“I’ve spent my entire life watching government spend more money than it takes in. My entire life I’ve believed this to to be unsustainable,” Johnson said during an interview with The Iowa Independent at a coffee shop in Ames. “I think we’re here, I think we’re here right now. I think we’re on the verge of an imminent financial collapse unless we fix government spending.”

Johnson has been traveling the country with Our America Initiative, a 501(c)4 nonprofit political advocacy committee, spreading that message. He’s made stops in Iowa before, and stirred media speculation about a possible presidential run in 2012. Because of his nonprofit status, however, he refuses to give any clues, other than he wants to speak in Iowa to at least influence the debate when caucus time comes.

Fred Thompson had some legal issues during his campaign for crossing the line over his nonprofit status, Johnson said, “and I hope the fact that he was a 501(c)4 isn’t a portend for how successful this might be.”

His first trial run may come this weekend when he speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, and has his name included in the straw poll.

But even if he’s not running for office, at least not yet, he already has a plan for how to trim the deficit, starting with entitlement programs and national defense.

“We’re nation building all over the planet when we have our own nation to build,” Johnson said.

Johnson initially thought the invasion of Afghanistan was totally warranted, with America sending the military to take out Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda. But they’re not there anymore, he said.

“I would get out Iraq and Afghanistan tomorrow believing that the issues we will face getting out of Iraq and Afghanistan tomorrow will be the same issues that we’ll face 25 years from now, if that’s when we finally decide to get out,” Johnson said. “Worst of all, more service men and women will lose their lives.”

Beyond the Middle East, Johnson says he’s confounded on why the U.S. still has troops in Europe.

“I can’t find anyone who thinks that’s warranted,” he said.

Johnson explained the U.S. is spending 52 cents out of the worldwide dollar on military spending, while China is spending 9 cents of that dollar.

“If we reduce our expenditures to where we’re spending 29 cents of the dollar,” Johnson said, “it’d still be triple of what China’s spending.”

If Johnson does run for the 2012 GOP nomination, he would enter the race with similar platform stances as U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) did in 2008.

The libertarian leaning Paul was the only Republican advocating immediate draw downs of military operations in the Middle East and trimming national defense. And Paul finished ahead of higher-profile candidates like Giuliani and Thompson, and he gained more votes than Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney and John McCain in a primary at least once. He also built the grassroots “Ron Paul Revolution,” laying out a lot of policy stances adopted by tea party groups.

Johnson doesn’t buy the theory that less money means the country is less secure.

“I don’t necessarily agree that by cutting money that we can’t in fact be smart and that we can’t in fact retain a really strong national defense,” Johnson said. “But a national defense as opposed to what seems to be a very strong offense.”

Tackling entitlements

The former New Mexico governor also has his eyes on tackling Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Johnson suggested raising the retirement age and raising the income threshold subject to social security tax.

“A reduction perhaps of some benefits, not big here, just a slight reduction if you will,” he said. “And perhaps a means testing for all of that.”

He said Medicaid and Medicare should be “block granted” — giving states a block grant without mandates from the federal government about how to issue it.

Johnson is perhaps best known for his outspoken advocacy for legalizing marijuana and ending the war on drugs. This is atypical for a Republican, ever since Richard Nixon started the war on drugs, and Ronald Reagan ramped up the effort. And although the Iowa Democratic Party has the idea of decriminalizing marijuana in their party platform, few politicians, if any, seek action on the issue.

During the recession, debate began in some states to legalize and tax marijuana to boost government revenues.

“A to Z, I’m opposed to the drug war, A through Z,” Johnson explained. “Taxes would be part of it, yeah, that’s the T. [And we could] redirect the resources to real crime, as opposed to an arguably victimless crime.”

Like Paul and the tea party crowd, Johnson advocates scrapping entire departments to save the federal government money, such as the Department of Education.

It’s clear Johnson believes if he ran he’d have a chance at success. He points to the fact he was elected, then re-elected in New Mexico, where it’s a two-to-one ratio Democrats to Republicans.

