THE OTHER SHOE DROPS: Turning back the tide of information overload with a digest of the latest developments in news conservatives need to pay attention to:

† The Republican contender who will be Obama II: CNN excerpts an article from the Oxford Analytica “Daily Brief” in which the advisory firm explains why former Gov. Mitt Romney’s (R-MA) “proposed policies would make the least abrupt departure from Obama policies”:

As Massachusetts governor (2003-07), he reduced a 3 billion dollar budget shortfall through a combination of spending cuts and revenue increases. … If elected, Romney is almost certain to seek revenue increases (albeit through tax reforms that reduces headline rates, or 'fees') in addition to spending cuts. …

Romney’s opposition to Obama’s healthcare reform legislation was aimed at increasing his chances at the Republican nomination. Yet he would probably not be inclined to repeal Obama’s legislation, and may lack sufficient Senate votes to do so even if the Republicans take control of the Senate. Instead, he would likely 'reform the reform' by instituting cost-control measures that the Democrats avoided. …

Romney favors a more limited role for the federal government in the economy than Obama, but still favored interventions such as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), including its use to bail out the U.S. auto industry. …

[W]ith the exception of stem cell research, if elected he is unlikely to be willing to expend political capital to change the status quo [on abortion, the death penalty and homosexuals in the military].

Romney himself, perhaps unwittingly, substantiated Oxford Analytica’s perception of his being the most Obama-like candidate in the Republican field in this interview he gave to CBS last month right after the NH primary:

Romney said that what he did [at Bain Capital] was no different from the Obama administration’s auto industry bailouts.

“In the general election I’ll be pointing out that the president took the reins at General Motors and Chrysler – closed factories, closed dealerships laid off thousands and thousands of workers – he did it to try to save the business,” Romney said.

† Why The Stiletto cannot support Mitt Romney for president (related article, second item on the page): When former Mormon Helen Radkey checked the church’s genealogical database to look for non-Mormons who have been baptized into the faith posthumously, she found the names of Holocaust survivors Simon Wiesenthal and Elie Wiesel and several of their family members, BBC News reports:

[Wiesenthal’s parents] Asher and Rosa Rapp Wiesenthal were baptised in proxy ceremonies by church members in the US states of Arizona and Utah in January, records show. …

The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced the news.

"We are outraged that such insensitive actions continue in the Mormon temples," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, a spokesman at the centre. …

An agreement in 1995 was supposed to ban the practice of baptising by proxy Holocaust victims, after it was discovered the names of hundreds of thousands of those who died had been entered into Mormon records.

Simon Wiesenthal's parents are long since deceased, with his father dying in World War I and his mother perishing in the Holocaust.

Wiesenthal himself died in 2005 after surviving the Holocaust and dedicating his life to documenting Nazi crimes and hunting down perpetrators.

The Washington Post explains that “[p]osthumous baptisms of non-Mormons are a regular practice in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Members believe the ritual creates the possibility for the deceased to enter their conception of Heaven.” For some reason, The WaPo shies from explaining the Mormon conception of Heaven, where “exalted” individuals become gods and godesses.

Wiesel – who has been trying to get the Mormon Church to stop these baptisms since the mid-1990s – said, “I’m not saying it’s his fault, but once he knows, morally he must respond. . . . He should come out and say, ‘Stop it.’ ”

Although Romney told Newsweek in 2007 that “I have in my life [participated in posthumous baptisms], but I haven’t recently,” a spokesman for his campaign said the candidate would have no comment on the controversy.

† Nice guys finish last? Maybe not this election cycle. (related article, second item on the page): A Romney advisor tells BuzzFeed about the campaign's planned two-front attack on Rick Santorum that “may make previous attacks on Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich look like mere love taps”:

The first is a comparison to Barack Obama: "He's never run anything," said the advisor. The Pennyslvanian's [sic] experience is limited to roles as a legislator and legislative staffer. "The biggest thing he ever ran is his Senate office," he said [sic].

The second is a challenge to Santorum's Washington experience.

"They’re going to hit him very hard on earmarks, lobbying, voting to raise the federal debt limit five times," said the advisor. "The story of Santorum is going to be told over the next few weeks in a big way."

