Obama's Custom-Tailored Latino Pitch

President Barack Obama’s got a version of his “We can’t wait” drive customized for the Latino audience.

Never heard of it? Unless you’re a Latino voter, that’s no surprise.

Over the past few months, the Obama administration has rolled out a series of executive actions that often garner little attention from the English-language press but get huge coverage in the Spanish-language media and other outlets favored by Hispanics.

As Obama’s GOP rivals face the primaries’ first sizable group of Latino voters, in Florida, the president’s use of executive power to court the potentially pivotal demographic group already is well under way. And Obama’s team is heavily promoting his actions to their target audience.

When Obama sat down with Spanish-language network Univision on Wednesday, one of the first things he did was boast about the immigration policies he’s altered.

“Some of the changes that we’re making on immigration, we’re trying to make sure that we’re prioritizing criminals [for deportation],” the president said, without really being asked.

Latino advocates say they’ve noticed a new level of engagement from the White House.

“They want to tell Latinos what they’re doing. That’s clear,” said Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), an outspoken immigration reform advocate who has pushed the administration to take unilateral steps to ease and refocus immigration enforcement.

Gutierrez said the proposals initially got a chilly reception from Obama and his aides, but the administration seems to be coming around.

“Before they weren’t worried about communicating with anyone in terms of the immigration sphere, except the very restrictionist community which they spoke to in very clear terms for three years. Every time they had a press conference on how many deportations, they weren’t shy about telling us,” Gutierrez said. “So, there is a difference [now], and I’m happy. Does it take a campaign to bring that out? Maybe. But there are more families being kept together as a result of the changes.”

The steady stream of under-the-radar moves to tweak the immigration system are aimed at re-energizing Latino voters disappointed by Obama’s failure to win — or even make a serious push on — a comprehensive immigration overhaul, and by the record-setting number of deportations carried out since Obama took office, Democrats say.

Gutierrez dates the administration’s new focus on immigration issues to Obama’s appearance last July before the National Council of La Raza. As Obama explained to the Latino activists that he had little ability to change the immigration process without help from Congress, the crowd broke into a variation of his 2008 campaign slogan.

“Yes, you can. Yes, you can,” they chanted.

“I think at that point [Obama aides] said, ‘You know what? We can,’” Gutierrez said.

Since that visit, the administration has discovered new flexibility to change a variety of immigration-related policies without the approval of Congress.

In August, the federal government promised to refocus deportations on criminals and launched an unprecedented review of all pending deportation cases, including those in which a final deportation order has been issued. In December, the Department of Homeland Security announced a toll-free hot line for citizens mistakenly detained as foreigners.

Earlier this month, Obama’s appointees began the process of tweaking the green-card policy, curtailing potentially dangerous trips to consulates in violence-plagued Mexico — another change the president highlighted in his Univision interview. A few days later, DHS released a policy enhancing the rights of lawyers representing immigrants in deportation proceedings.

“In the mainstream press, I don’t see a lot of news about the waiver [process for green cards] and the deportation review, but you can see that in the Spanish media all the time,” said Antonieta Cadiz, White House correspondent for La Opinión, a Spanish-language paper in Los Angeles. “The administrative relief measures: That’s something important.”


Obama has also hosted the Latino press for at least three White House roundtables in recent months, including reporters for local Spanish-language newspapers.

“We have access,” Cadiz said.

But Cadiz said the new measures and outreach have only partly reassured Latinos disappointed by the failure to overhaul immigration laws, which Obama promised to make a major push for in his first year in office. She also called the volume of deportations a “huge problem” Obama has to overcome.

A Pew Hispanic Center poll taken late last year found 59 percent of U.S. Latinos disapprove of Obama’s deportation policy.

But Obama, his aides and many in the Latino community say the GOP presidential candidates’ tough anti-immigration rhetoric is easing the president’s effort to reclaim the Hispanic vote. Mitt Romney campaigned in South Carolina with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a villain to many Latinos for his role in drafting state laws to crack down on illegal immigrants. In a debate last week in Florida, Romney urged “self-deportation” for illegal immigrants, a notion unlikely to sit well with many Hispanics.

Newt Gingrich has struck more moderate notes on immigration, but both he and Romney have endorsed English as the official national language and have vowed to veto the DREAM Act, a bill that would allow a path to citizenship for individuals who came to the U.S. illegally as children but are enrolled in college or the military. (Romney said he’d sign such a measure if it were limited to the military.)

During a November roundtable with Latino journalists, Obama suggested that his campaign wouldn’t need to do much to woo Hispanics since Republicans seem to be alienating them.

“We may just run clips of the Republican debates verbatim. We won’t even comment on them, we’ll just run those in a loop on Univision and Telemundo, and people can make up their own minds,” the president said.

Gutierrez said those networks have been giving all Republican candidate mentions of immigration major play.

“The problem for them is everybody’s watching,” he said. “The Republican debates have shown that there is absolutely no space for us there.”

The pro-Obama super PAC Priorities USA Action and the Service Employees International Union are already airing Spanish-language radio ads pointing out that Romney’s own Spanish-language ads in Florida ignore his alliance with Kobach and his opposition to the DREAM act.

National polls of Latinos suggest Obama’s approval rating has eroded somewhat over the past year, but he maintains commanding leads over his most likely Republican rivals. Obama leads Romney, 67 percent to 25 percent, and Gingrich, 70 percent to 22 percent, in a Univision/ABC News poll out last week.


Still, any dip in Latino support from 2008 could hurt Obama’s reelection chances. “Democrats have to be wary that interest of their voters is not as high as in ’08,” said Terry Madonna, a pollster and public affairs professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Pennsylvania. “They need to have a fairly substantial turnout among minority groups. That makes niche marketing all the more important.”

Consultants say the Obama campaign is well-positioned to use the Latino media to deliver a customized message to Hispanics — but officials need to be cautious that those messages don’t turn off other voters.

“It’s a very fine dance with targeting,” said GOP new-media strategist Patrick Ruffini. “The essential political risk has been growing with the ability to do it.”

Some Republican lawmakers already are noticing — and attacking — Obama’s executive actions on immigration.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said the president’s moves amount to a “back-door amnesty” that ignores immigration laws.

“The Obama administration has a pattern of abusing administrative authority to allow illegal immigrants to remain in the United States,” Smith said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the decisions made by President Obama seem to be more influenced by campaign politics and liberal constituencies rather than sound policy for the good of our country.”

Many of the recent policy changes were suggested in memos that Hispanic groups sent the White House in the first half of last year, though often Obama did not go as far as the groups sought.

For its part, the White House denies that the immigration-related measures are timed to aid the president politically.

“The president has been outspoken in his commitment to fixing America’s broken immigration system. He believes Congress should work together to build a 21st century immigration system that meets our nation’s economic and security needs. But given the urgency of these challenges, we can’t wait for Congress to act. That’s why he has made administrative improvements to make government work smarter and more effectively,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said in a statement.