“I’m a Republican, I remain a Republican,” he said. “But I’m flattered by statements that would say these are libertarian ideas. Libertarians don’t get elected to office and I got elected to office. And I’m saying this in the context that these ideas resonate with people when they’re actually implemented.”

Johnson said his experience as governor was built around a cost-benefit analysis for everything. It lead him to oppose the death penalty, not only because mistakes are sometimes made, but because with court proceedings for appeals it’s cheaper to lock someone up for life than to put them to death. He also privatized prisons in New Mexico.

He’s spoken to more than 400 groups in 32 states, including four trips to Iowa. Shortly after the interview in Ames, he left to speak with a tea party group in Mason City. He rode RAGRAI in 2010 and said he plans to ride it again this summer.

When asked about the reception he’s gotten, Johnson said it’s been really good, and if it wasn’t he wouldn’t be here right now.

Gov. Gary Johnson (R-N.M.) on deficit reduction: “Let’s start with the big four” by TylerKingkade

The other prominent Republicans considering presidential bids fare far worse against Obama. Former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich trails Obama by a 51-38 percent margin, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney finishes behind the incumbent at 47-41 percent.

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin performs the worst for Republicans against Obama. She only gains 37 percent support from Iowans compared to 53 percent for Obama in a hypothetical match-up. PPP’s poll only looked at these four top tier Republican candidates, excluding other possible nominees such as former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty or Sen. John Thune (S.D.).

November 2012 is a long way off, but Iowa will likely be one of the handful of swing states that could decide the president’s re-election. Governing Magazine analyzed the electoral landscape and rated Iowa, with its six electoral votes, among its 10 toss-up states. Obama carried Iowa in 2008 with 54 percent of the state’s vote. But after the 2010 census, the states carried by John McCain in 2008 gained further electoral votes, so Obama will likely start his re-election bid with less secure electoral college votes, making states like Iowa that he won in 2008 even more important to hold.

But shortly after last November’s midterm election, in which Giffords was one of only two of the targeted Dems reelected, Palin called last year’s campaign a “bullseye” and crowed about taking down 18 of 20, which included blue-dog Democrats Betsy Markey and John Salazar in Colorado.

After Palin’s PAC posted the campaign last March, Giffords, now in critical condition after an assassination attempt Saturday, was critical of Palin’s violent imagery: “We’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list. Crosshairs of a gunsight over our district. When people do that, they’ve got to realize there’s consequences.”

Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnick, a Democrat, pointedly decried the heated political rhetoric in Arizona and the effect it may have on mentally ill people like Giffords’s alleged attacker, 22-year-ol Jared Lee Loughner of Tucson, now in police custody after bystanders captured him after he killed six and wounded 14 outside a Safeway grocery store.

“When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous,” Dupnick said at press conference Saturday. “And unfortunately, Arizona I think has become sort of the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry.”

Tea Party favorites and conservative Republicans ratcheted up the warlike and violent imagery during last year’s campaign, aiming most of their vitriol at President Barack Obama for passing “Obama-care” in an effort to get more Americans covered by adequate health insurance.

Giffords voted for health-care reform and saw one of her Tucson offices vandalized with what police believe may have been a bullet through one of the windows.

Rising Republican star Congresswoman Michele Bachmann was particularly noteworthy in her borderline militant stance against health-care reform, saying on Sean Hannity’s radio show, “We can never forget that the Founders were rebelling against a governmental authority that abused their taxation power. And that was the tyranny. That’s exactly what’s happening right now. And we have to — we have to rise up and say, ‘No more. Not on my watch. No more.’”

At a Republican event in Denver in 2009, Bachmann was much more graphic:

“This cannot pass,” she told a crowd at a gathering sponsored by the conservative think tank Independence Institute. “What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn’t pass.”

