We might have a debate in town

With no dog in the Super Bowl fight (sorry Mike Vick), I'm still talking presidential politics, and I'm hoping we have still something to talk about by the time our primary election rolls around:

The (Greater Houston) Partnership and the Sierra Club Foundation have long planned to hold a presidential debate at the George R. Brown Convention Center on Feb. 28, just five days before the March 4 Texas primary.

MSNBC has promised to air the event, with NBC News Washington bureau chief Tim Russert as moderator.

The plan calls for the remaining Democratic candidates to face off in one session, with the Republicans going at it in a separate debate that same evening — assuming no candidate has clinched a party nomination by then.

Originally, the organizers had expected the debate would focus on energy and environmental issues, given the energy sector's importance to the Houston economy.

But realizing theirs could be the last debate before the nominees are finally chosen, the organizers decided to broaden the topics to be discussed, although energy would still be emphasized.

Alas, there is a scheduling conflict:

CNN has announced plans for a presidential debate in Ohio on the same day as one scheduled later this month by the Greater Houston Partnership and MSNBC.

And that could prompt an earlier debate within the campaigns: Which state is tactically the better venue if the nominations aren't decided after next week's Super Tuesday showdown?

Texas awards more nominating delegates, but Ohio is more likely to be a November battleground.

Somebody is going to blink and reschedule. I'm guessing we lose again. It sure would be cool to have a contested Democratic nomination still nip-and-tuck with Texas being able to figure in to the winning difference, and a debate locally to go watch.

Conservatives are neurotic. Whooda thunk?

*Gasp*

A study funded by the US government has concluded that conservatism can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in "fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity".

As if that was not enough to get Republican blood boiling, the report's four authors linked Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan and the rightwing talkshow host, Rush Limbaugh, arguing they all suffered from the same affliction.

All of them "preached a return to an idealised past and condoned inequality".

This brings to mind the possibility of payback for the book right-wing mentalist Michael "Weiner" Savage wrote regarding liberalism as mental disorder.

Republicans are demanding to know why the psychologists behind the report, Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition, received $1.2m in public funds for their research from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

The authors also peer into the psyche of President George Bush, who turns out to be a textbook case. The telltale signs are his preference for moral certainty and frequently expressed dislike of nuance.

"This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes," the authors argue in the Psychological Bulletin.

One of the psychologists behind the study, Jack Glaser, said the aversion to shades of grey and the need for "closure" could explain the fact that the Bush administration ignored intelligence that contradicted its beliefs about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

Do you think the doctors anticipated the sputtering outrage, the apoplectic blog posts, the rabid frothing of the goonbats?

The authors, presumably aware of the outrage they were likely to trigger, added a disclaimer that their study "does not mean that conservatism is pathological or that conservative beliefs are necessarily false".

Another author, Arie Kruglanski, of the University of Maryland, said he had received hate mail since the article was published, but he insisted that the study "is not critical of conservatives at all". "The variables we talk about are general human dimensions," he said. "These are the same dimensions that contribute to loyalty and commitment to the group. Liberals might be less intolerant of ambiguity, but they may be less decisive, less committed, less loyal."

See? Fair and balanced.

But what drives the psychologists? George Will, a Washington Post columnist who has long suffered from ingrained conservatism, noted, tartly: "The professors have ideas; the rest of us have emanations of our psychological needs and neuroses."

Chronic and hopefully terminal, in Will's case.

Conservatives desperate to stop McCain

As Super Tuesday looms — and the possibility that McCain could all but wrap up the nomination — the chattering conservative class is in an uproar. Talk show host Rush Limbaugh has warned that McCain as standard-bearer would destroy the Republican Party. Author and pundit Ann Coulter, in jaw-dropping heresy, said she would campaign for Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton if McCain wins the party nod. Commentators Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Mark Levin have come out in support of McCain's rival, Mitt Romney. ...

"If you are a Republican in the broadest sense, there is only one place to go right now, and that's Mitt Romney," said former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum.

No matter how irritated I find myself at the Democrats in the Democratic party, all I have to do is cast a glance rightward and my heart warms.

In the short-term, McCain is helped by Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor and Southern Baptist preacher who remains in the race and could split the conservative vote with Romney in the Bible Belt and elsewhere. Seeking to capitalize, McCain visited Tennessee, Alabama and Georgia on Saturday.

In the long-term, "it is critical for him to build a strong and stable bridge to the constituency that every cycle rings the phones, knocks on the doors and gets the vote out," said Greg Mueller, a conservative Republican strategist. "Endorsements alone will not be enough. Many conservatives will look to see what issues he emphasizes on the campaign trail from now until Election Day."

And that's where he will very likely lose. The base is so utterly demoralized that if they refuse to work for McCain as the nominee, then he is doomed from the beginning.

Frankly, I can't see that happening. Coulter's "endorsement" aside, Republicans will no more stay home in droves than they will vote for the Democrat. The one thing I'm sure of is that it will be a close contest in November if Clinton is the nominee -- too close -- and it won't if Obama is.

With Clinton and McCain still the probable big winners on Tuesday as this is posted, third-party entries will begin to gain momentum. Some combination of Michael Bloomberg, Ralph Nader, almost certainly Ron Paul and possibly a reactionary right candidate could easily combine to siphon off 15% of the popular vote but little of significance in the Electoral College.

An uninspired electorate with demotivated activists on both sides ultimately produces some plurality president in the mushy middle. In 1992 its name was Clinton.

In other words, business as usual.

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