"Election Day 2012 will not be a presidential election. It will be a plebiscite. 

"Americans will not only be voting for a president (and a House and a third of the Senate). They will be participating in a plebiscite on the definition of America. 

"If Americans re-elect the Democrat, Barack Obama, they will have announced that America should be like Western European countries -- governed by left-wing values. Americans will have decided that America's value system -- 'Liberty,' 'In God We Trust,' 'E Pluribus Unum' -- should be replaced. 

"The election in November is therefore a plebiscite on the American Revolution. The usual description of presidential elections -- 'the most important in our lifetime' -- is true this time. In fact, it may be the most important election since the Civil War, and possibly since America's founding."

"If insanity is doing the same thing again and again but expecting a different outcome, then the federal government's strategy for keeping higher education affordable is crazier than Norman Bates. ...

"Directly or indirectly, government loans and grants have led to massive tuition inflation. That has been a boon for colleges and universities, where budgets, payrolls, and amenities have grown amazingly lavish. And it has been a boon for politicians, Republicans and Democrats alike, who are happy to exploit anxiety over tuition to win votes. 
 
"But for students and their families, let alone for taxpayers who don't go to college, it has been a disaster. The more government has done to make higher education affordable, the more unaffordable it has become. Doing more of the same won't yield a different outcome. By now, even Norman Bates would have figured that out."

"Washington Post‘s Rosalind S. Helderman tells her readers that Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law, S.B. 1070, is 'deeply unpopular with Latino voters.'  Really? A very recent Quinnipiac poll found that 49% of Hispanics oppose the law, but 47% approve of it.  If thats 'deeply unpopular' I wouldn’t want to be President Obama."

"In 1972, a young aide named Patrick Buchanan suggested that Richard Nixon frame the presidential campaign as 'square America' vs. 'radical America.' The square won 49 states. 

"Pundits tend to describe Mitt Romney's vanilla disposition as a liability. The Washington Post recently asked, 'Why does Mitt Romney seem so stiff?' But there's a more practical question: How much does it matter? 

"Stiffs can become president, even in this television age. During the 1988 campaign, George H.W. Bush asked reporters, 'What’s wrong with being a boring kind of guy?' The answer came on Election Day. Americans backed the boring guy. ... 

"The GOP presumptive nominee, therefore, need not match Obama’s aplomb -- let alone Reagan’s stage presence. Many presidents could not. He does not need to talk about his iPod playlist or sink three-pointers to win. He may be the underdog. But six in 10 Americans say the nation is on the wrong track. Americans’ distrust of politicians is at historic levels. This public is crying for competence more than compassion."

"A new report finds that the number of Mexican immigrants in the United States has declined for the first time since the Great Depression. As the Supreme Court hears oral arguments today in Eric Holder’s lawsuit against Arizona, it’s worth considering what these findings might mean for immigration policy. ...

"Contrary to those who would declare victory on immigration and push it onto the back burner, the current respite is an opportunity to complete our immigration infrastructure. For example, although E-Verify is now widely used, it’s still not standard for all hiring. Legislation to require it for all hires is held up in Congress, and were it to pass it would face a legal jihad from the ACLU and its fellow-travelers that would last for years. Likewise, we still do not have a proper check-out system for foreign visitors, something that’s especially important because close to half the illegal population (especially non-Mexicans) entered legally and then never left. And, despite the howls from the Left (and from some on the right), any real immigration infrastructure requires systematic and routine cooperation among local, state, and federal governments, so that every illegal immigrant who encounters the authorities is identified and removed."

"Watching the slow-motion collapse of the EU, the American people should learn a vital lesson: You can't spend your way to prosperity, and the lavish promises of the never-ending welfare state can't be kept.  
 
"As in the EU, U.S. voters have a choice between more spending, bigger government and higher debt — the European socialist model — or growth, smaller government and fiscal restraint. 
 
"Let's hope they can tell the difference."

"The phrase 'stunning development' is used far too often in our politics, but here is an item that can be described in no other way: Nancy Pelosi and congressional Democrats, frustrated by the fact that the Bill of Rights interferes with their desire to muzzle their political opponents, have proposed to repeal the First Amendment. 

"That is precisely what the so-called People’s Rights Amendment would do. If this amendment were to be enacted, the cardinal rights protected by the First Amendment — free speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom to petition the government for redress of grievances — would be redefined and reduced to the point of unrecognizability. The amendment would hold that the rights protected by the Constitution are enjoyed only by individuals acting individually; individuals acting in collaboration with others would be stripped of those rights. ...

"One of the great dangers of such efforts to regulate political speech is that it puts incumbents in charge of setting the rules of the game under which their power and their position may be challenged. That is a recipe for abuse and corruption, and for smothering those critics who would draw attention to abuse and corruption."

"While much of the political world obsesses over Twitter fights and Seamus the dog, Barack Obama has set himself up for a high-profile defeat on one of the most important issues of the campaign. 

"The president has put his feet in cement in opposition to the Keystone oil pipeline. But on Capitol Hill, more and more Democrats are joining Republicans to force approval of the pipeline, whether Obama wants it or not. 

"The latest action happened Wednesday, when the House passed a measure to move the pipeline forward. Before the vote, Obama issued a veto threat. The House approved the pipeline anyway -- by a veto-proof majority, 293 to 127. Sixty-nine Democrats abandoned the president to vote with Republicans. That's a lot of defections."

"War is not a ladies auxiliary tea party, and it's all too easy for people comfortable in Los Angeles or New York or the White House to condemn the troops without context. Those troops should be given company level letters of reprimand and moved on.

"... I'm furious, not at the troops who did something dumb, but I'm furious at the moral cowardice of military leaders who never stick up for our troops but protect their own careers. Do I sound angry? As a 22-year-old former Army enlisted man and officer, I'm angry as can be because Gen. Allen needs to get it through his head that a leader is responsible for everything his troops do or fail to do. That's the military code. Don't blame the troops out doing the tough work. Blame the generals whose strategy has failed, the cowardly, cowardly White House just trying to kick the can down the road to November, and blame the establishment media that really loves, loves to trash our soldiers and Marines."

"It has become an article of faith among some policy makers and advocates, including Michelle Obama, that poor urban neighborhoods are food deserts, bereft of fresh fruits and vegetables.

"But two new studies have found something unexpected. Such neighborhoods not only have more fast food restaurants and convenience stores than more affluent ones, but more grocery stores, supermarkets and full-service restaurants, too. And there is no relationship between the type of food being sold in a neighborhood and obesity among its children and adolescents.

"Within a couple of miles of almost any urban neighborhood, 'you can get basically any type of food,' said Roland Sturm of the RAND Corporation, lead author of one of the studies. 'Maybe we should call it a food swamp rather than a desert,' he said."