Police have yet to ascribe a motive to Loughner’s alleged rampage, but Internet postings and interviews with acquaintances and classmates paint a picture of a deeply disturbed young man with a strong objection to government policies. He had been rejected for military service and thrown out of his community college for erratic behavior.

Steven Law, president of American Crossroads, is quoted by the LA Times as saying:

“We operate like a hedge fund,” said Steven Law, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and president of American Crossroads, a nonprofit group that funds political ads. “We look for opportunities where we can invest and make a difference.”

Ironically, a November NBC News report suggested that donors to American Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, a 501(c)(4) “social welfare” group that does not disclose its donors under tax law, were hedge fund managers:

A substantial portion of Crossroads GPS’ money came from a small circle of extremely wealthy Wall Street hedge fund and private equity moguls, according to GOP fundraising sources who spoke with NBC News on condition of anonymity. These donors have been bitterly opposed to a proposal by congressional Democrats — and endorsed by the Obama administration — to increase the tax rates on compensation that hedge funds pay their partners, the sources said

Crossroads GPS was very successful this past election cycle, winning in 15 of the 20 races it made independent expenditures in.

So just how mavericky is Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), who proudly donned and then curiously shed the mantle of the “original maverick”? Well, not nearly as mavericky as he once was:

So who are the true mavericks? Sides posts these graphs of the top 10 mavericks in the 111th House and Senate. It’s worth noting that seven of the top 10 mavericks in the House, and the seven most mavericky senators, are in the Democratic caucus — although, as Sides points out, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is only on the list because he frequently votes against Democratic legislation for procedural reasons.

“Republicans have made clear for months what needs to be done in order to move this process; there’s been no ambiguity in our position on a strong missile defense, nuclear triad and the need to verify any treaty,” said Don Stewart, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Kentucky Republican.

Sens. John McCain and Jon Kyl, Arizona Republicans, said they are concerned about additional references beyond the opening paragraphs of the treaty on missile defenses.

“While we were initially advised that the only reference to missile defense was in the preamble to the treaty, we now find that there are other references to missile defense, some of which could limit U.S. actions,” they said in a statement.

This is quite a curious set of objections. The “unilateral” Russian references to missile defense don’t appear to be more than the Russians expressing dissatisfaction with missile defense, none of which bind the U.S. from deploying a missile shield. As for verification, for the first time in nuclear-arms treaties with the Russians, New START allows on-site inspections of Russian missile silos and nuclear storage areas — and the main reason for that is if the treaty relied on what’s called telemetry, or information about U.S. missile launches, that would potentially jeopardize missile defense by giving away too much information about the missiles that a missile-defense system relies upon. How’s that for a commitment to missile defense?

And what’s this stuff about the triad? (The “triad” is a shorthand for the three kinds of delivery systems for nuclear weapons: missiles, submarines and bombers.) Not only are all three aspects of the triad preserved in the treaty, the Nuclear Posture Review released this week explicitly preserves it. And, again, it commits the U.S. to deploying a missile defense system. All of this is public information available on the Internet.

The other objection cited in Eli’s piece is about modernization of the nuclear stockpile, something else that the Nuclear Posture Review explicitly pledges, and for which Defense Secretary Gates arranged a $5 billion transfer of funding to the national nuclear laboratories to ensure. To the extent the objection withstands scrutiny, either GOP Senators disbelieve Gates, or they’re trying to resurrect the Reliable Replacement Warhead — a system that experts consider a new nuclear weapon (which the Obama administration doesn’t want to develop) and which Congress killed during the Bush administration.

My understanding is that the Obama administration believes the Senate GOP leadership was always going to make noise about the treaty for political reasons, so the statements here probably don’t come as any surprise. But they do indicate, barometrically, that the leadership considers it more important to give Obama a bloody nose on a crucial aspect of his agenda this year than to cut the U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles by 30 percent. On that central issue, the GOP is pretty silent. Doug Feith, the former Bush administration undersecretary of defense, even tells Eli, “There is no problem with a new START treaty in principle.”

