John Podhoretz [e.a.]:

If the exit polls hold up and Mitt Romney wins, that will mean three different Republicans have won the first genuinely contested state contests — Huckabee in Iowa, McCain in New Hampshire, Romney in Michigan. It is possible Fred Thompson will win South Carolina next week. And all these results make it even more plausible that Rudy Giuliani will hold on to win Florida two weeks from now, because there will be no frontrunner and therefore no one will benefit from momentum in the effort to prevail in Florida.

Five contests. Five different winners. All going into Super Tuesday. It sounds like chaos, but maybe it’s the best thing for the GOP, because the party is going to have to generate some kind of news excitement if its candidate is to have a chance in November.

Michael Cohen [e.a.]:

If the Mittster wins tonight you will have three contested primaries/caucuses won by three different candidates. With Rudy and Thompson still alive in the South the chances of a consensus frontrunner emerging on February 5th seems slim indeed. Let’s say hypothetically that Rudy win Florida or maybe New York and McCain, Romney and Huckabee split the rest of the states voting on the 5th. With no frontrunner, a brokered convention becomes a real possibility. And can you imagine Romney dropping out for the good of the party or McCain stepping down so his bete noire Plastic Man can get the nomination or the GOP establishment acquiescing to the Huckster?

Woohoo!

And why not? If the country is indeed looking for a change, let’s work through all the issues and put all the candidates through the grinder. Let’s make them work for our votes, damnit! And let’s show the young ‘uns democracy in action.

The Guardian reviews a book about the allure of anonymity for authors through the ages:

Why was it so important to so many authors to remain unnamed? The perplexed compilers of the dictionary guessed that the usual motive was “some kind of timidity, such as (a) diffidence, (b) fear of consequences, and (c) shame”. Yet this does scant justice to the ambitions of some of the authors who used anonymity. Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock” and Byron’s “Don Juan”, both originally anonymous, were hardly works by timid writers. Fielding’s Joseph Andrews and Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, authorless in their first editions, were not published diffidently or fearfully. Indeed, in these cases as in many others, the authors did not really expect to remain hidden. If you follow in any detail the use of anonymity by literary writers - satirists, poets, dramatists and novelists - you will find that only rarely was final concealment the aim. Provoking curiosity and conjecture - highlighting the very question of authorship - was more often the calculated effect.

This is not a challenge to you, dear readers. Furthermore, I am pseudonymous, not anonymous. (And likely to stay that way.)

[update: I fixed the link]

Come November, I will likely vote for the Democrat (as I always have, no matter how much I loathed him and no matter how often Democrats have betrayed liberal ideals—and it was always a him, I note pedantically rather than from the perspective of gender politics, which bores me).

I’ve never been into identity politics, and I’m not emotionally invested in this election. So far, I’m amused by the campaign and I think the rowdy atmosphere surrounding it is good for America (because it calls attention to the political process and gets people involved on some level).

In this upcoming election, my primary concern is that our next president stay focused on external threats to America and Americans and that s/he take the foreign policy baton from Bush without breaking stride. Almost as important, I want a president who is going to look at health care and do something to provide a safety net for the uninsured. This country must also face head-on the conundrum of illegal immigrants. (I come from a “legal” immigrant family myself, was naturalized as an American citizen as a teenager, and I am deeply offended by the nativism animating much of the “conversation” about “illegal aliens”: Lou Dobbs, I’m talking to you. This is not an “identity issue.” It’s an issue of “Who is an American?”.

I also believe that there should be a push to reintroduce civics into the American high school system, as a means of encouraging young people to participate in the representative government they are so lucky to live under (but I won’t get militant about that idea). I don’t think we desperately need a brand-new foreign policy—who even knows what that would look like? and isn’t that what got us into trouble (if that’s what you believe happened) after 9/11 when Bush reached for a response and found an answer, courtesy of his powerful vice president?