Few non-Latino voters describe immigration as the issue of greatest concern to them. However, a Gallup Poll taken this month showed only 28 percent of Americans satisfied with the current “level of immigration.” The low figure reflects both those who think immigration policies are too liberal and those who find them too harsh.


“It’s an issue that has some emotional edge to it, which is why I think it does have the potential to be an issue that flares up,” said Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll. “Those who are most concerned about it now are Republicans, and obviously Obama’s strategy is not aimed at winning them over.”

Measures like the DREAM Act generally poll well, but some Obama administration actions do run counter to overall public opinion. In recent months, the Justice Department has filed lawsuits against popular laws passed in Alabama, South Carolina and Utah that crack down on illegal immigrants. Arizona’s challenge to an earlier administration suit against that state’s immigration-control law will be argued before the Supreme Court this spring.

Analysts say the greatest risk in Obama’s “we can’t wait” immigration strategy lies with swing voters in key states such as Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia, who might disagree with the policy and — more dangerously — view it as evidence that the president isn’t focused on jobs and the economy.

“The Republican nominee, whoever that may be, will be cognizant of this to see if there are ways of making this an issue,” Newport predicted.

“Immigration reform is a major issue uniquely with” Latinos, Democratic pollster Mark Penn said. “Candidates are going to want to get their comprehensive immigration reform position out to the Latinos and probably want to downplay it to the rest. It is important, though, to not be inconsistent in that message or they’ll quickly find themselves in a bind.”

While Obama described the recent immigration changes to Univision as part of his “we can’t wait” agenda, he did not make a speech or hold an event about them as he did for some other parts of the campaign aimed at congressional inaction.

Schultz said Obama “has repeatedly called for elevating this issue, [and] we welcome as much coverage from across the media spectrum as possible.”

When a reporter noted to Gutierrez that many of the new immigration initiatives don’t generate much attention in the English-language press, he interjected, with a laugh: “You think on purpose, maybe?”

He said he still detects a skittishness among Obama’s advisers about putting immigration issues front and center with a general audience. “Do I think there’s some, ‘It would be nice if we could only communicate with Latinos’? … Yeah, there’s some of that,” he said. “I understand some of the cynicism that can come with it. I’m just hard-pressed to have a problem with it.”

The Death of Bipartisanship

Every time there is divided government in Washington, there is a revival — among elite journalists, think tank commentators and respectable politicians of all stripes — of a cherished idea about how business should get done in the nation’s capital:

Get the most responsible adults of both parties in one room, shoo away the cameras and microphones, and don’t let the two sides come out until they have cut a deal on the most pressing problem of the day.

Call it the Split the Difference Scenario — a dream of Washington at its civic-minded best that has flourished for decades, even as the reality of Washington became ever more snarling and contentious.

Sometimes, the dream even came true, in iconic closed-door moments: a bipartisan bargain over Social Security in 1983, a high-drama budget summit at Andrews Air Force Base in 1990, a landmark spending accord between Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich in 1997.

The striking fact about Washington at the start of 2012 is how many people, in public and private, say they have concluded that the capital is no longer a city of splittable differences.

This sullen judgment is by all evidence driving the political strategy of President Barack Obama, formerly an apostle of a grand bargain to solve the country’s fiscal problems.

He’s being joined by a critical mass of Washington influentials — witnessing the inability of the two parties to find common ground on the budget in 2011 — who are ready to discard the old ideal: Politicians huddling behind closed doors to cut deals is no longer viewed as necessarily even a desirable scenario, much less a plausible one.

“This election is built to have a fight,” Rep. Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican and the House majority whip, told POLITICO. “If you watch from the rise of the tea party [on the right] to the rise of the Occupiers [on the left]—in ’08, our country said they wanted a little more government. In 2010, they said, ‘Whoa, that was too much.’ I think 2012 is going to be the argument for the size and scope of what they want America to be, and that is healthy. We should have the debate of what we want this country to look like.”

The correct response to Washington gridlock, by this reckoning, is not private deal-making but a public clash over core beliefs. Most Republicans don’t believe in raising taxes and would rather fight than split the difference. Most Democrats don’t believe benefits like Medicare should be cut or turned over to the states and are more than ready to take the argument to voters.

Neera Tanden, an influential Democrat who heads the liberal Center for American Progress, echoed McCarthy. “Two different elections point in two different ways, and both sides are arguing over fundamental principles,” she said.

Tanden argues that much of the commentary about Washington incorrectly supposes that it is petty obstacles — political posturing or the tactics of special interest groups — that prevent a return to grand bargains of the Andrews Air Force Base variety. “The debate has become so shrill and partisan people just assume it’s ridiculous,” she said, when the argument is actually over basic questions that may get resolved only when the electorate decides in an emphatic way which side is right.

This analysis is shared by Rahm Emanuel, a veteran of Washington and Obama’s West Wing and now the mayor of Chicago.


“We need to take on the mythology that divided government produces progress,” Emanuel said. “Divided government produces divided government.”

The notion of closed-door bipartisan deals, he said, belongs to a bygone era: “Events have moved on. What the markets want, and what the world wants, is decisive action. That comes with single-party governance.”

This scenario is in fact what Washington produced twice over the past decade. In the first part of President George W. Bush’s term, Republican dominance produced major tax cuts. In the first part of Obama’s term, Democratic dominance produced the largest overhaul of the nation’s health care system in decades. Neither event was the result of a closed-door bargaining session of the sort many Washington elites hold dear.

If the Split the Difference Scenario has been exposed as a myth, perhaps no person has been more shaken by the discovery than Obama. He now believes, according to advisers and others familiar with his thinking, that there is scant opportunity for any kind of Washington grand bargain until 2013 — and perhaps not then, unless the results of the November election leave one party clearly empowered and the other so chastened it is ready to deal.

This conclusion represents a painful falling to earth. Obama’s 2008 message was built on the idea that Washington governance had become irrational — distorted by the mad dash of politicians for publicity and momentary tactical advantage — and that his brand of cool rationality could bridge divides and restore order.

The blame over why this didn’t happen seemingly began within hours of his inauguration — Republicans spurned his overtures, or his own agenda was called too radical and divisive. But it wasn’t until 2011 that the basic premise of Obama’s vision of Washington compromise collapsed.

House Speaker John Boehner’s support for the ideal of Washington difference-splitting probably would match Obama’s, if he were left to his own devices. But he did not have support from his own GOP caucus to negotiate on the issue most important to Obama, raising taxes in tandem with spending cuts. In the meantime, there were other valiant efforts to revive the old era of closed-door deal-making. The congressional supercommittee could not reach accord. A budget plan by two longtime Washington worthies, Democrat Erskine Bowles and Republican Alan Simpson, was unveiled to widespread editorial-page and think-tank praise — and was promptly snubbed by actual politicians. The Senate Gang of Six, devoted to finding bipartisan budget solutions, managed to make progress in closed-door talks — until the very moment when partisans not in the talks got wind of specifics on raising revenue or cutting treasured entitlement programs.