So the objection is political, and that means that when hearings start in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the task of administration officials will be to cut off the GOP’s lines of objection, along with pointing out that nuclear-arms control treaties typically pass with huge margins of Senate support as the administration has been doing, from President Obama on down. But precedent isn’t binding on anyone. The key will be whether the GOP leadership decides to bring pressure on the caucus to vote against the treaty or allows senators to vote their own consciences. With Lugar’s support, Obama needs seven GOP senators and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) Tough road ahead for Brian McKeon.

SEC. 5. DETENTION WITHOUT TRIAL OF UNPRIVILEGED ENEMY BELLIGERENTS.

An individual, including a citizen of the United States, determined to be an unprivileged enemy belligerent under section 3(c)(2) in a manner which satisfies Article 15 5 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners in which the individual has engaged, or which the individual has purposely and materially supported, consistent with the law of war and any authorization for the use of military force provided by Congress pertaining to such hostilities.

My emphasis. Lieberman is constantly described as a moderate. McCain — at least once upon a time — used to buck his party and is now taking a for-it-before-he-was-against-it position on closing Guantanamo. And they favor keeping U.S. citizens detained indefinitely, a position that wouldn’t withstand a second of judicial scrutiny.

These are Graham’s closest allies in the Senate. They would be the very first people he would call to round up their votes for closing Guantanamo if the White House agrees to a deal. And they favor keeping American citizens detained forever!

Mitt Romney at a book signing in Huntington, N.Y., on Wednesday (William Regan- Globe Photos)

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) effectively clinched the 2008 Republican presidential nomination in the 10 days between the South Carolina and Florida primaries. Up against a wall, with polls showing Mitt Romney moving up as Rudy Giuliani faded, McCain unleashed a new attack. Romney, he said, had given up on the Iraq War. Romney, said McCain, had wanted to “surrender and wave a white flag” and “set a date for withdrawal that would have meant disaster.” Thrown off his message, Romney stopped talking about the economy and tried — in vain — to get McCain to back off. Gov. Charlie Crist (R-Fla.) endorsed McCain, the senator won his state’s primary by 5 points, and within two weeks Romney would drop out of the race.

[GOP1] Romney won’t be caught in that position again. That’s at least some of the rationale for “No Apology: The Case for American Greatness,” a book he is launching with a national tour, a round of media sit-downs, and a series of speeches. The title — which Romney credits to an aide after he had spent “at least six months trying” to think of one — is a knock on President Barack Obama for purportedly conducting an “American Apology Tour” in other countries. For roughly 100 pages, Romney lays out a vision for American foreign policy defined against Obama’s “radical reworking of American and Western leadership” — and what Romney characterizes as Obama’s view that “America is in a state of inevitable decline.”

For a politician whose every action points at a 2012 White House bid, it’s a bold move. As unemployment hovers near 10 percent and health care reform trudges through Congress, support for Obama’s approach to foreign policy has been a source of strength. Polling released in January and February found approval of Obama’s handling of terrorism in the 50s, even after a thwarted airplane terror attack on Christmas Day 2009. A Gallup poll released last month found support for Obama on foreign policy at 51 percent, 15 points higher than support for the president’s domestic record. A Franklin & Marshall poll released last week found the same thing, with 57 percent of Americans backing the president’s approach to Afghanistan and a slight majority backing his overall foreign policy. The president and his party are more vulnerable on economic issues, which Romney, a self-made multimillionaire, has a unique ability to speak out on. Instead, he’s opted to challenge Obama on his foreign policy strength.

“It’s a good juxtaposition,” said Saul Anuzis, the former chairman of the Republican Party in Romney’s first home state of Michigan. “Obama has said he kind of wants to create this new world order. It’s been a year since his worldwide tour, and we haven’t seen many successes — potential adversaries are taking advantage of our perceieved weaknesses.”

