Why Sarah Palin wants a brokered convention: 3 theories

Though she's sitting out the primaries, the Alaskan warns that "all bets are off" if no candidate has enough delegates to be nominated at August's GOP convention Here we go again: Former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is getting supporters and detractors all riled up, telling Fox News that if the GOP goes into its August convention without a clear nominee, we "could be looking at a brokered convention" and that "all bets are off." The Alaskan polarizer referred to other dark-horse candidates "willing to offer themselves up...in service to their country," adding ambiguously, "I would do whatever I could to help." Does that mean Palin wants the primaries to end in deadlock, with none of the four remaining candidates equipped with enough delegates to win? Here, three theories on why that may be exactly what Palin's hoping for:

1. A brokered convention would make Palin relevant again
In the "very unlikely" event of a brokered convention — in which a nominee is selected through political horse-trading and backroom deals — the GOP would be engulfed in "total chaos," says Rachel Weiner at The Washington Post. That, in theory, could be good for Palin. She has faded from view and her clout has diminished, but she likely figures that a scenario in which her name is bandied about as a potential nominee would offer her a "return to relevance." She thrives on primary voters' dissatisfaction with their current options, and the longer GOP voters fail to rally behind one candidate, "the more attention she will get as a standard-bearer for unhappy conservatives."

SEE MORE: Is Sarah Palin still a threat to Obama?

2. She still thinks she can be the nominee
"Oh man, do we feel like idiots!" says Jim Newell at Wonkette. Now we see that "lazy ol'" Palin has always wanted a brokered convention so party officials would "ask her to jump in the race" after she got to sit out the actual campaign. Yeah, "this way she didn't have to do the hard stuff like campaignin' and debatin'," says TBogg at Firedoglake. Joke if you must, says Jules Witcover at the Baltimore Sun, but "in this crazy Republican year, it seems anything is possible."

3. She legitimately wants to help her party
Palin really has something to offer if she wants to be useful, says Brandon Kiser at The Right Sphere. It pains some Republicans to say it, but she has undeniable "pull" with conservatives, and she could use it to get supporters of Newt Gingrich, say, or Rick Santorum to "coalesce" behind one candidate, even if it's an establishment candidate like Jeb Bush or Mitch Daniels. "'They may be establishment,' she'll say, 'but they're conservative — and that’s what we need to defeat Barack Obama.'" I, for one, would "like to see that speech."

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Top Republican wants vote on birth control mandate

WASHINGTON (AP) — Conservatives said Sunday the flap surrounding President Barack Obama's birth control mandate was far from over, with Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell saying he'll push to overturn the requirement because it was another example of government meddling.

While a senior White House official shrugged off such remarks, declaring the issue resolved and new legislation unlikely, the heated rhetoric from Republicans suggested the GOP would try to keep the debate alive in an election year to rally conservatives and seize upon voter frustration with big government.

"It's riddled with constitutional problems," McConnell said of Obama's broader health-care plan. "And this is what happens when the government tries to take over health care and tries to interfere with your religious beliefs."

Last week, Obama backed down on a mandate that religious-affiliated employers such as Catholic hospitals and colleges cover birth control in their health insurance plans. In a tweak of the rule, those employees would be offered free coverage directly from their health insurer. But employers would not provide or pay for it.

The White House says the plan won't drive up costs because birth control, similar to other preventative care measures, is less expensive than pregnancy. But opponents say that unless drug makers stop charging for contraception, the cost is likely to get passed on to employers regardless.

While some Catholic groups applauded the move, including the Catholic Health Association, the nation's Catholic bishops said it continued the attack religious freedoms — a theme quickly picked up by Republicans trying to wrest control of the White House this November.

"There's no compromise here," said GOP presidential hopeful Rick Santorum, a Catholic and favorite among religious conservatives. "They are forcing religious organizations, either directly or indirectly, to pay for something that they find is a deeply, morally, you know, wrong thing. And this is not what the government should be doing."

In several televised interviews, White House chief of staff Jacob Lew defended the latest plan as the best possible compromise to provide women access to contraceptives and respect the religious freedoms of employers. Churches had always been exempt under Obama's original plan, although religious-affiliated organizations were not.

"We didn't expect to get universal support of the bishops or all Catholics," he said. "I think that what we have here is a policy that reflects bringing together two very important principles in a way that's true to the American tradition."

Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., has called Obama's revised plan an "accounting gimmick." He introduced legislation last week that would exempt any organization with moral objections from providing birth control. McConnell said he expects such a bill would be vetoed by the president but that he still wanted a vote "as soon as possible."

House Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan said there were enough votes in the Republican-controlled House to pass similar legislation.

