’08 Election

2 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Moonbats

random thoughts on the democratic debate

What Keith Olbermann oh-so-cleverly called “the spotlight dance” between Obama and Clinton (and those other people) failed to reveal anything that we didn’t already know. There was no compelling story in this debate, only the regularly scheduled Bush-bashing and an argument over which candidate would get us out of Iraq the fastest. That’s why all the buzz was around two (shall we say) lesser lights in the Democratic field, Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich.  (I especially liked Gravel’s accusation that Barack wanted to nuke somebody…)

Transcript available here.

Kucinich doesn’t buy the line that they did the best they could with the information they had at the time. At least he has what could be charitably called an Iraq plan.

KUCINICH:

I have a plan, H.R. 1234, a plan to end the war in Iraq, which calls on the international community to provide peacekeepers and security forces that will move in as our troops leave. But we can’t do that until we determine we’re going to end the occupation. And we will do that when we stop the funding.

Any plan that primarily depends on the international community for its success is doomed to failure.  There should be collaboration with the international community, but I’m not sure what makes Kucinich think that he can do what much more skilled politicians have failed to do. What would convince those countries who had previously promised their support to actually provide it? I don’t know the answer, and Kucinich probably doesn’t either.

That said, he is committed to getting the US out of Iraq, for better or for worse. He calls out the other candidates for continuing to pay for this war that they don’t support.   He has been the candidate who takes unpopular positions on issues, and that’s something you can’t say about most of the Democratic front-runners. He could be the most hard-left candidate the Dems have…except for Mike Gravel.

Mike Gravel said some unbelievable stuff…like this:

We need to find another way. I really would like to sit down with Pelosi and with Reid, and I would hope the other senators would focus on, how do you get out? You pass the law, not a resolution, a law making it a felony to stay there. And I’ll give you the text of it.

And if you’re worried about filibuster, here’s what you do tactically. They can pass it in the House. We’ve got the votes there. We’ve got the votes there.  In the Senate, let them filibuster it. And let Reid call up every — at 12:00 every day to have a cloture vote. And let the American people see clearly who’s keeping the war going and who’s not.

Good luck with that, Mr. Gravel. Did you catch that? He wants to make it a FELONY to stay in Iraq. Left unclear, of course, is WHO Gravel wants to put in jail.  I’m guessing it’s the President of the United States, but maybe I should ask him the question just to be sure . It’s quite difficult to be left of Kucinich, so I give him credit for succeeding with that.

Even though I have no doubt that both of these men believe everything they said in the debate, these statements weren’t entirely made out of conviction.   They were made out of necessity —  a need to distinguish themselves from their fellow travelers…and maybe in the process steal some inhabitants of nutroots nation. What we saw from them in this debate is Exhibit A why third-tier candidates, whether they are Democrats, Libertarians, Greens, or the Vampires party, haven’t yet attained that credibility that one must have to break into the top tier in any presidential race.

Another reason these candidates can’t seem to get any traction is that choosing a presidential candidate has become more about image than about substance.  Image consciousness drives the process in both parties.  In the non-political world, we would be more impressed with Joe Biden and Bill Richardson and their experience/ qualifications than we are with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. The Republican or Democratic presidential nomination is no longer given to the most qualified, but to the candidate whose family looks the best on a Christmas card.

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2 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Republicans

more mitt

Here’s my theory that I’m just going to throw out there for discussion: Mitt Romney was never able to completely convince pro-choicers that he was one of them, no matter what he said publicly. We are quite familiar with the Senate debate video clips, and the accusations leveled of flip-flopping on the issue of abortion. Less familiar to conservatives still struggling with supporting Mitt is the fact that he had the endorsement of Massachusetts Citizens for Life in 1994…because “he supported parental-consent laws, opposed taxpayer-funded abortion or mandatory abortion coverage under a national insurance plan and was against the Freedom of Choice Act that would have codified Roe”. He certainly didn’t convince Kate Michelman of NARAL that he was 100% pro-choice.

In the above linked article, Michelman accuses Romney of a “campaign of deception to hide his anti-choice views”. Interesting. Even after all the signs pointed to Romney being, at the very least, pro-choice friendly, there were still doubts about his position on abortion by activists like Michelman. The whole American Spectator article deserves a look, because it does shed a little light on Romney’s past record on abortion, and it brings out several things the casual observer may not realize about that past.

I’m not suggesting that Romney was always pro-life, just that he has taken positions in the past which are consistent with pro-life positions, even before he became governor. He admitted that he has changed his position on abortion, but I’m not sure he was ever 100% pro-choice to begin with. It takes extreme political skill to convince activists from both sides of this issue that you support their view, and it’s not surprising that Romney couldn’t completely pull it off.

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Posted on '08 Election, Conservatives, Republicans

mccain

maybe he’s not the conservative’s prince charming, but right now he’s saying all the right things.

“I’m not running for President to be somebody, but to do something; to do the hard but necessary things not the easy and needless things. I’m running for President to protect this country from harm and defeat our enemies. I’m running for President to make the government do its job, not your job; to do it with less, and to do it better. I’m running for President to defend our freedom and expand our opportunities. I’m running for President not to leave our biggest national problems to some unluckier generation of leaders, but to fix them now, and leave our grandchildren a safer, freer and more prosperous country than the one we were blessed to inherit; I’m running for President to make sure America maintains its place as the political and economic leader of the world; the country that doesn’t fear change but makes change work for us; the country that doesn’t long for the good old days, but aspires to even better days. I’m running for President of the United States, not a defeated country, not a bankrupt country; not a timid and frightened country; not a country fragmented into bickering interest groups with no sense of or dedication to the national interest; not a country with a bloated, irresponsible and incompetent government. I’m not running for town manager or school board member or corporate treasurer or surgeon general or head of the trial lawyers association or secretary of the local charity. I’m running for President of the United States, the most powerful, prosperous nation and greatest force for good on earth. And if I am elected President I intend to keep it so. Thank you.”

read it all here.