Romney’s focus takes advantage of several developments in Republican Party politics. Despite Obama’s popularity on national security, one of the surest ways to draw standing ovations in conservative crowds is to call the president out for weakness, apology, “abandoning our allies” or “giving civil rights to terrorists” — points Romney made in his speech to CPAC and makes again in “No Apology.” And as Republicans look toward possible presidential candidates for 2012, the current field lacks any contenders with the built-in national security credibility of McCain. Some Republican strategists and conservative activists say that opens the door for any candidate to win over veterans and national security-minded voters by speaking out first and taking a hammer to Barack Obama.

“There are really no divisions between Republicans on national security,” said Michael Goldfarb, a former McCain campaign strategist who now works with Liz Cheney’s Keep America Safe. “There will be events we can’t predict, so you’ll see the candidates take different positions. I think you saw that in 2008. Everybody’s for keeping Gitmo open, so Romney will say ‘double it.’”

During Romney’s 2008 run, tactics like that couldn’t quite win over the GOP’s national security voters. In exit polling of the Florida primary, for example, 44 percent of Republicans called McCain “most ready to be commander-in-chief.” The 27 percent of primary voters who’d served in the military backed McCain by seven points over Romney; those with no service record backed him by only three points.

But no candidate on the 2012 horizon has a record like McCain’s — or any military record to speak of. Among the dozen candidates seen as most likely to jump into the race, politicians whose names have appeared on straw polls or who have been invited to address GOP dinners, none served in the military.

“If you’re gonna run for president you just have to make clear what your foriegn policy stances are,” said David Keene, chairman of the American Conservative Union, and a Fred Thompson backer in 2008 who eventually switched to Romney. “It may have more to do with views and ability than with whether you were a corporal or private in the military. Perhaps what [Romney] wants to do is check that box on his resume. Everybody has to check that box.”

The way that Romney checks that box in “No Apology” is illustrative, with positions inspired by neoconservative thinkers — Fred Kagan, Charles Krauthammer, Thomas P. Barnett – cited throughout the text. America, argues Romney, is one of four competitors with “distinct strategies for twenty-first-century world leadership,” with the others being China, Russia, and “the jihadists.” Romney sees the first two rivals increasing their military power in a way that might cut America out of their spheres of influence. Were China, for example, to “become capable of declawing America’s military in Asia, they will gain freedom of action to do whatever they choose in the Pacific and Indian Oceans.’” The solution to this is more military spending: Romney calls it “inexplicable and inexcusable” that the 2009 stimulus package “devoted almost no funding” to defense. In other sections of the book, as in his speeches, Romney argues that President Obama is creating mounting crises by not dealing aggressively with critics of American power. “The day is coming,” he writes, “when [Venezuelan President] Chavez announces a ‘peaceful’ nuclear program organized and supported by the mullahs in Iran.”

These, said Republican strategists, are arguments that will build up Romney’s commander-in-chief credentials in the possible 2012 field. Possible candidates like Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R-Minn.) and Rep. Mike Pence (R-Ind.), they said, hadn’t focused on national security to the same extent. Only supporters of Newt Gingrich suggested that their candidate could get a jump on Romney, pointing out to TWI that the former speaker of the House is also a Distinguished Visiting Scholar and Professor at the National Defense University and a co-chair of the UN Task Force, and has held other educational or ceremonial defense positions. But no one argued that Romney was staking an early claim on the GOP’s national security vote.

“By articulating it early,” said Anuzis, “by making a strong case early, he establishes his credentials — even if they are theoretical and political.”

At the same time, liberals who look at the foreign policy polling data are skeptical that Republicans have so many openings on President Obama’s national security record.

