’08 Election

Posted on '08 Election, Random Musings, Republicans

random thoughts on ames: part 1

Ron Paul sounds more like he’s lecturing the country than he’s motivating the country.  Some of his good ideas get lost in the bizarre presentation. The problem is that the hard truths don’t usually come from the candidates who can win.  Activists don’t usually win elections as candidates.  Ron Paul sounds like an activist, as does the other unknown candidate, John Cox.  Ron Paul says America is becoming a tyranny.  There’s a difference between being a realist and being a scare-monger.  Ron Paul sounds a lot like Kucinich in his views on trade.  The Paulites are kind of scary.  I agree with Paul and Neil Boortz that we are becoming less free due to increased government bureaucracy. There’s a logical argument that we should focus more on the problems we face domestically than on foreign policy.  What sympathizers of Ron Paul’s seem not to understand is that we need a muscular foreign policy to allow us to stay free and prosperous, and to live the life that we are used to as Americans.

I love Mike Huckabee’s speech, even though he did rip off Newt’s Fed-Ex analogy on illegal immigration.  It’s more pep talk than lecture, and filled with enough one-liners to pack any campaign article.  He is missing his true calling – motivational speaker.  The audience absolutely loved him, and I hope that he sticks around until the end and shows well in Iowa today.  I don’t know why those who are supporting Huckabee are not concerned that he might be one of those “compassionate conservatives” who show compassion by the way they allocate money to federal programs and bureaucracy.  With all of Bush’s strengths, he has been weak on controlling spending.  If you are a person who is serious about that issue, Huckabee might not be your guy.  On the other hand, I’m not sure any of the top three are committed to reducing government spending either. Rudy is probably the most likely to do that, but do we really know for sure?  I don’t think we have that kind of candidate.

It’s a shame that Duncan Hunter hasn’t gotten more traction.  For conservatives, he’s the closest we have to everything we want.  He is a social conservative, and he’s strong on defense issues, including border security.  I’m not sure why his speech is focusing so much on trade and China.  The applause by the audience seems to be even for just about every candidate.  It’s hard to predict the results of the Iowa straw poll based on audience applause.  His best moments in this speech are when he talks about his area of expertise: border security.  Duncan Hunter ends with a shout-out to the military.  Always a quality option in Republican-friendly towns.

I missed Romney’s speech, but I’m sure there was nothing in it I hadn’t heard before.

Romney may win, as everyone is predicting, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were a few surprises coming out of this straw poll.

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Posted on '08 Election

attack dogs?

Chuck Todd has suggested that Chris Dodd and Joe Biden were auditioning for a new role last night, when they took a few swings at Barack Obama over his statements on Pakistan – Hillary’s attack dogs. As if she needed them. A more likely possibility is that they were acting out of self-preservation rather than any ambition to be a part of a future Clinton administration. The time has come for those not named Clinton or Obama to make their move and to try to get some blows in to knock down the top two candidates. That’s not to suggest that Dodd or Biden didn’t have it right when they criticized Obama on Pakistan, however…

Good thing that this was only a candidate forum. If this was an actual debate, it would have to be considered one of the most unfocused, disorganized debates we have seen so far. Keith Olbermann was unable to control what was happening on the stage, but in some cases, this was a good thing. If he had tight control over this forum, we might not have gotten the exchange between Dodd, Clinton and Obama. Dodd and Clinton argued that going into Pakistan would destablize the regime of Pakistan President Musharraf. Even though I’m sympathetic to Obama’s call to go in and get Osama bin Laden if we have the “actionable intelligence” needed to know for sure where he is, this is not the right time to discuss that possibility. Musharraf is struggling to keep control of Pakistan, to stay alive even, so even if he’s not the best guy to spread democracy, if he is overthrown, the resulting government will be much worse.

Pakistan appears to disapprove of Obama’s grand plan .”It’s a very irresponsible statement, that’s all I can say,” Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Khusheed Kasuri told AP Television News. “As the election campaign in America is heating up we would not like American candidates to fight their elections and contest elections at our expense.” I don’t think Obama will get away with making the argument that since the other senators voted for the war in Iraq, they don’t have the ability to question his Pakistan strategy. Does anyone actually believe that Obama would go into Pakistan with our military to take out Bin Laden? I doubt that he would.

