Robert Novak has a column in Human Events that seems to indicate he might just do that.  Newt has said he would make a decision in September on whether he would run for the nomination and that decision would hinge on if there was a true conservative leader running that he could support.  Fred Thompson seems to be the man Newt has been waiting for.

Newt Gingrich is telling Republican insiders that his decision in September whether to run for president in 2008 depends on the progress of Fred Thompson’s imminent candidacy.

If Thompson runs a vigorous and effective campaign, Gingrich says privately, he probably will not get in the race himself. If Thompson proves a dud, however, the former House speaker will seriously consider making a run. That implies that the others in the field look to Gingrich like losers in the general election.

So as the total tech nerd that I am I have been reading tons of coverage of the iPhone launch and it seems that reviewers are torn. It certainly has an amazing user interface and some cool features but the big question seems to be the keyboard. Does the lack of a tactile keyboard prevent it from being a true business class communications device.

Which begs the bigger question of whether the iPhone ultimately is a competitor with the SideKick and Helio or with the Palm and Blackberry devices. I think from what I’ve seen so far, and no I didn’t buy one so take this with a grain of salt, that it will be a device to compete with non-business consumers. Business class users are still going to want the functionality of the Palm and Blackberry devices and don’t really need to have their music or videos on a device. Whereas the typical consumer user probably doesn’t need to be able to type a novel on their device but does want the video and iTunes capabilities. Either way I think its highway robbery for the price. What say you STG readers?

Saint Augustine on MySpace…

Cross posted at Areopagus Blog 

Basically if you want to hear my musing on things religious (all three of you) check out that blog, I try to keep my politics over here.

Brownback on his vote-switching:

“I wanted to send a clear signal that I am for comprehensive immigration reform but now is not the time, this is not the vehicle,” Brownback said.

I’d mock the sentence, but it doesn’t make any coherent sense so there’s nothing to mock. Let me send you a signal that your campaign is even more hopeless than it was before.

Lindsey Grahamnesty about the failure of the bill:

“To my Republican friends, remember this day if you vote no. You will never ever have this deal again. There will never be a merit based immigration system like we’ve negotiated because President Bush has helped us.”

I don’t think a comment is necessary. Have a good life back in South Carolina.

Apparently Americans aren’t too fond of flip-floppers:

WASHINGTON - More than half of Americans say they wouldn’t consider voting for Sen. Hillary Clinton for president if she becomes the Democratic nominee, according to a new national poll made available to McClatchy Newspapers and NBC News.
The poll by Mason-Dixon Polling and Research found that 52 percent of Americans wouldn’t consider voting for Clinton, D-N.Y.
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a Republican, was second in the can’t-stand-’em category, with 46 percent saying they wouldn’t consider voting for him.

From Geraghty’s Democratic Party debate review:

Edwards: The cause of poverty is the defining mission of my life.

And that’s why he charges so dang much to make speeches about it!

Bill Quick of the Daily Pundit explains what just happened:

In the end, the underdogs crushed the Bush Amnesty, and in the process, came of age as a true power player on the national political scene. Of course many contributed: Conservative think tanks generated reports and analysis, and the righty talkers mobilized their millions of listeners. But in the middle was something new: the Blogosphere, which reacted to every Bush attempt with speed and ferocity never seen before in American politics. The bill was subjected to a merciless spotlight within hours of its release, so merciless that it became impossible for Senators to follow their usual procedure and vote for it sight unseen.

Read the whole thing.

There is an interesting article over at American Thinker by Christopher Chantrill who argues that right now the next generation of conservative thinkers are just starting to emerge from their shells to change the world.

To understand the basic problem of the conservative movement you have only to read the Washington Times by Ralph Z. Hollow on the recent “third force” conservative summit summoned by conservative activist Paul M .Weyrich.

“‘We want to rebuild a conservative movement independent of the Republican Party and of George W. Bush - and to emphasize that it is a third force, not a third party,’ said Phyllis Schlafly, 82.”

“‘The Democrats own the liberals, and the Republicans own the conservatives,’ said Paul M. Weyrich, 64.”

“‘The modern conservative movement has always been a fusion of economic, national defense and religious conservatives…’ said David A. Keene, 62.”

Could there be a problem here? Might it have something to do with the age of the activists?