“There is a large sub-group of the Republican base for whom this is absolutely a winning argument,” said Heather Hurlburt, a Clinton administration veteran who now leads the National Security Network. “There’s a larger swath of moderates/independents — maybe as much as a third of the electorate — for whom national security is a ‘threshold issue.’ They aren’t — consciously — voting on national security issues. But they can’t really take in a candidate’s pitch on jobs, healthcare, values, whatever, if they haven’t first been convinced that the candidate will keep them safe and shares a baseline understanding of the threats we face. The ’06 and ’08 elections — and Obama’s ratings on national security and foreign policy — show that these people can be quite receptive to international approaches that start with diplomacy, engagement, cooperation and persuasion — as long as they believe that strength will be used when necessary.”

Some conservatives agreed, saying that whether a candidate like Romney can ride this message to success in 2012 — not just primary victories, but the White House — depends on what Obama does. David Frum, the former Bush administration speechwriter who now runs the Frum Forum website, wondered whether Obama was benefiting from a “benefit of the doubt bump.” It would take a while to sort out whether Romney’s play for national security cred was working.

“He’s got a theme and a tone,” said Frum, “but not a message.”

Still from an advertisement by John McCain's re-election campaign (YouTube)

In the wake of Sen. Scott Brown’s (R-Ma.) upset victory in Massachusetts, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee issued a memo to campaign managers suggesting a few ways to prevent their candidates from becoming the next Martha Coakley.

“Create sufficient pressure for your moderate opponents to be forced to weigh in on the positions of your far right opponents,” argued the memo writers. The memo set up a hypothetical scenario in which a front-running candidate would have to respond to someone who questioned whether President Barack Obama was a natural-born citizen of the United States. The so-called “birther” question, they argued, could trip up Republicans just as well as questions about the gold standard or nullification of federal laws.

[GOP1]Republicans and conservatives rolled their eyes at the scheme. “That has got to be the most brilliant campaign strategy since Michael Dukakis and [former Georgia Senator] Max Cleland raised questions about their own patriotism,” joked conservative columnist James Taranto in The Wall Street Journal.

But it wasn’t Democrats who fired off the first attack ad on the “birther” conspiracy theory. On Feb. 24, Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) re-election campaign released a 78-second video accusing his primary challenger, J.D. Hayworth, of indulging the conspiracy theorists. Footage of wild-eyed “birther” attorneys segued into footage of Hayworth mulling over the “questions” surrounding the birth of the 44th president.

The attack from McCain followed several days of under-the-radar, intra-Republican rumor-mongering about Hayworth’s apparent indulgence of the “birthers.” While they haven’t launched such full-on assaults, some Republican strategist have also nudged reporters to pose the “birther” question to California U.S. Senate candidate Chuck DeVore and Kentucky U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul, as well as Rep. Nathan Deal (R-Ga.), a candidate for governor of Georgia. Even Sarah Palin, who gave a wishy-washy answer to a conservative radio host when asked about Obama’s citizenship, has taken some quiet friendly fire from Republicans bracing for her to hit the 2010 campaign trail. More than 18 months after the conspiracy theory debuted, it continues to dog the GOP — with some prodding by strategists and activists in both parties.

Most Republicans argue that the prominence of “birther” conspiracy theories is the fault of the left, and of liberal think tanks and bloggers like Mark Stark who have captured Republicans on video fumbling the question. Outwardly, they say it’s a distraction that won’t matter.

“The fact that national Democrats are focusing on birthers,” said Brian Walsh, a spokesman for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, “instead of the national unemployment rate… is absolutely bearing fruit [for the GOP.] Republican candidates are now ahead in the polls in eight Democrat-held Senate seats along with all five contested open seats. It’s clear Democrats have not learned a thing from their losses in New Jersey, Virginia and Massachusetts.”

Still, the issue succeeded in shaking up the GOP primary in Arizona. The “Identity” video sparked a war of words between Hayworth’s and McCain’s press shops, with the former accusing the latter of desperation. But there’s a reason for the “birther” resurgence: a bill in the Arizona state legislature, co-sponsored by most Republicans, that would demand “documents that prove” that any future presidential candidate “is a natural born citizen.” The existence of that measure lengthened the news cycle for McCain’s attack, with Hayworth saying he’d support a version of that kind of legislation and McCain taking a pass, his spokesman Brian Rogers telling TWI that the senator “generally doesn’t tell the state what to do.” Hayworth’s campaign called that a dodge.