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Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Editorials

it’s not racial

That’s the best answer I can give to Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson who wants to make Barack Obama’s standings in the polls about his race. It’s not about that. He asks if “white America” is ready to elect an African-American as our President, and cites our previous history with segregation, slavery, and civil rights.  There’s no question that we have struggled as a nation with racism, and to some degree we still do. But the only ones who seem to be obsessed with Obama’s race are the media. They keep bringing it up as if we SHOULD care about it.

Most Americans will vote based on which candidate they feel is the most capable of leading this country.  Many of the South Carolina Democrats in the poll he mentions are probably supporting Hillary over Barack for this reason, not because of racism. It doesn’t look like a coincidence that Mr. Robinson mentions South Carolina as part of the “white America” that he claims could keep Obama from the nomination. Even though I don’t generally give any Democrats the benefit of the doubt, I think that Robinson is trying to make a connection that isn’t there.  There may be a few who will not vote for Hillary because she’s a woman, or Barack because he’s African-American.  That’s not representative of the whole state of South Carolina, nor is it representative of this country overall.  I resent the implication that the main reason Barack isn’t making up much ground on Hillary in the polls in South Carolina and elsewhere is because of his race.  There are other reasons for that, but nothing that makes for an exciting story on the frontpage of a website or newspaper.

Americans deserve more credit than they are being given here. We can judge for ourselves whether a candidate has the right combination of charisma, experience, and leadership to be our choice for President. We can judge for ourselves what kind of President that candidate would be, not based on race, gender or even religion – and we don’t need the media’s approval for our choice.  The candidates on both sides would be wise to keep that in mind.

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4 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

mostly unedited thoughts on the youtube debate

I was about to give the YouTubers credit for keeping the conversation serious, and then the second half of the debate happened.  Of course I think CNN gets most of the blame for this.  Maybe the entertainment factor is a good thing for political junkies who are close to getting burned out with all these debates. I Loved the snowman video as well as the one with the folks from TN, and the singing tax guy.

Quick takes on the candidates:

Hillary Clinton – continues to impress.  Who’s going to stop her from getting to the finish line? Not any of these guys.  She was asked about whether she considers herself a liberal.  Of course not. She’s a “progressive” just like all the  other Democratic proponents of expanding government.

Barack Obama – ok, but not spectacular.  Had a few good answers.  Maybe it’s unfair to compare him to Hillary.  Made a strong defense of his approach (more affordable coverage) to health care vs. John Edwards’ approach(mandating coverage).

John Edwards – Hair looked good as always.  Nice tie. Got more than enough time to talk about his signature issues.  Would have loved to hear him go into more detail on his statement in Cleveland regarding a national fund to help people in danger of losing their homes.

Biden – one of the many “truth to power” candidates on Iraq. I don’t mean that he is right about everything he says.  Just that he seems to have a more realistic take on the aftermath of Iraq than most of the other candidates. He also had a few great lines…which I will get to shortly.

Richardson – didn’t make any major gaffes (that I noticed anyway)

Dodd, Kucinich, and Gravel-  The problem that all these second to fourth tier guys have is that all the niche groups are taken by the top 5. That is, except for the rabidly anti-war group.  Kucinich is a true believer.  You have to credit him for that.  The problem is that, despite what all the polling seems to be telling us, this is not where the country is on the Iraq war and on pre-emptive war in general. Both Kucinich and Gravel kept the debate from getting too serious, but the format of this debate would have made that impossible anyway.

This debate is more about entertaining the public then informing them on the issues.  Buried in the zany videos there have been some serious questions that, as always have only gotten sound-bite type answers.  Kucinich wants us to text for peace. Yup.  I think that it would be more useful to text Kucinich himself and tell him that his time is up as a candidate.
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Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

something barack obama needs to explain

Check out this lede from Philip Elliott, AP writer, in his article titled, “Obama: Don’t stay in Iraq over genocide”.

He says:

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn’t a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

Obama goes on to say that he believes that there will be bloodshed after we leave Iraq, and yet he thinks that the risk is greater if we stay than if we continue to “occupy Iraq and serve as a magnet for terrorist activity”. Well, at least Obama has acknowledged the possibility that there wouldn’t be a painless exit from Iraq. That’s a possibility not many Democrats are willing to even consider.

Barack Obama seems to believe that the answer to Iraq is international forces and more diplomacy. He sees the situation in Iraq as hopeless and chaotic enough that our troops should leave. He appears to suggest that it is time to let the Iraqis deal with the consequences of not meeting their political objectives. Many Democrats agree with Obama on this, but some are more committed to troop withdrawal than others. It’s a sympathetic position to take, even for a few stray Republicans who are deserting the President on this war.

