Primary Considerations

Who elected Barack Obama? People who also voted to re-affirm traditional marriage in California and Florida. People who also voted to end legal discrimination against working-class white men in Colorado. People who also voted not to liberalise the gambling laws in Missouri and Ohio. Almost everyone in the black church. The clear majority of Catholics.

In a word, moral and social conservatives.

So why did they vote for him?

For reasons of economic populism and foreign policy realism. Which are, of course, the right reasons.

No one deserves a free run against nothing more than Sarah Palin. And someone elected by morally and socially conservative economic populists and foreign policy realists, but who pays them back by giving the position of Secretary of State to Hillary Clinton, deserves a very serious challenge indeed in the 2012 primaries. The foundations of that challenge should already be being laid. Are they being? If not, why not?

Still, at least this is an opportunity to fill a vacant Senate seat (not the only one about to become vacant, of course) with a morally and socially conservative economic populist and foreign policy realist. Nothing could better befit the state named after the last Catholic King of England, Scotland and Ireland (indeed, the only ever Catholic King of all three for anything more than a matter of minutes), whose title at the time of its foundation was taken from the birthplace of Christendom.