This record of frustration is reflected in Obama’s rhetoric.

Last July, in a televised address to the nation, he was still fully committed to the idea that there was a grand bargain to be struck with Republicans on the budget. He noted that he was pushing Democrats to make it happen: “While many in my own party aren’t happy with the painful cuts it makes, enough will be willing to accept them if the burden is fairly shared. While Republicans might like to see deeper cuts and no revenue at all, there are many in the Senate who have said, ‘Yes, I’m willing to put politics aside and consider this approach because I care about solving the problem.’”


He said voters are “fed up with a town where compromise has become a dirty word,” and concluded, “The American people may have voted for divided government, but they didn’t vote for a dysfunctional government.”

A half-year later, Obama’s speeches still give a nod to the idea that bipartisan progress would be desirable if possible — but they often reveal his clear belief that this is no longer likely. Speaking to the House Democratic Issues Conference last week, Obama said of Republicans: “Where they obstruct, where they’re unwilling to act, where they’re more interested in party than they are in country, more interested in the next election than the next generation, then we’ve got to call them out on it.”

If many Washington politicians have given up on the idea of grand bargains built on both sides giving a little, it is clear many voters still believe this should be the goal. A Pew survey earlier this month found that 58 percent of respondents believe Republican leaders should work with Obama to get things done, “even if it means disappointing some groups of Republican supporters.” A CBS/New York Times poll this month made a similar point even more starkly: 85 percent said that “Democrats and Republicans should compromise some of their positions in order to get things done.”

As the dream of Washington deal-making has faded in recent months, some academic observers believe there is a more structural explanation than simply a looming election campaign.

Keith T. Poole, a University of Georgia political scientist who studies congressional voting patterns, said that although there were grand bargains during the administrations of Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, the trend has been moving away from major legislative agreements since Ronald Reagan used a bloc of moderate Democrats and Republicans to strike landmark deals in the early 1980s. George W. Bush and Barack Obama have had a relative handful of centrists to help move their agendas in bipartisan fashion.

“Steadily the moderates have all disappeared,” Poole said. “The moderate Southern Democrats were replaced by Republicans and then, one by one, the moderate Republicans were replaced either by Democrats or conservative Republicans.”


Poole and research partner Howard Rosenthal of New York University have written that Republicans have become more conservative faster than Democrats have become more liberal.

“The Republican Party has been steadily moving to the right since the 1970s,” Poole said. “The Republicans have moved about three times the speed to the right as the Democrats have moved to the left.”

This conclusion about the inexorable pace of polarization will disappoint many centrist voters, on whom elections hinge — a fact that is producing its own round of partisan blame-casting.

Emanuel said Democrats are naïve if they are waiting for “the inner Bob Dole to come out” among today’s Republicans, ready to make a deal. Instead, “any person who reaches out and tries to work with the president is going to get [challenged in] a primary.”

“It’s just a widening, a rift, between us,” in the two major parties, said Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), a member of the Senate Gang of Six, “and that makes it very difficult to get back to those glory days with Tip O’Neill and Ronald Reagan” able to steer a compromise on Social Security.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who was a member of the failed budget supercommittee, told POLITICO that, “I think there is a deal to be cut that the American people would perceive as very fair and very balanced,” with a mix of tax increases and spending cuts. But, he said, as a practical matter, Obama realizes from “bitter experience … that that’s not going to be possible” because of GOP opposition.

Rep. Jeb Hensarling, a Texas Republican appearing last week on the same POLITICO panel with Van Hollen, countered that Obama’s tax proposal of increasing taxes on families making more than $250,000 reflects a strategy of “division” of the electorate. “Any time you hear Washington say, ‘We’re going to tax the rich,’ that’s when middle-income people have to watch their wallets.”

Rep. George Miller, a veteran California Democrat, said the two parties are talking past one another more than when he first won election to the House in 1974. This, he said, makes closed-door deal-making much harder: “People went into a room to get the best deal they could get, but to get a deal. You don’t have that anymore now.”

Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) agreed that grand bargains are getting harder — but said the effort must still be made. “It’s a process that has to occur and we haven’t gotten through that process,” Price said. “Hopefully, at some point people say, ‘Look, we’ve got to get the work of the country done, find that common ground and move forward in a positive way.’ But I don’t belittle or minimize the challenge. It’s huge.”

:::OPINION::: SOTU or Campaign Speech?

The congressional podium is not a campaign stump. But don’t expect President Barack Obama to appreciate that distinction at Tuesday’s State of the Union Address. He rarely does.

The Obama White House and the Obama campaign have become almost indistinguishable. One crafts political slogans, makes empty promises and viciously attacks its opponents. The other is the campaign.

As usual, Tuesday’s speech will be a campaign speech. It will be well-delivered, long on rhetoric — and short on specifics. While the catchphrases may be new, one thing remains the same: It will be politically self-serving.

As usual, Obama will also make promises he won’t keep. “Winning the future,” was 2011’s State of the Union slogan. After a year of record debt, a credit downgrade, high unemployment and political gridlock, we’ve certainly lost much more than we’ve won.

“Winning the election” will likely be this year’s unspoken theme. The president will present his case for a second term, even as the country suffers the consequences of his first. Yet a president’s record, not his words, should be what justifies reelection.

Obama’s record is one of failure—failure to restore the economy, to create jobs, to unite the country. It’s evident on the campaign trail. He’s making the election about fear and division: us versus them, rich versus poor, Republican versus Democrat. That’s the reelection strategy of a failed incumbent president.

There is indeed division in this country — but not the sort the president seeks to create. The real disconnect is between the president and the voters. It’s a disconnect between a president trying to save his job and a people desperately needing jobs of their own.

That disconnect was on full display last week. Washington had an opportunity to create thousands of jobs and a secure, affordable energy source. But Obama had an opportunity to please his political base. So he axed the Keystone pipeline project—and all the jobs that went with it.


The Keystone project made sense for America. The pipeline from Canada would have been a safe and reliable source of oil for the United States. With gas prices rising and Middle Eastern oil exporters growing hostile, it was, in the words of Canada’s prime minister, “a no-brainer.”

Labor unions supported Keystone. Small business supported Keystone. Republicans and Democrats praised the project. After Obama’s hapless decision, nearly every major newspaper in the country excoriated him for not siding with the American people.

The president has a pattern: It’s always his political self-interest before the nation’s best interest. With his massive stimulus, he doled out taxpayer money to his political allies. In 2009, his administration loaned $535 million to the solar energy company Solyndra. The stimulus failed — Solyndra went bankrupt.