“This law specifically requires documentation for the presidential primary,” said Hayworth’s spokesman Jason Rose in an interview with TWI. “It should apply to anyone seeking any office. When J.D. goes to the polls he has to provide an ID, so why have a different, lesser, standard for this office?”

Despite the local legislative issue, Rose clarified that Hayworth’s position on Obama was that “the questions about the president have been asked and answered.” But the hubbub there could be repeated in five other states where legislation about the eligibility of presidential candidates has been introduced — in every case, by Republicans. Indiana’s Senate bill 82 grapples with the legal standing issue that has vexed “birthers,” granting the right to challenge qualifications to “a registered voter of the jurisdiction conducting the election.”

New Hampshire’s House bill 1245 mandates that “the names of the candidates shall not appear on the ballot unless the secretary of state has received certified copies of the birth certificates of the candidates.” And in South Carolina, freshman state Rep. Tommy Stringer has introduced legislation that would amend the state’s election code to make sure that “a candidate for President or Vice President of the United States may not have his name printed on a ballot in this State unless there is conclusive evidence that he is a natural born citizen of the United States.” In an interview with TWI, Stringer said the Certificate of Live Birth made available by Barack Obama’s campaign in 2008 “satisfies” him, unless “someone comes up and proves he was born in Kenya or someplace.” The rationale, he said, was not shaming Obama, but demanding transparency.

“As far general opinion goes, Americans don’t trust the government at either the federal or state level,” Stringer said. “Whatever we do to enforce trust and accountability — something like proving citizenship for office — that’s a minimal thing that could establish some trust.”

Stringer was bearish on the chances of his legislation — he doubted it would pass in 2010, though he plans to introduce it again in 2011. The “birther” movement itself has been just as persistent. At last month’s Conservative Political Action Conference, two leading “birther” attorneys drew a mixed response from attendees and a negative response from politicians. Phil Berg, the Pennsylvania attorney who filed the first suit against Obama in 2008, handed out advertisements, occasionally finding sympathy. But Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli pulled out of a panel because Gary Kreep, a California attorney who has represented Alan Keyes in a “birther” lawsuit, would be on the podium.

After chatting with Berg, Ken Timmerman, a Newsmax.com reporter and former editor of Reader’s Digest, told TWI that the media’s blackout on the conspiracy theory had affected him, too. He’d had articles about the subject spiked. Conservatives, he said, were worried about tackling it.

“What they do is use the Saul Alinsky response,” said Timmerman, “just to ridicule us. ‘Well, it’s the birthers again, the crackpots.’ I think that’s what a lot of the hesitation is about. They don’t want to allow the left to dismiss a legitimate movement because of something like this.” Timmerman understood the thinking of conservative leaders, and understood why liberals thought it was a target for mockery. He just thought they were both going to proven wrong.

Arizona Democrats, meanwhile, are enjoying the circus.

“John McCain hasn’t been a leading voice in the anti-birther movement,” said Jennifer Johnson, a spokesperson for the Arizona Democratic Party. “He saw this as a way to draw a distinction and paint J.D. as an extremist, and less of a legitimate candidate.” And McCain, she said, had no reason to worry about offending hard-right primary voters. “He lost them years ago.”

McCain tried to get Gates to say that military interrogators should have interrogated Abdulmutallab, but Gates replied that “a team of high-expertise FBI and other interrogators could be as effective at interrogating prisoners as anyone operating under the military field manual.” That’s a reference to the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, whom Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, erroneously told Congress last week was capable of interrogating Abdulmutallab, even though it isn’t operational yet. McCain didn’t care about this fact, and got Gates to reiterate that the so-called HIG ought to have been on scene. He gave up after failing to get Gates to affirm that FBI interrogators didn’t have enough time to extract information from Abdulmutallab.