If Perry needed to follow his performance in last nights debate by demonstrating his logical and rhetorical bona fides, his performance at CPAC today in Orlando does not qualify.

Governor Perry asserted that Republicans don’t want the “slickest candidate or the smoothest debater.” Presumably the “slick” pejorative applies to people who are more articulate and more persuasive than, well than Rick Perry. It seems increasingly clear that you don’t have to be slick to get the upper-hand on Rick Perry but that’s really not the point.

During the Bush years Republicans endured an abiding frustration with the President’s oratorical handicap. There were exceptions of course but circumstance often played a role; his declaration that the 911 attackers would soon hear all of us as he stood on a pile of rubble in lower Manhattan for example. No one will remember George W. Bush as a great speaker although we wanted him to be.

Reagan was great for so many reasons and much of what we remember about him was the way he spoke to us and spoke for us. Kennedy, Churchill, Lincoln; would Perry consider then “slick”? They were great in no small part because of their speech. If you were to strip the speaking and debating elements out of Obama’s schedule, what you would have left would be mainly smoke breaks, golf and giving tax-payer dollars to failing companies run by campaign donors.

In modern America where the media have shrugged off the pretense of being anything other than blindly devoted to liberalism, the ability for the conservative standard-bearer to speak clearly and powerfully is that much more critical. We all know it. We are drawn to future leaders like Marco Rubio, who seem blessed with that natural ability to connect and inspire.

This is a mindless, sour shot reminiscent of his formulation that Bush = Yale and Perry = Texas A&M. It’s bad rhetoric but more importantly it’s poor thinking. Republicans want someone who can inspire us, lead us and lead the world. That will require the best orator and the best thinker we can distill. Perry is showing himself to be neither.

Bill Richardson was disappointed and surprised about his treatment at the hands of the totalitarian regime in Cuba who refused to let him take their big bargaining chip home playing the role of conquering hero.

Liberals expect benevolence and virtue from everyone except white, middle class Christians, even recognized state sponsors of terror like the Castros.

Human Rights groups report significant recent increases in detentions and violence against dissidents. The Castros have a 50 year track record of murderous, repressive rule that has impoverished 11 million people.

Cuba’s refusal to release Alan Goss was described as a stunning reversal. Really? Stunning? Stunning like North Korea’s proficient and longstanding abuse of American diplomats, Iraq’s contravention of eleventeen dozen United Nations resolutions, Pakistan’s decisions to share classified US military equipment with the Chinese, Russian military aggression in former Soviet satellites? The list goes on.

It seems that no amount of brutal experience will ever persuade diplomatic savants like Governor Richardson that dictators and terrorists don’t see the world the same way as middle Americans. Cuba is a profound tragedy, not a threat. But this interaction is representative of the kind of thinking that does represent the only potentially fatal threat to America.

A stone’s throw from our own coast, a pair of geriatric thugs are holding an American citizen because the issue is not what we can do, it’s what we are willing to do. That’s something people like Fidel and Raul Castro understand with savage clarity. It’s a truth we need to embrace to protect ourselves from threats external and internal. It’s a truth which could prevent people like Governor Richardson from wandering through life in a perpetual state of bewildered shock.

President Obama addressed the United Nations General Assembly today with the usual kaleidoscope of utopian aspiration and misunderstanding.

For example, the idea that the end of war is social justice for everybody. “The men and women who built this institution understood that peace is more than just the absence of war. A lasting peace — for nations and for individuals — depends on a sense of justice and opportunity, of dignity and freedom. It depends on struggle and sacrifice, on compromise, and on a sense of common humanity.” Ergo his admonition for NASA to bolster the self-esteem of the Muslim world. In fact, the only historical deterrent to war is the threat of overwhelming force. the sure knowledge in the heart of every would be tyrant or sponsor of terror that we will in the words of President Kennedy “pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

The President suggested that the tide of war is receding” and we are poised to end these wars from a position of strength.” In reality, we are drawing down our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, before achieving a stable peace. We are contemplating major cuts to our defense budget so that we can support a bloated and increasingly clumsy entitlement state. In the “war” against a dime-store dictator in Libya, we followed the French and the British.

To pivot away from another awkward foreign policy blunder, the President was however forced to utter this truth that says so much about the irrelevance of the United Nations; “a genuine peace can only be realized between the Israelis and the Palestinians themselves.”

Some bit of demonstrable truth. Sovereign nations are and must be responsible for their fate and the billions of dollars we contribute to the United Nations serve primarily to maintain a class of lazy and ineffectual Marxists who apologize for the most egregious offenders. Israel’s continued existence owes nothing to the United Nations; quite the contrary.