If that’s his position, then how can he then support US military intervention in Darfur? What makes the Iraqis less worthy of being saved from genocide than the Sudanese?

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1 Comment Posted on '08 Election, Conservatives, George W. Bush, Republicans

stand by your man (part 1)

Let me preface this by saying that there are many areas where conservatives believe that President Bush has disappointed them. The debate over McCain-Kennedy comprehensive “immigration reform” is the most recent example of this perceived apostasy, and it’s a great example of how tone-deaf the administration has become lately. We are also annoyed with the massive increases in federal spending that the President allowed to pass his desk. To some conservatives, there is a long list of Dubya’s sins, real and imagined, and they are ready to move on from this President. Our reasons are different than those of the Democrats. While acknowledging that he should be given all of the credit for his SCOTUS picks and some of the credit for our strong economy, we still find him lacking in other areas. Some of the criticism is unfair in this way: He never ran as a fiscal conservative. He was always supportive of making it easier for illegal immigrants to come here. We voted for the President, not because of these things, but because of Iraq and because we wanted conservative judges on the Supreme Court.

Bill Kristol believes that President Bush will be judged as a successful president. His argument almost convinces me, but even though I know that there have been some successes with the surge strategy, I’m just not buying his optimism on Iraq. He says that in order for a war president to be judged a success, the war has to be won. Many of us are discouraged with Iraq. Maybe we are buying in too deeply to what the MSM is selling. Maybe we are just being realistic about the obstacles the administration is facing in continuing the surge and trying to improve the conditions on the ground in Iraq. In either case, it’s an uphill battle to keep the Republicans from defecting to the Democratic side on the war, and it’s a continuing struggle to keep the impatience of the American people with the progress of this war from forcing those defections from those standing for re-election next time. I’m not rooting against the President. I want him to succeed, not because it validates me, or neocons, or because he would have a better legacy. I want Iraq to succeed because that would mean the terrorists and insurgents have failed there.

Maybe we are asking for too much in our presidents and in our presidential candidates. After all, none of the Republican presidential candidates currently in the field are as committed to reducing the size of the federal government as the average conservative is. They don’t have any new ideas on Iraq, Iran, or North Korea, and they would not implement anything different from what Bush has done so far. On the other hand, Romney, Giuliani, and Fred are all better communicators than President Bush. Romney is probably the weakest of the three because of his tendency to sound wonkish when discussing anything. All I’m saying is that if conservatives intend to vote for a Republican for President in ’08 (rather than sitting the election out and giving the election to Hillary by default), that means that we will have to settle for someone who doesn’t fit everything we want. And that includes FRED.

4 Comments Posted on '08 Election

just run already

At some point, the potential campaign of Fred Thompson has to kick off, and we need to find out if he is everything we want in a nominee or whether this whole deal is just hype. Right now that’s all it is.  He sounds good. He says all the right things. He has a solid conservative record in most areas of concern to us, and he’s not Rudy or Mitt. What more can we possibly want?

How about a candidate who doesn’t duck formal debates with other potential nominees?  How about somebody who takes a few risks on the way to the nomination? If Fred waits until September to officially announce that he is running for President, it could be too late for us to find out if he is the strongest candidate we have to put up against Hillary. Fred can’t possibly live up to the hype built around him. I think he could be a strong candidate, and see no reason why he couldn’t win a debate against the current Republican field.  I just want to see the proof.

Dean Barnett makes a similar point here.

He says:

But even more disconcerting is the news that Fred’s going to delay entering the race until September. If I didn’t know better, I would say the Thompson campaign thinks that he can get the nomination by running out the clock and relying on eager dorko-fanboys to keep saying, “Did you see that Michael Moore video?!!!”

As usual, to preempt the angry line of commenters now cueing up, let me assert that I like Fred. If he’s the nominee, I’ll support him enthusiastically. But his “campaign” is doing neither himself nor his party any favors. It’s time he enters the ring and proves that he can play on this level. It’s only fair that he allows Republican Party members to make an informed decision about the man who seeks to lead them.

Folksy blog posts are nice. But the country and the party deserve more.

It’s time to see what kind of candidate Fred can be.  I hope he gives us enough time to find out.

