1. Ohio Election Results: Collective Bargaining Rights Preserved, ObamaCare Rejected
The coverage of the results of yesterday’s special election in Ohio has focused almost exclusively on the failure of Issue 2, which sought to uphold Senate Bill 5’s restriction of collective bargaining rights for state employees. The current tally has Issue 2 being rejected by 61%, and the media coverage seems to suggest that this may somehow have an impact on the 2012 presidential elections. I think the issue far more likely to weigh heavily on presidential prospects in 2012 is Issue 3, which proposed to enact an amendment to the Ohio constitution that would opt it out of the federal health care reform law, known colloquially as “ObamaCare”, and more specifically a health care mandate system. The amendment is currently passing by a wide margin of 66%, with every county voting in favor except Lucas County, where it is failing by a less than one thousand vote margin.
2. The Gingrich Window
A propos, the Wall Street Journal editorial page comes out with an echo of my observations from yesterday’s Late Edition regarding the latest GOP primary polls. Gingrich does have an opportunity to cash in on his third place position should Cain implode (though the author’s derisive dismissal of Cain in light of the specific but suspiciously template-style accusations made by Bialek are a bit premature, I have a feeling) and one or more of the inevitable losers drop out sooner rather than later. What’s more, Rick Perry’s decision to not participate in further debates (which will without doubt not do anything to stop his plummeting poll numbers, though it may slow the plunge), starting with tonight’s, does remove some clutter that will allow Gingrich, who will participate, to fill at least a small vaccuum and continue to push his poll numbers up. We shall see.
3. If Iran Goes Nuclear
The inevitable question, with the release of the IAEA report suggesting that Iran is closer than ever to obtaining nuclear weapons, of what President Obama and his sometimes ally Prime Minister Netanyahu will do should they get the bomb. There’s no easy answer, and if we start a full-scale war with Iran to prevent them from obtaining weapons we’re not at all sure that they’ll use for anything but negotiation and prestige I think we’ll look back at the price as having been far too high. On the other hand, the idea of having yet another fundamentalist Islamic state that we know is tied directly to terrorist proxies and killing Americans with their finger on the nuclear trigger presents far too much risk to tolerate. I would tentatively suggest we continue the sabotage operations and try as hard as possible to get their first bomb to go off accidentally in whatever hangar or bunker it’s stashed in. That will embarrass them, destabilize their government even further, and invite international action to contain the disaster within their borders.