Our continued support for the charade in Turtle Bay is evidence that things are not changing for the better as the President suggests.

It’s hard not to notice that every time the White House gets their shorts in a twist about the timing of a given issue, we, the taxpayers get soaked . . . again.

Stimulus . . . gotta do it right now or we are looking at a quick end to Western civilization and it’s gonna be ugly.

Health Care Bill . . . must be done immediately. No time to read the bill let alone think about it.

Turns out the White House, or “WW” for the initiated, was in a big rush to give Solyndra, a half a billion dollars in federally guaranteed loans before they absolutely had to file bankruptcy.

It’s worth mentioning because the Activist-in-Chief is in a hurry again. This time he’s in a sweat to give away a great deal more of your money and man oh man it’s gotta be done right now!

No doubt the “jobs” bill will turn out to be for the best.

Is there anything more predictable than liberal spin?

Pelosi et al. were indignant at the suggestion Bob Turner’s defeat of David Weprin, in Tuesday’s special election for Anthony Weiner’s vacated Congressional seat had any national meaning whatsoever.

Just thinking back to the last special election in New York, a few short months ago. Yeah, I’m sure the Democrats were equally ambivalent about Kathy Hochul’s win over Jane Crowin; a mere trifle, an insignificant footnote right?

No, in fact Democrats hailed Hochul’s victory as a sign of the apocalypse. A harbinger so rich with meaning that reasonable people would probably just want to dispense with the 2012 election altogether, given that the Obama victory was a foregone conclusion. ABC news defined the election as nothing less than a referendum on the Ryan budget plan.

Pelosi should be doing PR for Dear Leader. I’m just surprised she didn’t suggest Democratic aparatiks in the New York’s 9th had been struck by lightning ala the North Korean ladies world cup soccer team.

Some of the more strident voices on the right are prone to suggest that while the Obamanites are idealogues they aren’t completely ignorant of the damage their economic policies have caused and are destined to cause if continued unchecked. The thinking is that like Rahm Emanuel, the left sees the impending crisis as an opportunity. Crisis could be the catalyst for even greater transfer of power to the government.

Crazy right? Important voices in the European Union are championing the idea that some sacrifice of national sovereignty is the only way for the EU to survive the self-inflicted social and economic cancer that is eating them alive. The way to deal with the decay that has resulted from an overgrowth of government is . . . further consolidation of power under a single government.

The American left has certainly made no secret about their over-weaning admiration for the European way.

Thomas Friedman is fond of talking about how traveling from anywhere in China to anywhere in the United States is like traveling from the Jetsons to the Flintstones. Is this the future Thomas Friedman wants? The Chinese are building entire cities to house future populations that aren’t coming.

This is clearly insane even before you consider that China is experiencing a dramatic slowdown in the rate of their population growth because like much of Europe their birth rate is terminal . . . again as a matter of central planning.

There is good reason to worry about the Chinese but when you see this kind of insanity, you have to wonder about their long-term staying power. It was this kind of thinking that made it impossible for the former Soviet Union to overcome a determined opposition.

Still, that was 3 decades ago and our own staying power has changed. You can see the outlines of this monument to the delusion of central planning in Obama’s half trillion dollar painting project.

At long last the suspense has broken. The White House has laid bare their bold new plan to re-animate our economy, and it is . . . income redistribution; government as the consumer of last resort. That is to say, the last consumer without enough common sense to quit spending money, our money, when all the money is gone.

I don’t begrudge any politician their view of the world. What is unsettling is the apparent need to call it something it’s not in order to make it appealing. The Gibbs-Axelrod-Wasserman axis of evil are wearing themselves out talking about how the Republicans offer no new ideas and for some reason the Republicans reflexively deny this and insist that in fact they are offering “new” ideas as well.

Not True. There are no “new” ideas. There are about two idea ideas and both of them are old.

There is on the one hand the idea that government should take an active role in doing for the people. In order to do, the government which has nothing, must take, from someone who has. The founders understood well the self-corrupting nature of government and they feared the self-sustaining momentum of an indulgent, activist government. The feared a numbed populace growing more impatient and infatuated with bread and circuses and an intellectual class willing to feed them to maintain power. The logic of activist government plays seductively on our fears and our desire for comfort and security of the kind life doesn’t really offer. Ultimately this logic ends with the state having everything and the people having nothing.

On the other hand, there is the idea of a limited government with a short list of enumerated powers. A government responsible to do only those things which in fact the people can not do for themselves such as field a standing army capable of securing our borders. This idea, so appealing to those who had lived under oppression, is more challenging. Limited government leaves apparent loose ends. A natural disparity of results emerges from the infinite range of human desire and capacity. Self-determination sometimes bears fruit that is hard to see. While citizens are free to pursue happiness they are also free to follow a course which inevitably brings unhappiness.