Anyhow, chastened by my country’s “over-correction” as a result of 9/11, I’m standing back and assessing this crop of candidates as they present themselves to me over the course of primary season.

Here’s the impression they’ve made on me so far:

Romney: good for business

Obama: full of hot air

Huckabee: slick Mikey

McCain: Old Faithful

Giuliani: father knows best

Clinton: Tracy Flick (see amusing vid here)

Had enough politics yet?

Ready or not, you’re about to get more, courtesy of CNN’s Jon Klein.

The Associated Press’ David Bauder quotes CNN/U.S. President Jon Klein: “There is no question that this political campaign is bewitching viewers,” said Klein. “We’re having so much fun covering it that we wanted to do more of it on the air.”

There is good reason for him to preen, as I mentioned here yesterday. Horse-race coverage is a hit.

Terrorists targeted the U.S. in Lebanon today:

Bomb Targets U.S. Car in Beirut

A bomb evidently meant to destroy an American Embassy car exploded as the vehicle passed by Tuesday, narrowly missing the car but wounding its local Lebanese driver and a fellow passenger and killing at least three civilians traveling in the car behind, according to initial local reports, aid workers at the scene and State Department officials in Washington.

That report comes from the New York Times. The Times itself is making news today. It is expiring:

At post time, The New York Times Company shares are trading at their 52-week low, down 4.82%, or $0.77 at $15.01. Times shares have been having a hard time climbing above the 52-week low since last week’s announcement by Goldman Sachs that the decline of newspapers coincides with a general economic downturn.

Gannett shares were also down at post time 1.62% or $0.56 at $33.36.

| 12:03 PM |

Need any more good news?

It turns out that Pakistan has lost control of the militant groups it once controlled. Wait. Pakistan once controlled militant groups? Now they tell us! Gee, I hope they still have control of those nukes.

Soon, there will be even more Oprah on television.

The channel, which will also be known as OWN, is slated to launch in mid-2009, using cable and satellite distribution now in place for the Discovery Health Channel.

Ms. Winfrey will oversee programming for the channel, although details of program plans aren’t yet decided. The programming will be in Ms. Winfrey’s “own voice,” according to a spokeswoman for Ms. Winfrey, and Ms. Winfrey will be involved on and off camera.

Arianna Huffington reminds Democrats (and the rest of us) that there’s still a war on in Iraq.

Judy Miller is back, and writing for City Journal and the New York Sun.

Britney Spears is utterly lost. It is horrible. Truly.

Pope Benedict is apparently unprepared to face his critics at an Italian university, who object to his views on the Church’s persecution of Galileo in 1663.

Also: the IDF attacked Hamas in Gaza, killing 18 Palestinians, reportedly mostly “militants” and including the son of one of Hamas’s founders. Hamas launched a barrage of rockets into Israel, wounding five. A Hamas sniper shot and killed a worker on an Israeli kibbutz. Welcome to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

George W. Bush’s future son-in-law sounds like a pathetic suck-up. Surprised?

LGF’s Charles Johnson writes the headline of the year  [e.a.]:

Taliban Commits Mass Murder, AP Publishes Their Press Release

I suspect the AP must have rewritten the story since he provided the link, because the version he posted starts like this [e.a.]:

KABUL, Afghanistan - Militants with suicide vests, grenades and AK-47 rifles attacked Kabul’s most popular luxury hotel Monday evening, killing at least two people in a coordinated assault rarely seen in the Afghan capital, witnesses and a Taliban spokesman …told the AP.

The version of the story that’s up at the link starts like this:

KABUL, Afghanistan - Militants stormed Kabul’s most popular luxury hotel Monday, killing at least six people as they hunted down Westerners who cowered in a gym — a coordinated assault that could signal a new era of brazen Taliban attacks.

And the story is told from the p.o.v. of the victims and survivors this time. The “militant” perpetrators’ “spokesman” is still quoted, though.

Kudos to Charles Johnson for going where the MSM won’t go: on the attack against enemy propaganda.