless sense of how the candidates will line up when the votes are tallied: Paul, Santorum, and Romney taking the top three spots, in that order.

Web Searches and the Iowa Caucus: Update

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:24:00 +0000

Daily Google Insights index scores from Iowa are now available for January 1. They show that Rick Santorum has moved into 2nd place in the web search primary. Google Insights scores for the five leading Republican presidential candidates are:

Ron Paul---70
Rick Santorum---32
Mitt Romney---22
Rick Perry---15
Newt Gingrich---13

Once again, assuming that the other candidates in the Iowa race will get about 10% of the Caucus vote between them and that Google Insights scores are directly comparable to levels of electoral support, these data indicate the following vote percentages (with projections based on last week's Google Insights index scores in parentheses).

Ron Paul---41% (45%)
Rick Santorum---21% (10%)
Mitt Romney---14% (14%)
Rick Perry---9% (10%)
Newt Gingrich---8% (10%)

The figures capture both the strong surge in support for Rick Santorum which has been evident in the polls and the continued collapse of Newt Gingrich.

In contrast, polls show a much closer contest between Romney and Paul for the Iowa win, with Romney holding a slight advantage. ARG's latest poll, which concluded on January 1, indicates:

Mitt Romney leads the Iowa Republican Presidential Caucus with 22%. Following closely, Ron Paul is in second place at 17%, Rick Santorum is in third place at 16%, and Newt Gingrich is in fourth place at 15%.

Likewise, Intrade's current market for election futures indicates that Romney is the most likely winner of the Iowa Caucus. Current prices for the Iowa Caucus future indicates that Romney's probability of winning the Caucus is 51.6% with Ron Paul (27.0%) and Rick Santorum (20.4%) assigned nontrivial prospects of winning. The Intrade market has little faith in either Gingrich (0.5% chance of winning) or Perry (0.2% chance of winning) pulling off a comeback.

Update: I just found this bit from a report on Iowa State University's Poll, released December 22:

A new Iowa State University/Gazette/KCRG poll of 333 likely Iowa Republican caucus goers finds Ron Paul in the top spot among GOP presidential candidates with 27.5 percent, followed closely by Newt Gingrich with 25.3 percent. Paul's lead over Gingrich is within the poll's margin of error at plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Mitt Romney is in third place at 17.5 percent, while Rick Perry is the only other candidate to poll in double digits at 11.2.

While Paul's lead is just over 2 percentage points and easily within the poll's margin of error, it may actually be more solid than it appears.

"What our poll says is that 51 percent of Paul's supporters say they're definitely backing him," said James McCormick, professor and chair of political science at Iowa State and coordinator of the poll. "The percentage for the next two candidates is much weaker, at 16.1 for Mitt Romney and 15.2 for Newt Gingrich. Moreover, the percentage of respondents 'leaning to' or 'still undecided' in their support for these latter two candidates remains high, at 58 percent for Gingrich and 38 percent for Romney. In other words, I'm going to make the case that these numbers are still very soft for those two candidates."

"I think Paul probably under-polls," said Dave Peterson, interim director of the Harkin Institute of Public Policy at Iowa State and associate professor of political science who assisted with the poll. "His supporters are younger and more likely to reply on a cell phone, so he's probably going to perform better than his polling suggests. His supporters also are dedicated and will likely turn out on caucus night and not change their minds."

The Dave Peterson quoted is none other than Aggie PoliSci Legend David A. M. Peterson, by the way.

Political Analysis with Google Search Data: A Roundup

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:09:00 +0000

My friend and coauthor Sylvia Manzano pointed out this story from yesterday's Morning Edition on NPR. NPR's science correspondent, Shankar Vedantam, interviewed UNC sociologist Phil Cohen, who discussed how political web searches correlate with cultural and aesthetic web searches. Here's part of the transcript of the conversation between Morning Edition host Linda Werthheimer and Vedantam:

VEDANTAM: There's a sociologist that I spoke with at the University of North Carolina. His name is Phil Cohen. And what he did is he said can we apply this tool [Google Correlate] to politics. And so he said let me search for prominent, liberal and conservative commentators - people like Rachel Maddow and Stephen Colbert, or Rush Limbaugh.

And what he found, unsurprisingly actually, was that the places where people were doing a lot of searches for the liberal commentators tended to be liberal places. They were places that tended to vote for President Obama in the 2008 election.

WERTHEIMER: California.

VEDANTAM: Exactly. But he also found that the places which searched for the liberal commentators also tended to search for very particular kinds of foods.

WERTHEIMER: Now, that is very strange.

VEDANTAM: So let me play you a little bit of what Phil Cohen told me in terms of what the liberals who are searching for Rachel Maddow are also searching for, in terms of their food.

PHIL COHEN: On the liberal list are arugula pasta, beets nutrition, beets urine, fake meat, fennel salad, firm tofu, a variety of vegetarian cooking, vegetarian recipes. Something like a Republican stereotype of what a liberal food diet might be.

And, from my reader comments, I learned about this Italian blog, Studi e Proiezioni Elettorali (Surveys and Election Forecasts), that's been playing around with using Google Trends and Google Insights data to forecast European elections and trying different ways of weighting the these web search data to correct for some kinds of selection bias inherent in drawing inferences about the electorate from the population of internet searchers.

Some of my own musings about the value of web search data for political analysis here and here.

Santorum's Mo

noreply@blogger.com (Joe Ura) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 19:45:00 +0000

Rick Santorum seems to be the latest GOP candidate to gather spontaneous momentum ahead of the Iowa Caucus. He's running a close third in the latest round of Iowa polling, just behind Ron Paul and Mitt Romney. Considering Santorum's run last May, I wrote:

[Santorum's] thinking is philosophically indistinguishable from that of President Obama and most of the rest of the Democratic Party. It boils down to a belief that people should not be free to choose, that we are too stupid or immoral to decide what's best for ourselves, and that we need government to step in to save us. Democrats and Santorumites may have different priorities about how to use government and what particular choices they want the government to make on our behalf, but there is no principled difference between government commanding us to buy health insurance in order to promote universal health care and government proscribing contraception, abortion, or consensual homosexual sex. Either you are for a limited government exercising a finite set of enumerated powers or not, and it is clear to me on which side Santorum falls.

I've neither seen nor heard anything since to change my mind.