I don’t know if it is age or experience that seperates the current crop of conservative leaders from the young people they are trying to reach, but I think it might have something to do with the nature of conservative thought.

I know that I have hardly any intention of getting seriously invovled in politics as a career, and certainly wouldn’t think of doing so before I had a career elsewhere and an established family. Chantrill has another theory however:

Maybe it’s even time to skip a generation and go with a bunch of untried rookies. But what do rookies know?

According to Robert Stacy McCain, Luke Sheahan of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education was counseling conservative students recently on forming a conservative campus club. Why not call it a Hayek or a Friedman Society, Sheahan suggested. “The reaction? Blank stares. ‘They had no idea who they were,’ Mr. Sheahan said.”

Virtually everyone who writes on this blog is on the younger side of their 20s and would agree that our generation struggles with the classical aspects of conservative thought. What does this mean for the future?

We Americans have experience of this. In 1775 George Washington was an old man of 43 and John Adams was 40. But Thomas Jefferson was 32, James Madison was 24, and Alexander Hamilton was 20.

Fifty years ago, twenty-something Bill Buckley rashly started National Review. In 1973 Paul Weyrich became founding president the Heritage Foundation at the tender age of 30. Phyllis Schlafly was once a young activist and conservative ghost writer. That’s how today’s conservative movement first got traction: from reckless youngsters that didn’t know their place.

The emerging conservative movement of the twenty-first century is probably forming around us right now. Reckless twenty-somethings are thinking reckless thoughts and planning reckless deeds. Soon enough we’ll know all about them.

So I just was flipping through the channels and came upon Al Sharpton vs. Christopher Hitchens on Hardball debating religion. Al Sharpton was the voice of rationality and Christopher Hitchens was on this tirade about how “religions rots everything.”

It was one of the most amazing displays I have ever seen as Hitchens basically looses it and goes off on how everything American society has been destroyed by religion, how religous people are deluded and dangerous, and how the atheists have the keys to America’s future. Sharpton then goes on to point by point eviscerate Hitchens.

I stood there verbally rooting for Al Sharpton and then stepped back and realized I stepped into some twisted alternate reality. Wow.

Victory on the education front.

In a sweeping decision likely to affect school integration efforts nationwide, the Supreme Court on Thursday threw out programs from Louisville and Seattle that used students’ race as a factor in school placement to build diversity across a district.

Chief Justice John Roberts announced the decision decrying racial considerations in public schools and was joined by his four fellow conservatives. The ruling prompted liberal justices to declare they feared for the legacy of Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 landmark that set the nation on the path of desegregation.

Maybe now school districts in the South can stop the asinine busing plans that send students to schools far away from their homes.

The Senate drove a stake Thursday through President Bush’s plan to legalize millions of unlawful immigrants, likely postponing major action on immigration until after the 2008 elections.The bill’s supporters fell 14 votes short of the 60 needed to limit debate and clear the way for final passage of the legislation, which critics assailed as offering amnesty to illegal immigrants. The vote was 46 to 53 in favor of limiting the debate.

Senators in both parties said the issue is so volatile that Congress is highly unlikely to revisit it this fall or next year, when the presidential election will increasingly dominate American politics.

Breitbart

Woohoo! And We the People prevail. According to Senator Jeff Sessions, the switchboard in the Senate buildings went down due to an overflow of telephone calls from angry constituents.

Say What? That’s right the most “ethical” congress in history voted itself a payhike today. I am looking for the roll call and I will post it when it when I find it.

Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., and Minority Whip Roy Blunt, R-Mo., worked the floor during the vote to make sure there was relative balance between the warring parties in delivering votes. Working through Blunt, Hoyer forced more than a dozen Republicans to switch their votes in support of accepting the raise, including Mike Pence and Daniel Burton of Indiana and Fred Upton, Dave Camp and Vernon Ehlers of Michigan.

Pence did what? Hoyer and Blunt working in tandem, what in the WORLD was going on in the House today?!?!!? I mean holy insanity! The article is a must read though extremely depressing.

Roll call is apparently here but it wasn’t a straight up or down on the payraise but a vote about voting on it…

Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) approval rating is taking a pounding in his home state as a result of his strong support for a bipartisan immigration reform bill, a new poll showed Friday.