The president said no to Keystone, a chance to create jobs without spending government money. But he said yes to Solyndra, a chance to spend government money while destroying jobs. These are, of course, just two examples of failure, but they illustrate his priorities: He says yes to good politics, no to good policy.

Tuesday, though, the president will pretend otherwise. He will declare himself the hope of the country. He will attempt to make himself seem indispensable because, in this weak economy, he knows Americans are inclined to dispense with him at their first chance.

After three years, we see through the façade. We’ve heard it all before. And the disconnect between rhetoric and reality, between president and people, has left America in a state of disunion.

In their annual addresses, presidents traditionally declare, “the state of our union is strong.” Obama will likely say the same. But at the start of 2012, one wonders. Our people are strong, but we’re hurting. We are tough and determined, but growing weary.

While millions remain unemployed, millions more have given up looking for work. Americans are an optimistic people, but when the president makes difficult circumstances worse, it’s unimaginably dispiriting.

Perhaps for the first time in history, the weakness of America’s president is threatening the strength of our people. When the strength of our people is threatened, the state of our union is too.

Americans demand a president who can come to Congress with a plan and purpose. Obama arrives with a speech and a slogan.

It’s a state of disunion.

UK, France and US Send Warships Through Straight

This deployment defied explicit Iranian threats to close the waterway. It coincided with an escalation in the West's confrontation with Iran over the country's nuclear ambitions.

European Union foreign ministers are today expected to announce an embargo on Iranian oil exports, amounting to the most significant package of sanctions yet agreed. They are also likely to impose a partial freeze on assets held by the Iranian Central Bank in the EU.

Tehran has threatened to block the Strait of Hormuz in retaliation. Tankers carrying 17 million barrels of oil pass through this waterway every day, accounting for 35 per cent of the world's seaborne crude shipments. At its narrowest point, located between Iran and Oman, the Strait is only 21 miles wide.

Last month, Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, commander of the Iranian navy, claimed that closing the Strait would be "easy," adding: "As Iranians say, it will be easier than drinking a glass of water."

But USS Abraham Lincoln, a nuclear-powered carrier capable of embarking 90 aircraft, passed through this channel and entered the Gulf without incident yesterday. HMS Argyll, a Type 23 frigate from the Royal Navy, was one of the escort vessels making up the carrier battle-group. A guided missile cruiser and two destroyers from the US Navy completed the flotilla, along with one warship from the French navy.

All three countries retain a permanent military presence in the Gulf, but a joint passage through the Strait of Hormuz by all of their respective navies is highly unusual. The flotilla will have passed within a few miles of the Iranian coastline.

A western official denied this was a provocative move intended to increase the pressure on Iran. The goal was simply to "illustrate international resolve" to guarantee free movement of shipping through a vital artery of the world economy, he said.

A Ministry of Defence spokesman confirmed that "HMS Argyll and a French vessel joined a US carrier group transiting through the Strait of Hormuz to underline the unwavering international commitment to maintaining rights of passage under international law."

The spokesman added that Britain maintains a "constant presence in the region as part of our enduring contribution to Gulf security". Royal Navy warships have been patrolling the region continuously since 1980.

Abraham Lincoln's entry into the Gulf came in defiance of an explicit warning from Iran. Earlier this month, General Ataollah Salehi, commander of the country's armed forces, threatened to respond with "full force" if any US carrier ventured into the region's waters. "We don't have the intention of repeating our warning, and we warn only once," he said.

The Islamic Republic then held a naval exercise in the Strait of Hormuz. More Iranian military manoeuvres, code-named Exercise Noble Prophet, are expected in the waterway later this week.

Another carrier, USS Carl Vinson, has been in the Gulf and the surrounding region for several months. Abraham Lincoln's arrival means a return to the two-carrier deployment that America has retained in the area for many years.

Each of these Nimitz class vessels carries a complement of fighter aircraft with more striking power than the entire Iranian air force. Their presence widens the options open to Western governments should Tehran attempt to retaliate for tighter sanctions by harassing international shipping lanes.

Iran could do so by laying launching attacks using warships or land-based anti-shipping missiles. Each of these threats could be countered using carrier-based aircraft.

However, officials believe that the balance of forces against Iran makes any such move against the Strait of Hormuz highly unlikely. Iran has an interest in talking up the possibility because this can raise oil prices and increase its own revenue at a time when its economy is in severe difficulties.

One official added that no government should dismiss these threats, pointing to Iran's actual disruption of shipping in the Gulf in the late 1980s. Another option that would fall short of launching classic military strikes would be for Iran to lay mines in shipping lanes.

All US warships deployed in the Gulf, the Red Sea and the western half of the Indian Ocean are controlled by US Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain. The Royal Navy also has a small permanent staff based in the Gulf kingdom.

SCOTUS Rules on GPS Case

Washington (CNN) -- Police erred by not obtaining an extended search warrant before attaching a tracking device to a drug suspect's car, the Supreme Court said in a unanimous ruling Monday.

A majority of justices said that secretly placing the device and monitoring the man's movements for several weeks constituted a government "search," and therefore, the man's constitutional rights were violated.

Four other justices also concluded that the search was improper but said it was because the monthlong monitoring violated the suspect's expectation of privacy.

U.S. Supreme Court rules on health care challenge On humane treatment of downed livestock

That difference of legal analysis may create further confusion among law enforcement over when and for how long such high-tech operations can be used, on both criminal suspects and the general public.

At issue was whether movement in a private vehicle on city streets is "public" in nature.

Growing sophistication of electronic devices to monitor the movements of suspects made this issue ripe for review, since lower courts had disagreed on when such surveillance is permissible without a warrant.

The devices send an electronic signal to a satellite, allowing real-time plotting of someone's whereabouts.

Antoine Jones was a co-owner of Levels, a Washington nightclub, when he was suspected of trafficking cocaine on the side. A joint FBI-D.C. police team covertly attached a GPS device to his Jeep outside the terms of a warrant.

A warrant had been granted, but installation of the GPS device was authorized by a judge only within 10 days and only in the District of Columbia. Agents waited until the 11th day to secretly place it on the vehicle, and they did so in neighboring Maryland. Jones was then monitored for 28 days as he drove around the area.

He was eventually tracked to a house where law enforcement officers discovered nearly 100 kilograms of the illegal narcotic, along with about $850,000 in cash. Jones was sentenced to life in prison.

The court was being asked to decide whether such covert surveillance violated the Fourth Amendment and whether in this case it should be considered a "search," a "seizure" or both.

The justices agreed police violated Jones' rights but disagreed on just why.

The Constitution's Fourth Amendment says, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated."

Antonin Scalia wrote for a five-vote majority that a person's property is legally sacred, and the government had to justify placing a GPS device on the vehicle. Scalia said the electronic age does not change a centuries-old concept.

"The government physically occupied private property for the purpose of obtaining information," said the ruling. "We have no doubt that such a physical intrusion would have been considered a 'search' within the meaning of the Fourth Amendment when it was adopted."

Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor agreed with the conclusions.

But a group of four justices led by Samuel Alito concluded that the majority's reasoning was "artificial" and did not address larger legal concerns of searches in the digital age, including GPS. He said the court should have used this case to clarify the limits of police monitoring of wireless personal communication devices like mobile phones and Internet use.

"The availability and use of these and other devices will continue to shape the average person's expectations about the privacy of his or her daily movements," Alito wrote. "In circumstances involving dramatic technological change, the best solution to privacy concerns may be legislative."

But the U.S. Congress and most states have not kept up with the times, Alito said, leaving courts to sort out what level of privacy a citizen can expect.

He said that in this case, four weeks of tracking was more than enough to justify police getting a search warrant.

Alito was backed by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Elena Kagan.

The justices have another pending case they may decide to tackle, from an Oregon inmate who faced similar circumstances. Police there had attached a GPS device to Juan Pineda-Moreno's car while it was parked on his property. Officers then tracked him to a remote marijuana field he was cultivating. He was convicted and sentenced to more than four years behind bars.

Unlike in the Jones case, a federal appeals court in San Francisco ruled that this was not a "search," so no warrant was required to place the device on Pineda-Moreno's Jeep Cherokee. His conviction was upheld.

The justices have not taken any action on the Oregon appeal, perhaps waiting to resolve the issue with Jones' appeal from Washington.

The current case is U.S. v. Jones (10-1259).

The Politics of Humor

Stephen Colbert is taking full credit for Jon Huntsman dropping out of the 2012 race, declaring on “The Colbert Report” that his announcement last week to form an exploratory committee for president has “completely changed the complexion of this race.”

“It has gone from linen to eggshell. And today, it just got a little off-whiter,” Colbert told his excited audience on Monday night, showing off a clip of Huntsman’s speech from earlier in the day announcing he was quitting.

“Folks, do you see what’s happened here? The mere possibility that I might run for president blew Jon Huntsman all the way back to the Lands’ End catalog he came from!” said Colbert. “Again, that’s just from me exploring the idea of running. Can you imagine what it would do to the field if I, Stephen T. Colbert, looked into the camera right now and officially announced?”

But the comedian quickly quieted his cheering fans, saying, “But I’m not.”

He added, “By the way, that snapping sound you heard just now is the sphincters of the other candidates snapping shut. You have to listen closely for Romney’s because it starts out about 90 percent clenched.”

The Colbert-Huntsman drama began last week when a new Public Policy Polling survey found the late-night comic edging out the former Utah governor in the South Carolina Republican primary, 5 to 4 percent.

This quickly led to Colbert announcing on his show that he was forming an exploratory committee for a possible candidacy for “president of the United States of America of South Carolina,” and a handing over of the control of his super PAC to his “Comedy Central” colleague Jon Stewart.

Since the announcement, Colbert’s super PAC has already begun airing an anti-Mitt Romney ad, and on Monday night released another commercial urging Americans to “vote Herman Cain.”

And could Rick Santorum be Colbert’s next target?

The comic, noting how Santorum had recently garnered the backing of social conservative leaders, quipped on this show Monday, “Personally, I would not have gone with Santorum. If I were God, I would have gone with me.”

“Why not, folks?” he said. “I’m a social conservative, I teach Sunday school, I attend church, and most importantly, I’m a way bigger homophobe than Rick Santorum.”

"Do Your Homework Early"

Wikipedia will black out its Web site Wednesday to protest SOPA, the of anti-piracy legislation that’s being considered by Congress.

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales made the announcement on Twitter on Monday, saying the site would shut down English versions of the crowd-sourced online encyclopedia at midnight Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday until midnight Wednesday.

I am just starting to do press interviews about the upcoming blackout of Wikipedia to protest #sopa and #pipa ("Protect IP").— Jimmy Wales (@jimmy_wales) January 16, 2012

Wikipedia is not alone in its plans for a blackout. Reddit and the Cheezburger network, which includes sites like The Daily What and Fail Blog, also plan to shut down to protest SOPA. The document service Scribd already made a billion pages vanish. Craigslist boasts a notice on its home page saying “Stop SOPA and PIPA. [The bills] are threatening Craigslist and the rest of your Internet. Most of the web sites you use strongly oppose these bills.”

The online protests are changing the debate.

Wales called the move a “community decision.” He pointed to a page that was created to gauge support for a possible blackout. Users have until 6:59 p.m. Tuesday to weigh in on the decision.
Wales and other SOPA opponents hope to draw attention to language in SOPA that, according to some, is too broad and could hurt free speech and innovation.

Over the weekend, the White House hinted that it would oppose the current version of the bill. And key sponsors are stepping away from its most controversial aspects.
If Wikipedia blacks out as promised, Wales expects an estimated 25 million daily visitors to be affected. His advice for students who might rely on the site: “Do your homework early.”

Non-Roms Running Out of Time

Different state, same old story. And Mitt Romney is smiling.

Even before the first votes of this nomination fight, the Republican presidential rivals to Mr. Romney were pointing to South Carolina. Iowa would be a scrum, they explained, and New Hampshire a foregone Romney conclusion. But South Carolina, well . . . watch that space. The Palmetto State would be the opportunity for one candidate to break out, unite all those South Carolina conservatives, and make this a race.

Someone might want to tell South Carolina. For all the bickering among the campaigns about how real Mr. Romney's lead is here, there is one polling fact that is undeniable: No one Romney opponent is breaking out. The non-Romney vote is as split as ever, and for that the non-Romneys have only themselves to blame. They're botching it.

Some 30 years after Ronald Reagan assembled his winning coalition, the task of any candidate who wants to unite conservatives remains largely the same: Run on a message that brings together economic libertarians, defense hawks and social conservatives. That's the game here, the first-in-the-South primary, a state with sizable contingents of limited government, military and evangelical voters.

Newt Gingrich, who as recently as last month held a 20-point lead here, initially seemed to understand that job. His closing Iowa argument was that voters faced a choice between a "Massachusetts moderate" and a candidate born to a "bold Reagan conservatism" that highlighted economic growth and opportunity. Whether that message would have rescued Mr. Gingrich from his sliding poll numbers, we'll never know.

He couldn't stick with it. Mr. Gingrich is a gifted and knowledgeable politician, traits that have also given rise to a certain egoism and lack of discipline. Even before the Iowa caucuses, he was wandering off message, and his bitter, fourth-place finish inspired a vendetta against Mr. Romney. The optimistic Gingrich growth campaign quickly gave way to the opportunistic Gingrich Bain assault.

Running for a Republican nomination as an anticapitalist is not the smartest politics. Doing it even as you acknowledge taking $1.6 million from taxpayer ward Freddie Mac is the opposite of smart. The Gingrich team was betting it could tap into populist anger against wealthy Americans, but it misjudged its South Carolina audience.