"If this is what the president's willing to do in a tough election year, imagine what he will do in implementing the rest of his health care law after an election," Ryan, R-Wis., told ABC News "This Week."

Lew shrugged off questions about Senate legislation, predicting that they would not "come to pass" and that the president planned to move ahead with implementing the current plan.

"We're going to go ahead and implement it," Lew said. "And women are going to have access (to contraception) and institutions like Catholic universities and Catholic hospitals will not be in the position that they had feared. I think that's a good resolution."

Santorum and Lew spoke on NBC's "Meet the Press." McConnell and Lew spoke on CBS "Face the Nation." Lew also spoke on Fox News Sunday, CNN's "State of the Union" and ABC News "This Week."

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Who Wants War With Iran?

Appearing alongside CIA Director David Petraeus before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last week, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, said of Iran:

"We don't believe they've actually made the decision to go ahead with a nuclear weapon."

Before the hearing, as James Fallows of The Atlantic reports, Clapper released his "Worldwide Threat Assessment." It read, "We do not know ... if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons."

Clapper thus reaffirmed the assessment of 16 U.S. intelligence agencies in 2007, reportedly repeated in 2011, that the U.S. does not believe that Iran has decided to become a nuclear weapons state.

In December, when Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that if Iran went all out, it might be able to build a nuclear weapon in a year, Pentagon spokesman George Little hastily clarified his comments:

"The secretary was clear that we have no indication that the Iranians have made a decision to develop a nuclear weapon."

On Jan. 8, Panetta himself told CBS:

"(Is Iran) trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that's what concerns us. And our redline to Iran is: Do not develop a nuclear weapon."

On Super Bowl Sunday, President Barack Obama told NBC's Matt Lauer that he hopes to solve the Iranian problem "diplomatically."

From the above, we may conclude that the administration does not believe that Iran has crossed any redline on the nuclear issue — and President Obama does not want war with Iran.

Who, then, does want war? Ayatollah Ali Khamenei? Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad?

From their actions, it would appear not. If Iran wanted war with the United States, any terror attack inside this country or on U.S. forces in Iraq or Afghanistan could bring that about in an afternoon.

Expulsion of the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors from the Natanz enrichment facility, covering up the IAEA cameras, breaking the seals on the low-enriched uranium stockpiled there, or removing the LEU would be a fire bell for the Pentagon.

But the IAEA inspectors and LEU are still there.

When the alleged plot by a used-car salesman in Texas to hire Mexican cartel criminals to blow up a D.C. restaurant and kill the Saudi ambassador was revealed, Iran denied it emphatically and demanded to interview the alleged mastermind.

Moreover, Tehran has yet to retaliate for the assassinations of five of its nuclear scientists and four terror attacks by Jundallah in Sistan-Baluchistan and PJAK, a Kurdish terrorist organization operating out of Iraqi Kurdistan. Iran has alleged Western and Israeli involvement in these attacks.

Now that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has denied any U.S. involvement, Mossad is the prime suspect behind the killing of the nuclear scientists. And U.S. writer Mark Perry, in Foreign Policy, alleges that Mossad agents posed as CIA and used U.S. dollars in London to recruit Jundallah.

If this is true, this would be a false flag operation to provoke Iran into lashing out at America. Apparently, Iran did not take the bait.

Why have the Iranians not followed through on their threat to close the Strait of Hormuz and begun to dial it back?

War with the United States would be a disaster. Though the Tehran regime might survive — as Saddam Hussein's survived Desert Storm — Iran's navy, most of its armor, anti-aircraft and anti-ship defenses, and its strategic missile force would be destroyed, as would much of the country's infrastructure. Iran would be set back years.

Who, then, wants war with Iran?

All those who would like to see exactly that happen to Iran.

And who are they? The Netanyahu government and its echo chamber in U.S. politics and media, the neoconservatives, members of Congress, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.

And as the Obama administration is the major force in U.S. politics opposed to war with Iran, its defeat in November would increase, to near certitude, the probability of a U.S. war with Iran in 2013.

Yet if the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence community are correct — Iran does not have a bomb and has not decided to build a bomb — why should we go to war with Iran?

Answer: Iran represents "an existential threat" to Israel.

But Israel has 200 atomic bombs and three ways to deliver them, while Iran has never built, tested or weaponized a nuclear device. Who is the existential threat to whom here?

And though a U.S. war on Iran would be calamitous for Iran, it would be no cakewalk for Americans, who could become terrorist targets for years in the Gulf, Afghanistan, Baghdad's Green Zone, Lebanon and even here in the USA.

Year 2012 is thus shaping up as a war-or-peace election, with Republicans the war party and Democrats the peace-and-diplomacy party.

And as the months pass between now and November, this will become clear to the nation.

Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of "Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?" To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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