The New START agreement that the Russians won needs to be approved by the Senate. As is his way, Obama wants the process to be got through fast: the less time taken for reading and debating the better.

The Heritage Foundation warns:

All the pressure to blow past the critics, cut backroom deals and get the treaty ratified ought to raise huge red flags. New START has had less than half the number of hearings that treaties are normally subjected to, and the pace for approval certainly is trying to outpace any nuclear arms pact the Senate has ever considered. Not only is the speed with which it is being pushed through unprecedented, the administration continues to withhold key documents, including the treaty negotiating record. This is no time for conservatives in the Senate to offer lemming-like support for President Obama’s arms control agenda.

Mitt Romney lists 8 things that are wrong with it. Just one of them, his item 4, should make it a dud in the eyes of Americans:

Counting multiple-warhead bombers as only one warhead, as New START does, is a problem for America, not a plus. Yes, we currently have more long-range bombers than the Russians. But Russia has embarked on at least one new long-range bomber program. Russia also is developing a new long-range air-launched nuclear cruise missile. We, on the other hand, are doing neither. Russia will have modern bombers and modern missiles; we will not. It should come as no surprise that they are happy to undercount nuclear warheads on bombers.

Failing to count multiple warheads on bombers makes the treaty’s announced warhead limits virtually meaningless in any case: Russia can effectively escape the limit of 1,550 by deploying long-range bombers with many nuclear weapons.

Russia is a dying nation. Its birthrate is 11.1 live births per 1,000 population. Its fertility rate, though it rose slightly from 1.3 in 2006 to 1.5 in 2009, is such that the number of Russians born declines sharply with each generation. And Russian life expectancy is only 65. So there’ll be far fewer Russians by the end of this century. For the next fifty years the Russian state could still do harm, such as seizing parts of neighboring countries, as it recently seized two provinces of Georgia – without the world giving a good goddamn. (When it comes to Russian domination, never call it “imperialism”, comrades!) So there’s an argument for limiting its military power. But this treaty won’t do it.

What New START can do is advance the realization of Obama’s dream: a weak, denuclearized America.

With one last leadership role for him, teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony.

These are our favorite quotations from speeches made yesterday and today (February 18 and 19, 2010) at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC ) being held in Washington, D.C., under the auspices of the American Conservative Union.

Mitt Romney (find the transcript of the whole speech here):

On our watch, the conversation with a would-be suicide bomber will not begin with the words, “You have the right to remain silent!”

We will keep America, America, by retaining its character as the land of opportunity. We welcome the entrepreneur, the inventor, the innovator.

American patriots have defeated tyrants, liberated the oppressed, and rescued the afflicted. America’s model of innovation, capitalism and free enterprise has lifted literally billons of the world’s people out of poverty. America has been a force for good like no other in this world, and for that we make no apology.

Marco Rubio (find the transcript here):

There is no greater risk to this country than the risk posed by radical Islamic terrorists. Let me be clear about something. These terrorists aren’t trying to kill us because we offended them. They attack us because they want to impose their view of the world on as many people as they can, and America is standing in their way. We need to make it unmistakably clear that we will do whatever it takes, for however long it takes, to defeat radical Islamic terrorism. We will punish their allies, like Iran, and we will stand with our allies, like Israel.

The final verdict on our generation will be written by Americans who haven’t even been born yet. Let us make sure they write that we made the right choice, that in the early years of this century, faced with troubling and uncertain times, there were those who believed that the great American story had run its course. But we did not agree. Fear did not lead us to abandon our liberty. Uncertainty did not lead us to abandon the entrepreneurial spirit. We fought for and held on to those things that made us exceptional. And because we did, there was still one place in the world where the individual was more important than the state. Because we did, there was still at least one place in the world where who you come from does not determine where you get to go.

Mike Pence (find a report of his speech here):

Some people around here like to call this the ‘party of no.’ Well, I say no is way underrated here in Washington, D.C. Sometimes no is just what this town needs to hear.

A recession is when your neighbor loses his job, a depression is when you lose your job, and a recovery is when [House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi loses her job.

The good news that the Democrats are dropping rapidly in voters’ approval is tempered for us by the bad news that of  the visible Republican 2012 presidential candidates, Mike Huckabee heads the list. We see him as good-natured but dangerously naive. His religious belief is as ingenuous as that of a small child. True, Sarah Palin’s is too, but she has many qualities that made her a strong governor and could make her an effective future leader.

A former member of Huckabee’s 2008 campaign, Joe Carter, confirms our view of him. Slightly to our surprise we found this at First Things, a Christian site:

The tragic murders of four policemen in Washington State, quickly turned into a political story when it was discovered that former governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee had previously commuted the sentence of the gunman [Maurice Clemmons], making him eligible for parole.

Normally, I wouldn’t have much to say on such story. But because I have some familiarity with the backstory — I worked for a brief time for the Huckabee campaign — and because it has implications for the role of religion in politics, I thought it might be worth sharing my perspective.

Reflections on a politician by former campaign staffers should always be taken cum grano salis. This is no exception. While I’m still a fan of the governor I don’t believe he — nor anyone else from the 2008 primary season (from Palin to Romney to Giuliani to Paul) — has any chance of ever becoming President. Because of this, I don’t feel the need to either defend or condemn him. While the tragic chain of events that were set in place by his signing commutations are not entirely — or even primarily — the fault of the governor, he must bear a sufficient measure of responsibility. …

On the issue of clemency, commutations, and pardons. … Other governors with their sights set on higher offices had learned that doing nothing — even to correct obvious instances of injustice — was unlikely to cause any long-term political damage. Keeping an innocent man in prison is less harmful to an ambitious politician than freeing someone who may commit other crimes.

Huckabee would certainly discover this political reality the hard way. Initially, I chalked it up solely to extraordinary political courage. Later, I tempered this view when I realized that this courage was mixed with a large dose of cluelessness. The governor seemed genuinely surprised that he was held responsible for the criminal acts committed by those whose sentences he had commuted as governor. It was as if he believed that simply having noble intentions and a willingness to make tough decisions would provide political cover. The notion that he should be accountable for future crimes committed by these men seemed as foreign to him as the idea that he should refuse all leniency.

His naivete about how his actions would be judged was compounded by his own belief in the nobleness of his motives. Huckabee was — and likely remains — a true believer in the concept of restorative justice. …

Judging from the records, the governor also seemed to put a lot of weight on conversion stories — a common trait among evangelicals, who believe the gospel is sufficient for restoration and redemption of character. The opinion of clergy appears to have carried a great deal of weight in the decision-making process. …