This is the state that for the past year has been the epicenter of the debate on the merits of a free market because of President Obama's National Labor Relations Board attack on Boeing. The voters here get creative destruction, and when Mr. Gingrich brought up Bain at a forum in Charleston on Saturday, he was booed.

By Sunday, at an event in Georgetown, S.C.—a town that had once had a steel mill shut by Bain—he'd dropped the Bain line altogether and returned to his "Reagan conservatism" argument, insisting he's the best choice to counter "Obama radicalism." But it's arguably a little late for a refocus.

Focus has not been a problem for Rick Santorum, whose late Iowa surge was on the back of evangelical support, and who remains focused on that constituency here. The economy may be in the tank, Iran may be threatening, but the former Pennsylvania senator doesn't want to talk about that. He's making the pure pitch to social conservatives.

At an event here in Florence—a regional business hub in this state's coastal plain—Mr. Santorum spent an hour talking about his faith, "strong families" and America as a "moral enterprise." He cast the general-election stakes as a choice of two radically different cultural visions of America, and he boasted he was the only candidate who would openly fight on issues like abortion. It won him applause from certain quarters. But it left many attendees wondering when Mr. Santorum was going to talk about his tax plan, or his views on national defense. Save for responding to questions, he never really did.

Yet South Carolina voters want to hear about these issues, and in depth. If Iowa showed anything, it is that in this age of Obama and high unemployment and terror threats, even cultural conservatives are voting on more than faith. That explains the growing fight over whether Mr. Santorum should have won the recent endorsement of a group of 150 social conservative leaders—or whether the nod should have gone to Mr. Gingrich. The social right is as split as anyone.

Lurking, too, in South Carolina minds are doubts about Mr. Santorum's economic credentials. Ron Paul has been running an ad noting Mr. Santorum's vote against federal right-to-work legislation, which would restrict unions from forcing membership and dues. Voters are also aware of his past votes for acts like Davis-Bacon, which requires taxpayers to pay union rates in government-funded contracts and disadvantages nonunion companies in right-to-work South Carolina. Voters are open to Mr. Santorum's reassurance, and the former senator has the smarts and skills to offer it. But he's not bothering.

Ron Paul has likewise pursued a narrow approach, pitching himself to small-government economic conservatives. That purity arouses great passion in a certain core following, but it leaves Americans who are concerned about foreign policy and social issues cold.

Rick Perry, for his part, has yet to figure out who he is courting: One minute he's slamming Mr. Obama's "war on religion," the next smacking "vulture capitalism," the next flogging his "energy jobs" plan. His herky-jerky campaign has underlined his lack of preparation.

And so, while the Romney rivals now openly exhort voters to hurry, to unify, to stop the Romney march, too few may be listening. The four main opponents to the former Massachusetts governor are, among them, splitting almost 60% of the vote.

Mr. Romney has steadily motored on, pounding at his two themes of competence and electability. He's been running ads since last year slamming the Obama administration for its Boeing assault, while enlisting South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley to act as his local surrogate. The Bain attacks have, if anything, helped solidify some of his support. And Jon Huntsman's withdrawal and endorsement will throw a few more voters his way. Should Mr. Romney win a clear victory here, the nomination may be over but for the balloons and confetti.

Messrs. Gingrich, Paul, Santorum and Perry can't argue that they haven't had a shot. Super PACs have assured they have had the money to compete in South Carolina, despite varying prior performances. South Carolinians have hardly rallied behind the flawed Mr. Romney—his polling average in this state remains at 30%—and they remain open to a compelling alternative.

They just haven't seen anything compelling enough to unite them. And the non-Romneys are running out of time.

U.S. Denies Covert Assassination of Iranian Nuclear Scientist

The Iranian government said in a letter to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon that a civilian nuclear scientist who was killed by a bomb yesterday was the latest victim of a foreign terror campaign.

“Based on the existing evidence collected by the relevant Iranian security authorities, similar to previous incidents, perpetrators used the same terrorist method in assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists, i.e. attaching a sticky magnetic bomb to the car carrying the scientists and detonating it,” Mohammad Khazaee, Iran’s ambassador to the UN, said in the letter yesterday. “Furthermore, there is firm evidence that certain foreign quarters are behind such assassinations.”

Iranian officials have accused the U.S. and Israel of targeting Iranian nuclear scientists in an effort to halt Iran’s nuclear program, which Western nations say may be aimed at producing atomic weapons. Tensions have risen over U.S. and European efforts to increase economic sanctions on Iran because of the nuclear program.

Khazaee said Mostafa Ahamdi Roshan, who was killed in a Tehran bomb blast, was the fourth prominent Iranian scientist to be targeted in similar attacks. Roshan, a deputy director at the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan province, and another person died in the latest attack, Khazaee said.

“This terrorist action was undertaken by elements of the Zionist regime and those who claim to fight against terrorism,” the official Islamic Republic News Agency cited Iranian Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi as saying.

Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor said by telephone that he had no comment on the reports.

Clinton’s Comment

“I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters yesterday in Washington. “There has to be an understanding between Iran, its neighbors and the international community that finds a way forward for it to end its provocative behavior, end its search for nuclear weapons and rejoin the international community.”

Some Republican presidential candidates in the U.S. have supported efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear program by attacking its scientists. In a November debate, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich endorsed “taking out their scientists,” and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum called it ”a wonderful thing” when Iranian scientists are killed.

Previous attacks against Iranian nuclear scientists involved the assassination of Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, killed by a bomb outside his Tehran home in January 2010, and an explosion in November of that year that took the life of Majid Shahriari and wounded Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, who is now the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.

Possible Attackers

“While it is difficult to gauge the impact of the scientists’ deaths on the country’s nuclear development, Iranian officials have already acknowledged they have a human resources problem in the program, largely because of the sharp political differences within the country,” Meir Javedanfar, lecturer on Iranian politics at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center in Israel, said in a telephone interview.

The attacks on scientists may be the work of a foreign intelligence agency such as Israel’s Mossad, according to a U.S. official who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity because intelligence matters are classified. They also could have been carried out by an Iranian exile group such as the People’s Mujahadeen Organization of Iran working independently or in cooperation with a foreign intelligence agency, the official said in a telephone interview.

Attributing the murder to the Mujahadeen is “absolutely false,” the group said in an e-mailed statement.

Locating Targets

It’s also possible that internal opponents of the Iranian regime might have helped the Mujahadeen e-Khalq or foreign agents identify, locate and target important figures in Iran’s nuclear program, the official said.

That alone is difficult, said Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former Central Intelligence Agency specialist on Iran who is now at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a Washington foreign- policy research organization.

“It’s not as if you can look people like this up in the Natanz phone book,” he said in a telephone interview.

It’s conceivable that Iran’s Interior Ministry may have targeted at least some of the scientists because it suspected they were disloyal, according to Gerecht and the U.S. official. Using magnetic bombs attached to their vehicles would make it appear that Israel was behind the killings.