This ideal of limited government has become so hazy among establishment Republicans that people who still believe in these principles now call themselves after a riot that took place in 1773 . . . not new.

This is the real debate. Where is the line? How much should government do to ensure that citizens are not only safe but warm, full, comfortable and entertained. Spending half a trillion dollars on painting schools and building roads . . . not new. Cutting taxes and gutting bloated, oppressive regulation . . . not new.

Our national dialogue will be more productive if all the actors will be less pretentious and we as citizens and consumers of government will demand honesty and clarity.

After all the platitudes and patronizing about the mean-spirited dialogue of the Tea Party, why would the White House pass up an opportunity for some fair balance?

One can only imagine the drooling, apoplectic barking from the likes of Debbie Wasserman Schultz and other liberal pit bulls had Michelle Bachman or Sarah Palin squeezed of a couple of rounds like the ones Jimmy Jr. got off yesterday.

As always, follow the money. Organized labor gives hundreds of millions of dollars to the Democrats and the union organizer in chief is one of the biggest beneficiaries of union largesse.

Here it seems the dependent bureaucrat class has something in common with the producer class. Don’t embarrass the guy who signs your checks. No matter what. It seems you can even make the President look profoundly foolish and still go unchecked for a price.

Of course conservative politicians depend on campaign donors as well and the donations shape their behavior. Conservatives tend to get donations from businesses trying to avoid being ground under the boot of reckless bureaucratic rule makers who rule by fiat though regulations driven by special interests . . . like unions.

The only way to get the money out of politics is to get the government out of business.

In June this year after the US Women’s Soccer team eliminated the North Koreans from the World Cup, we learned the truth about their loss. Apparently several of the players were a little off their game due to the fact that they had been “struck by lightning”.

Silly. But no less so than the revelation that Dear Leader, Kim Jung Il uses an invisible phone, which he developed himself, to give the North Korean coach tactical advice during matches.

You have to wonder whether the Orwellian lies are for his own prisoner population or whether he thinks the free world might be persuaded. After all, the well balanced media admit there is really no way for them to know if any of this is true. You can however be sure that everything Dick Cheney says is not true.

There is something of the same Orwellian dishonesty about the governments lawsuit against 17 financial institutions who sold mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

To begin with there is the question of who the charade is for. All you neighbors knew 5 years ago it didn’t make sense that a guy with no provable income could get a 95% loan on a $500,000 house at historically low-interest rates. Politicians have for years defended the unworkable business model and resulting losses at Fannie and Freddie as a necessary communitarian sacrifice to achieve the goal of wider home-ownership. Not just any home either but more home than we could afford. Because that’s a right.

For just as long, Bankers have decried the erosion in underwriting standards driven by what amounted to distortion of a private market based on government interference.

If the politicians understood the game and the people buying the homes understood the game and the executives at Fannie and Freddie understood the game who is culpable?

Let’s accept the premise that Fannie and Freddie were really just naive and didn’t realize they weren’t getting an adequate risk premium on these securities. The turn on these loans is something far short of the decade or so they were creating this market. Are we to understand that there are no internal controls, no reporting or analysis that revealed any difference between the performance of these loans and conforming loans until the bubble burst and the fiction was laid bare?

No, the truth is that Politicians like Barney Frank and Chris Dodd created a situation where the financial institutions were essentially forced to play along. The banks made lots of money on the deal but that doesn’t make them the bad actors. They acted rationally to maximize the interests of their shareholders in a false market created and maintained against significant opposition over a long period of time. Everyone involved knew exactly how this worked and they knew that if the housing market ever softened, as it always does, the house of cards would collapse.

Our media is mostly still skeptical when they hear Kim Jong Il type stories about how Al gore invented the internet or Barrack Obama scheduled his address to Congress on evening of the Republican debate by pure coincidence but the lie has to be frivolous. As long as the lie supports the social justice agenda to which they are sympathetic their child like naiveté persists. The housing crisis is what the noble, soaring rhetoric of social justice looks like in practice.

Liberals object to the idea that regulatory uncertainty stymies business. This lawsuit makes it seem that ex post facto, the government can do whatever they want. The Dodd Frank Financial legislation goes a long way towards cementing that kind of uncertainty into law.

The media may like the idea of the big banks becoming the targets of a capricious legal assault. If they quit gazing at themselves in the mirror long enough to look around they would see examples of where that kind of caprice leads. Just ask Oleg Kashin.