Just as candidate Newt condemns 'crony capitalism' and Perry denounces 'vultures,' historian Francis Fukuyama has abruptly rescinded the happy talk that made him famous twenty years ago. At the end of the cold war, Fukuyama's book The End of History and the Last Man declared that left-right ideological conflicts were over. Liberal democracy had won. It would henceforth prevail around the world.

Hold that prophecy. The professor has issued a sort of retraction (he might say 'correction'). His essay in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, the journal of the Council on Foreign Relations, explained that 'some very troubling economic and social trends, if they continue, will both threaten the stability of contemporary liberal democracies and dethrone democratic ideology as it is now understood.' Yikes. What trends are those? Global capitalism, he said. Free-trade doctrine and new technology, along with the steady offloading of American jobs, are destroying the middle class - the necessary foundation for democracy in advanced economies.
[...]
His alarming observations were picked up by other conservative commentators and treated respectfully, a sign that these anxieties are widely shared. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, longstanding advocate of globalization, embraced Fukuyama's argument. New York Times columnist David Brooks wrote with sympathy for the struggling white working class. It votes Republican and gets hammered by corporate capitalists in return.

I then saw them again at the cash register where they were paying for a large bottle of generic cola with a handful of change they had collected.  Total cost?  .61 Euros.  Between the three of them, they didn't have .61 Euros to pay for a generic bottle of cola to share.  They were cute too - one white kid, one Arab and one black kid.  The money must be pretty tight in their families, don't you think?

I paid for them, so they get to have cola for 2 days instead of 1, and I left pretty ashamed of my assumptions about these kids.

Once again, thank you.

Now where's the fun in that! - Megatron

... It doesn't matter that Mr. Obama can't get the economy out of second gear. It doesn't matter that he cynically betrayed his core promise as a candidate to be a unifying president. It doesn't matter that he keeps blaming Bush. It doesn't matter that he thinks ATMs are weapons of employment destruction. It doesn't matter that Tim Geithner remains secretary of Treasury. It doesn't matter that the result of his "reset" with Russia is Moscow selling fighter jets to Damascus [...]

Above all, it doesn't matter that Americans are generally eager to send Mr. Obama packing. All they need is to be reasonably sure that the alternative won't be another fiasco. But they can't be reasonably sure, so it's going to be four more years of the disappointment you already know.

As for the current GOP field, it's like confronting a terminal diagnosis. There may be an apparent range of treatments: conventional (Romney), experimental (Gingrich), homeopathic (Paul) or prayerful (Santorum). But none will avail you in the end. Just try to exit laughing.

That's my theory for why South Carolina gave Newt Gingrich his big primary win on Saturday: Voters instinctively prefer the idea of an entertaining Newt-Obama contest - the aspiring Caesar versus the failed Redeemer - over a dreary Mitt-Obama one [...]

Then there is Mitt Romney, even now the presumptive nominee. If Mr. Gingrich demonstrated his unfitness to be a serious Republican nominee with his destructive attacks on private equity (a prime legacy of the Reagan years), Mr. Romney has demonstrated his unfitness by--where to start?

Gingrich up big ahead of GOP caucuses, poll shows

A Public Policy Polling survey released Wednesday shows Gingrich with a 36 percent to 18 percent lead over Romney. In third place is Rick Santorum at 17 percent and Ron Paul is in fourth at 13 percent.

Romney easily won Minnesota in '08 with 41.36% of the vote.  I would have predicted he'd do it again.