Mossad was suspected of using such a “sticky bomb” to kill Lebanese Hezbollah terrorist leader Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus in February 2008, although that was never proved, the official said.

Explosion, Stuxnet

Other incidents in Iran in recent months have raised suspicions of sabotage against the country’s nuclear program.

A November explosion at a military base west of Tehran killed at least 17 people including a director in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, state media reported at the time. Last year, malicious software known as Stuxnet affected computer systems controlling several centrifuges used in Iran’s uranium- enrichment program, Iranian officials have said.

The latest killing also follows an Iranian court’s Jan. 9 decision to sentence an American of Iranian descent, Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, to death for spying. U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland has said allegations that Hekmati worked for the CIA were “simply untrue.”

EU Meeting

Iran is under increasing pressure to curb what the International Atomic Energy Agency and a number of western nations have said may be a program to build nuclear weapons. The IAEA reported in November, citing unidentified sources it called “credible,” that Iranian work toward a nuclear weapon continued until 2010 -- seven years after U.S. Intelligence agencies determined with high probability that Tehran’s government had stopped.

European Union foreign ministers plan to meet on Jan. 23 to discuss imposing an oil embargo on Iran. Iranian officials have threatened to shut the Strait of Hormuz, a transit route for a fifth of the world’s oil, if crude exports are sanctioned.

Crude rose 0.7 percent to $101.53 at 8:30 a.m. in London, after reaching an eight-month high above $103 last week. Futures are up more than 10 percent in the past year.

Yesterday’s attack “comes in the middle of heightened tensions, and it helps Iran to play on a sense of threat that it is under a lot of pressure,” Gala Riani, a Middle East analyst at London-based forecaster IHS Global Insight, said by telephone. “It can also be beneficial to more extremist elements in the government who are supporting further military drills in the Strait of Hormuz.”

Iran conducted naval exercises near the Strait for 10 days that ended early this month. Iran also announced on Jan. 6 plans for “naval war games” to be conducted by the Revolutionary Guard Corps next month.

American Sentenced to Death in Iran

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - An Iranian court has convicted an American man of working for the CIA and sentenced him to death, state radio reported Monday, in a case adding to the accelerating tension between the United States and Iran.

Iran charges that as a former U.S. Marine, Amir Mirzaei Hekmati received special training and served at U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan before heading to Iran for his alleged intelligence mission. The radio report did not say when the verdict was issued. Under Iranian law, he has 20 days to appeal.

The 28-year-old former military translator was born in Arizona and graduated from high school in Michigan. His family is of Iranian origin. His father, a professor at a community college in Flint, Michigan, has said his son is not a CIA spy and was visiting his grandmothers in Iran when he was arrested.

His trial took place as the U.S. announced new, tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, which Washington believes Tehran is using to develop a possible atomic weapons capability.

Iran, which says it only seeks nuclear reactors for energy and research, has sharply increased its threats and military posturing against stronger pressures, including the U.S. sanctions targeting Iran's Central Bank in attempts to complicate its ability to sell oil.

The U.S. State Department has demanded Hekmati's release.

The court convicted him of working with a hostile country, belonging to the CIA and trying to accuse Iran of involvement in terrorism, Monday's report said.

In its ruling, a branch of Tehran Revolutionary Court described Hekmati as a mohareb, an Islamic term that means a fighter against God, and a mofsed, or one who spreads corruption on earth. Both terms appear frequently in Iranian court rulings.

In a closed court hearing in late December, the prosecution asked for the death penalty for Hekmati.

The U.S. government has called on Iranian authorities to grant Swiss diplomats access to him in prison. The Swiss government represents U.S. interests in Iran because the two countries don't have diplomatic relations.

Hekmati is a dual U.S.-Iranian national. Iran considers him an Iranian since the country's law does not recognize dual citizenship.

His father, Ali Hekmati, and family friend Muna Jondy, an attorney who has been speaking on behalf of the family, did not immediately respond to emails and phone messages left at their offices before business hours Monday morning.

Similar cases against Americans accused of spying have heightened tensions throughout the years-long standoff over Iran's nuclear program.

Iran arrested three Americans in July 2009 along the border with Iraq and accused them of espionage, though the Americans said they were just hiking in the scenic and relatively peaceful Kurdish region of northern Iraq.

One of them was released after a year in prison, and the other two were freed in September in deals involving bail payments that were brokered by the Gulf sultanate of Oman, which has good relations with Iran and the U.S.

On Dec. 18, Iran's state TV broadcast video of Hekmati delivering a purported confession in which he said he was part of a plot to infiltrate Iran's Intelligence Ministry.

In a statement released the same day, the Intelligence Ministry said its agents identified Hekmati before his arrival in Iran, at Bagram Air Field in neighboring Afghanistan. Bagram is the main base for American and other international forces outside Kabul, the Afghan capital.

It is not clear exactly when he was arrested. Iranian news reports have said he was detained in late August or early September.

Hekmati's father, Ali, said in a December interview with The Associated Press, that his son was a former Arabic translator in the U.S. Marines who entered Iran about four months earlier to visit his grandmothers.

At the time, he was working in Qatar as a contractor for a company "that served the Marines," his father said, without providing more specific details.

Iran and the Straight of Hormuz

Iran has the ability to block the Strait of Hormuz “for a period of time,” and the U.S. would take action to reopen it, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Martin Dempsey said.

“They’ve invested in capabilities that could, in fact, for a period of time block the Strait of Hormuz,” Dempsey said in an interview aired yesterday on the CBS “Face the Nation” program. “We’ve invested in capabilities to ensure that if that happens, we can defeat that.”

Should Iran try to close Hormuz, the U.S. “would take action and reopen” the waterway, said Dempsey, President Barack Obama’s top military adviser.

Blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic shipping lane linking the Gulf of Oman with the Persian Gulf, would constitute a “red line” for the U.S., as would Iranian efforts to build a nuclear weapon, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on the same program.

The U.S. tightened economic sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program on Dec. 31, and the European Union is weighing a ban later this month on purchases of Iranian crude.

Iranian Threat

Iran threatened last month to shut the Strait of Hormuz, a transit point for a fifth of oil traded worldwide, if sanctions are imposed on its crude exports. Iran held 10 days of naval maneuvers east of the strait ending Jan. 3. The country plans even bigger military maneuvers in the area next month, the state-run Fars news agency reported on Jan. 5.

U.S. sanctions imposed last year seek to cut off dealings with Iran’s banking system, making it difficult for consumers to buy the country’s oil.

Iran has also started to enrich uranium at its Fordo production facility, according to the official Kayhan newspaper.

The existence of the Fordo plant, built into the side of a mountain near the Muslim holy city of Qom, south of Tehran, was disclosed in September 2009, heightening concern among the U.S. and its allies who say Iran’s activities may be a cover for the development of atomic weapons. The Persian Gulf country says it needs nuclear technology to secure energy for its growing population.