Graham’s approval rating has sunk to 31 percent and he has a 40 percent disapproval rating, according to a poll released Friday by Atlanta-based InsiderAdvantage. The new poll points to Graham’s support for the Senate immigration bill, which includes a path to citizenship, as a likely reason for his apparent unpopularity.

The Hill

What happens to these people in Washington? Honestly, what happens to them, especially when they get into the Senate. Lindsey Graham was a rock star in the House, but now he seems to think that when he was elected to the Senate, he was crowned King of South Carolina.

Somebody credible better step up and primary this man because, I don’t care how “red” South Carolina is, we are going to lose this seat to a Democrat next year if he is our candidate again.

There is an absolutely fascinating blog post over at RedState that is a must read on the voting record of Fred! Thompson. It’s basic point is that in his time in the Senate, Thompson was the leading defender of federalism. That he did cast votes that angered some conservatives such as on tort reform but that his intellectual defense was consistently federalism. He viewed it as the first order of business in deliberations. Maybe he thought something was a good idea (take for example the Good Samaritan Act) but it simply was not the federal governments business.

Now for many of us in the conservative movement this is an incredibly exciting prospect of having a President who took federalism seriously. George W Bush has often tried to push conservative policy from the federal level but with absolutely no regard for federalism (No Child Left Behind, the premier example). The question simply is, does the public care. Or maybe put more accurately, can Fred! make the public care. We shall see, but all I know is I am a believer.

Redstate put up the list of Republican traitors to America:

Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Burr (R-NC)
Collins (R-ME)
Craig (R-ID)
Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lott (R-MS)
Lugar (R-IN)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Snowe (R-ME)
Specter (R-PA)
Stevens (R-AK)
Voinovich (R-OH)
Warner (R-VA)

Well I think we just saw what is essentially the end for the Brownback campaign and their longshot hopes. By voting for cloture on the shamnesty bill, he loses any leverage at all on the issue which is HUGE in the GOP primary in Iowa. Brownback has bet everything on Iowa and is struggling to get out of the low single digits. Fred!’s entry into the race was a body blow to his campaign, but this ends any real Brownback 08 rationale.

Its funny a few months ago I thought Brownback might climb his way from the third tier into the second tier, but it has turned out that Gov. Huckabee is the new second tier. We’ll wait to see the fundraising numbers this quarter but unless he has a tremendously above expectations haul I think the campaign is on life support at best.

We do have some good news today as one of the most insidious anti-freedom measures in recent history, “The Employee Free Choice Act” which would have ended open and free unionization elections failed its cloture vote. The secret ballot is safe for now but make no mistakes that the union heads realize this is their only way to reclaim their old power. This isn’t about protecting the worker this is about forcing workers to do something they don’t want to do in order to gain more power, money, and prestige for the union heads.

This is a big victory but we will have to fight this proposal again in the next session.

Update, this was a remarkable party line vote, the only person crossing the aisle was Sen. Specter.
Republicans voting FOR cloture:
Specter (PA)

Democrats voting AGAINST cloture:
NONE

So the next time someone tells you there are a lot of moderate Democrats, you can just use this vote to show that no there really are not.  If there’s any doubt how much the unions control the Democratic party well…

President Bush encouraged the Senate on Tuesday to put aside bitter differences and pass a bill that would legalize millions of illegal immigrants.

Bush appeared optimistic about winning a test vote Tuesday and the Senate’s passage of the bill by week’s end.

“We’ll be moving our attention to the House after the Senate passes this comprehensive piece of legislation,” Bush told business leaders and representatives of religious, Hispanic and agricultural communities. “I think this is an historic opportunity for Congress to act.”

Joel Kaplan, Bush’s deputy chief of staff, also was optimistic. “Our intelligence suggests that there will be the votes there,” he said.

Conservative critics who paint the measure as amnesty for lawbreakers, however, said their efforts to stop the legislation were gaining momentum. Bush’s team is predicting victory Tuesday on the effort to allow the bill - among the president’s top domestic priorities - to go forward.

With GOP conservatives determined to block the legislation, backers need 60 votes to clear procedural hurdles and resurrect it Tuesday. Just 45 senators - only seven of them Republicans - supported such a move two weeks ago.

Myway