Perhaps easier said than done, according to New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, who warns that “[t]he howitzer worked to dispatch Gingrich, but … to beat Santorum and close out the nomination contest, Romney will need to learn how to campaign with a stiletto”:

If Santorum were simply the latest “true conservative” alternative to Romney – another Michele Bachmann or Herman Cain, a brazen ideologue without a hint of moderation – then the script would be clear enough. Romney would emphasize his experience, his competence and his electability and gradually box out Santorum the way that, for example, Michael Dukakis boxed out Jesse Jackson in 1988.

But Santorum’s advantage is that he can get to Romney’s right and to his left at once. On the one hand, Santorum isn’t responsible for a health care bill that looks an awful lot like “Obamacare” and he doesn’t have a long list of social-issue flip-flops in his past. …

At the same time, though, Santorum’s persona, his record and his platform all have a populist tinge that plays well in states like Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, where swing voters tend to be socially conservative but economically middle-of-the-road. (Hence the Michigan poll that showed him leading among independents and Democrats who plan to vote in that state’s open primary.)

This means that Santorum can play the same anti-Bain, anti-rich-guy, blue-collar card that Gingrich tried to play in New Hampshire and South Carolina – but subtly, implicitly, in ways that don’t make him sound like he belongs in Occupy Wall Street instead of the Republican primary.

In addition, voters perceive Santorum as being so gosh darn likeable that he is bullet-proof (or stiletto proof), Mediaite argues:

Santorum has an authenticity that his rivals can’t approach. Moon Emperor Gingrich has an erratic, inaccessible intellect, and Mitt Romney always sounds like one of the Coneheads, trying to blend in with the HU-mans. …

However, Santorum’s real strength, the thing that sets him apart from previous flashes in the pan, is that, in a Republican primary, he is nearly bulletproof to the kinds of attacks that finished off Newt Gingrich in Florida. The Romney campaign sends out tons of emails every day, many of them opposition research memos and attacks on their candidate’s rivals, and while the barrage against people like Newt Gingrich has looked like something out of a Saw sequel, there has only been one consistent line of attack against Rick Santorum.

Almost without exception, these attacks have to do with Santorum’s record on earmarks, and sometimes, more broadly, other things he did as a Senator. There were two emails, months apart, that trumpeted Santorum’s 2008 endorsement of Romney, and one that reached back to the mid-nineties to a handful of pro-labor (really, they were not sufficiently anti-union) votes. The overwhelming majority of them, though, were on the specific issue of earmarks.

That’s not nothing, but Romney (and earlier, Rick Perry) has been throwing this spaghetti against the wall for months, and it hasn’t stuck yet. Even if it had, that’s all Romney has [emphasis in the original].

Editorial Note: Romney may need a stiletto to kill Santorum’s candidacy, as Douthat suggests, but it certainly won’t be this Stiletto!

† What Sarah Palin can teach Occupy Wall Street: Mediaite's Frances Martel relates how Sarah Palin deftly handled Occupy D.C. protesters who heckled her speech at CPAC:

Her biggest applause line, by far, was a rhyme about Americans being united: “We aren’t red Americans, we aren’t blue Americans, we are red white and blue Americans and, President Obama, we are through with you!” The government, she continued, was “too big to succeed, to [sic] big to ignore and too big to bare [sic] anymore,” and after a flurry of “yes we cans” and “change we can believe ins,” Palin was almost interrupted by a small band of Occupy people that [sic] tried to mic check her. She quickly began chanting “USA!” along with a very loud crowd, a chant that continued as “Sarah! Sarah!” until security led the protesters out. “You just won,” she told the crowd, following one of the more elegant rejection of Occupy protest aesthetic since the movement’s inception. “You see how easy that is?”

† The TSA emperor wears no clothes: Part II: Airport T(it)SA(ss) screeners strike again (related article, fifth item on the page), Infowars.com reports:
 

Wife and mother Ellen Terrell was asked by a female TSA screener “Do you play tennis?” When Terrell asked why, the screener responded, “You just have such a cute figure.”

Editorial Note: Crimestoppers is soliciting money for the purchase of the plots.