Pressure on Iran

Continued pressure, rather than threats of air strikes, is the best way to forestall Iran from developing nuclear weapons, Panetta said.

While the U.S. shouldn’t “take any option off the table,“ Panetta said “the responsible thing to do right now is to keep putting diplomatic and economic pressure on them to force them to do the right thing, and to make sure that they do not make the decision to proceed with the development of a nuclear weapon.”

Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum said Jan. 1 on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he would use air strikes against Iran unless the country dismantled its nuclear program or allowed inspectors to verify that the work isn’t aimed at making a weapon.

Dempsey suggested that curbing Iran’s nuclear work by bombing its facilities would be difficult.

“I’d rather not discuss the degree of difficulty and in any way encourage them to read anything into that,” Dempsey said. “My responsibility is to encourage the right degree of planning, to understand the risks associated with any kind of military option.”

Israeli Strike

Should Israel decide to undertake a unilateral military strike against Iran, the U.S. priority would be protecting American troops in the region, Panetta said.

Dempsey and Panetta sought on CBS to provide assurances that the new U.S. military strategy, announced last week, won’t limit the U.S. ability to stop aggressors.

“What we’re looking to do here is not constrain ourselves to a two-war construct, but rather build a force that has the kind of agility” needed to adapt to any scenario, Dempsey said. Previous U.S. war planning called for preparing to fight two conventional wars simultaneously.

The plan was driven by the need to cut almost $490 billion from projected Pentagon spending through 2021, including about $261 billion through 2017. Panetta said last week the details won’t be released until the Pentagon presents its 2013 budget request to Congress by early February.

GOP Field Looks South

CONCORD, N.H. — Even as most of the Republican presidential hopefuls hustle through town halls and diners ahead of Tuesday’s primary here, a consensus is emerging among the campaigns that South Carolina will serve as the great clarifier.

That’s where it will become clear that either Mitt Romney is on an inexorable path to the nomination or this process will take some time and the Republican Party’s conservative base isn’t quite ready to accept the once-moderate Massachusetts governor.

New Hampshire still matters. But its 2012 relevance is chiefly in how the results will shape South Carolina on Jan. 21.

With Mitt Romney enjoying a wide lead in Granite State polls, the key outcome Tuesday isn’t who will finish on top. Rather, it’s whether Jon Huntsman places strongly enough to keep going to South Carolina and whether Rick Santorum can outperform Newt Gingrich.

In the three-dimensional chess game that is a multi-candidate primary, some measure of success here for Huntsman would give the former Utah governor a rationale for taking his campaign south and targeting the center and center-right voters Romney would otherwise have largely to himself. And if Santorum can, in the second consecutive state, perform better than Gingrich, the former Pennsylvania senator will have a strong case to make in South Carolina that he’s the one the right should rally around to stop Romney.

“If we can be that strong conservative alternative [out of New Hampshire], then that’s the place where we can do well, I think,” Santorum said of South Carolina, adding that he “didn’t have the money to spend in New Hampshire before we got here.”

The possibility of a candidate drawing votes on Romney’s left flank and a more unified opposition on the right would present the GOP front-runner with his most serious challenge yet. Even if it didn’t threaten his long-term prospects, it would at least slow his momentum and presage a longer race.

A third Romney victory — in the heart of the GOP’s Southern base and in a state that has picked the party’s nominee in every primary since 1980 — would almost certainly ensure a coronation in Tampa.

“That’s a strong run, there’s no question about that,” Huntsman acknowledged, discussing the implications of a Romney sweep of the traditional first three states. “Pretty soon somebody builds up a sense of inevitability and in fundraising and organization and all that — it’s just the real world.”

Even as Romney officials seek to tamp down expectations by hewing to talking points about how their candidate won only 15 percent in South Carolina four years ago, some of the front-runner’s most prominent supporters are openly discussing the prospect of the Palmetto State as a TKO.

“He’s going to win in New Hampshire, and it’s going to come down, my friends, as it always does, to South Carolina,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said at a rally near Myrtle Beach last week. “If Mitt Romney wins here, he will be the next president of the United States.”

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, in New Hampshire stumping with Romney, noted that he’s “the front-runner in all the polls in South Carolina.”

“I think he’s doing great [in South Carolina],” Haley said.

The stakes there are equally high for the other candidates: Top backers of Santorum and Gingrich have already discussed how their candidate’s out-polling the other here would set them up for South Carolina.

For Santorum, topping Gingrich in New Hampshire would mark the second state in which the former senator would have outdone the former speaker — and that’s an important part of Santorum’s decision to come here, explained his chief strategist.

“We can beat some people here,” said John Brabender. “And once you do that, I think that’s helpful, because it shows some consistency.”

In Gingrich’s case, performing better in New Hampshire would demonstrate that Iowa was a fluke.

“I think we will get a strong indication that the Santorum bubble was exactly that and that Newt is still in contention,” said former Rep. Bob Walker, a close Gingrich adviser. “And by the time we get to South Carolina, we think we’ll have a very strong story to tell there and that [South Carolina] will end up being a major way of separating out the field between conservative and moderate.”

Brabender concurred.

“I think the role of South Carolina is to narrow this thing down to two candidates, Mitt Romney and one other candidate; we hope that’s Rick Santorum,” he said. “Everything changes once that happens. Because I think it’s after South Carolina that we see a big change in the field.”

Santorum’s hope is that Rick Perry, having gone down with one final fight, exits after the Palmetto State and that Gingrich, having finished behind Santorum in a third straight contest, follows suit.

“At that point you’re just helping Romney to go on,” said a Santorum official about Gingrich, post-South Carolina.

Huntsman officials also think that South Carolina will sift the field — but into a three-way contest among Romney, a social conservative, such as Santorum, and their candidate.

If the former Utah governor can parlay a strong Sunday debate performance into at least a third-place showing in New Hampshire, he could at the very least be a thorn in Romney’s side with the independents who can participate in South Carolina’s primary.

“South Carolina can blow everything up,” said Huntsman campaign manager Matt David, sketching out a long contest in which three candidates split delegates over a period of months.

Romney backers hope that Huntsman will be a nonfactor in South Carolina — and that the conservative trio of Santorum, Gingrich and Perry are all still drawing votes when Jan. 21 comes around. Then the former Massachusetts governor could win with a McCain 2008-style plurality, and Santorum or the other two conservatives would be hard pressed to compete financially in a big, resource-draining state like Florida.

Romney’s camp is as gleeful as Santorum officials are downcast about Perry’s decision to make a stand in South Carolina.

Boston’s hope: that with more than two weeks on the ground there and an in-the-black bank account, Perry can build back his numbers sufficiently to at least pull votes from the more plausible two conservative alternatives.

“He’s got some money!” said former New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu, hopefully, of why Perry could still be a factor.

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