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Posted on '08 Election, Editorials, UK

just a sticker on that burning suv

At what point are we all going to admit that terrorism is a real problem? Terrorism did not stop after 9/11. There were attacks all over the world, including the 7/7 terror atttack in London. Some countries stayed strong, like the UK, and some caved in and made concessions to try to appease the bloodthirsty murderers killing innocents mostly in the name of Islam. But it’s not our friends, or family, or co-workers this time around. It’s only been someone else’s friends, family, co-workers, and fellow countrymen. It should still matter to us. What makes us so invincible? We are doing almost everything that is in our power to do to try to prevent another 9/11. (That is, everything except making a serious attempt to secure our borders – and we need to keep pressuring Congress and the White House to do what they have no desire to do.) Even with our aggressive attempts to stop a potential terrorist attack here in the United States, we have no guarantees that we won’t have another terrorist attack.

That’s why we should care what is happening in the UK — London with the foiled bomb plot, and the more recent events at Glasgow Airport when a Jeep Cherokee loaded with gas cylinders crashed into the main entrance at that airport and burst into flames. It’s a reminder to us to stay vigilant. It’s a reminder to us that there are people out there who are willing to sacrifice their own lives for revenge on the infidels (or for those 72 virgins). Either way, negotiation with someone who thinks like that isn’t possible. You would think that Islam would win more converts if those fringe elements in their religion would stop beheading people or blowing things up. But I guess that kind of religion just can’t be understood.

Islamic extremists must be stopped. Anyone who wants to trivialize what we are now seeing in the UK, simply because it might not have been a top-of-the-line car bomb, or because this could be something concocted by the Bush-Cheney-Blair conspiracy, is not someone we should want to lead this country for the next 4-8 years. No serious presidential candidate should have this view, and we should disqualify anyone who isn’t willing to do whatever is necessary to protect America from all her enemies, both foreign and domestic.

(This is not a rip on John Edwards for two reasons. First of all, his position on terrorism is much more nuanced than his memorable soundbite about terrorism being a bumper-sticker slogan. It’s still a wrong-headed approach, but I think to some limited degree he knows that terrorism is a threat to this country. Secondly, I don’t see him as as a viable threat to Hillary and Obama, so I’m only worried about what those two or our Republican nominee might do about this threat once elected.)

It’s all well and good to talk about how the government could fix Darfur, health care, education, and every domestic problem by throwing all of our tax money at those areas, but when events like these keep the terrorist threat on our minds, will those domestic issues still take priority over national security? There’s nothing wrong with wanting to have solutions about health care and education. After all, the Democrats claim to want to fix those things EVERY SINGLE election cycle. But if we ignore the bigger problems right in front of our eyes, then someday we might have more to worry about than the price of our prescription drugs.

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Random Musings

whiner-in-chief

That’s one election John Edwards CAN win. There’s something inconsistent about condemning Ann Coulter’s outrageous remarks against himself and other Democratic presidential candidates, and using those remarks to raise campaign cash. Everything that the Edwards campaign has done recently smacks of desperation.  They know that their chances are getting dimmer for mounting a serious challenge to Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. It would take a lot of self-restraint to ignore what Ann Coulter says and take the high road here, and it’s clear that John Edwards doesn’t have it.  He took the opportunity to continue to pander to his netroots base by attacking Ann Coulter, one of the left’s favorite targets.  I would have more respect for Edwards if he had taken on Coulter directly, rather than having his wife call into Hardball and confront her. He did make an appearance on Hardball the next day, but it’s not the same thing.

If I was a John Edwards supporter, I would be concerned about the campaign’s attempt to paint him as victim of the right-wing smear machine and powerful forces who are trying to stop Edwards from making necessary changes in Washington.  It makes him look weak.  It makes him look desperate. It also makes him look like a distant third-place candidate in the Democratic presidential field.

If he can’t handle people saying terrible things about him now, he probably doesn’t want to know what he would have to endure as President of the United States.  He would have to take much more abuse from foreign leaders opposed to our foreign policy, from the UN, and from terrorists looking to intimidate the United States into making bad decisions about how to deal with them.  Can he confront those challenges and be a strong voice for the United States and our interests around the world?  That’s a question we need to answer.

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Posted on '08 Election

the madness of 2008

Consider this an open letter to all alternative potential presidential candidates (except FRED).  I’m talking to you,  Al Gore, Newt Gingrich, Michael Bloomberg, Ralph Nader, and any other long shot candidate I forgot about.

Get in or stay out. Make a decision and stop wasting our time with your stupid ego-driven flirtation with the WH. You are not going to win, and you don’t have anything new to add to the debate.  We have more than enough candidates to be unhappy about, and your entry into the race won’t do anything to change that. Do the honorable thing and support the candidates who have put in the time and effort to gain our support.

Thank you.

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