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2 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Conservatives, Republicans

struggle

Getting involved on the grassroots level of politics usually means that, during that process, you end up meeting people who are very passionate about the candidates they are supporting and the party they belong to.  It’s necessary that there is diversity of opinion in a political party, and there is no possible way that everyone will always be on the same page. What worries me going into ’08 is that this passion will cause divisions between members of the same party who, after our candidate is selected in the primary process, could refuse to support that candidate because he might not pass all the ideological roadblocks that have been placed in his path.

There are folks that I respect very much who have decided to support several of the second and third tier candidates in the Republican field.  I also know several people supporting Romney and McCain whose opinions I value a great deal.  In the absence of a viable “true conservative” who is 100% in the Reagan mold, we have the current front-runners, who all have some problems with the conservative base.  During the primary process, it is absolutely fair to try to convince supporters of another candidate, like Romney, for example, to back a more conservative, but less viable candidate like Huckabee, Duncan Hunter, or Sam Brownback. I don’t think the conservative cred of any of those gentlemen is in question.  I will concede that to their supporters. But there are other considerations for the Republican nominee for President than just being conservative enough for the base.

There is a fight going on for the soul of the Republican party. Every group wants a piece. The SoCons  (or the religious right), the fiscal conservatives, those who are more liberal on social issues, and the “compassionate conservatives” who support excessive spending on programs that do not work and see no problem with allowing illegal immigrants who have broken the law to continue to do so…these are just a few of the constituency groups we have to deal with. This is a healthy debate to have within the party, and one could make a strong case that the Republican party has strayed from its roots. I don’t think you would get much argument from conservatives on that, especially social conservatives.

But I’m not ready to exclude candidates who have a good chance of winning the nomination / Presidency simply because they can’t check off on a checklist all the conservative hot button issues. There are others who feel the same way that I do about this, and none of us should feel that we are less of a conservative just because we may not be supporting the most conservative candidate in the field.  This is the message we are getting, whether intentional or not, from supporters of Huckabee, Hunter, and Brownback, and I just don’t think that this is the best argument to make to fellow conservatives.

There seems to be this fear that the Republican party will lurch inexorably left should Giuliani or Romney get the nomination. I don’t see this happening. Conservatives will always be part of the Republican party, just like liberals will always be part of the Democratic party. This won’t change.  The Republican party has had capable and worthy nominees for President not named Ronald Reagan in the past and the same will be true in ’08, whether the candidate is conservative or not.

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11 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Republicans

romney on hannity and colmes

sean hannity interviews governor romney:

HANNITY: What do you think about Speaker of the House Pelosi, against the will of the White House, the recommendation of the State Department, is going to Syria to meet with the Syrian president? Is that the wrong thing to do? Does that send the wrong message to the world?

ROMNEY: It’s outrageous. What she’s doing is absolutely outrageous. I’m afraid she has been taking John Edwards’s talk to heart, which is that there are two Americas, one led by the president and the other, which is led by her.

But there is one America. It’s the United States of America. We have one foreign policy. If people don’t agree with that foreign policy, they can elect new leaders. They can elect a new president in two years, and they can pursue a different course.

i love this. governor romney is exactly right, and this is what it boils down to here. congress doesn’t have the role of commander-in-chief. if they want that role, they have to get a democratic president elected. the democrats are in danger of overstepping their constitutional role by any freelance foreign policy they are doing, so speaker pelosi and her bipartisan delegation need to be careful that the United States speaks with one voice to terrorist-supporting states like Syria and Saudi Arabia.

he continues:

But the idea of having the speaker of the House, the third person in line for the presidency, of the United States, being with Assad, being welcomed and given diplomatic coverage, shots of her on TV and the media and the way she’s being used by the Arab press is just outrageous.

HANNITY: Let me go to the issue of Harry Reid earlier this week said, in fact, he would support Russ Feingold’s bill to defund the war in Iraq within 120 days of its passage if, in fact, the president goes forward with his threat to veto the supplemental that was loaded up with pork and, of course, this artificial timetable, as the president says?

How should the president react to that and what do you say to Senator Reid for that proposal? That basically guarantees defeat.

ROMNEY: Well, it’s a terrible idea. And again, I think people are playing politics with foreign policy.

No one likes the fact that we’re still in Iraq. Everybody wants our troops home as soon as they possibly can be home. But people who have studied it very carefully and put politics aside recognize that if we simply withdraw on a precipitous basis, we open a risk of a very substantial nature to America’s interests.

The risk is that Iran, the nation we just were speaking about, grabs the Shia south of Iraq, that al Qaeda plays a dominant role among the Sunnis, that the Kurds destabilize the border with Turkey, and that potentially from any one of these acts that we end up with a regional conflict. And that our friends like Israel get drawn in, and then America has to go back in a far more difficult position.

These are the consequences of improper departure from Iraq, and so we have to make sure that we — we manage to the extent humanly possible this process to maintain order and a decree of stability we don’t let this country to fall in complete and total collapse.

HANNITY: If that were to come to fruition, Iran and al Qaeda would also have the oil reserves in Iraq, which would create the financing as they, you know, basically have a new staging area for terror.

ROMNEY: The people in Congress, and the people of America have to recognize that you’ve got to separate our disappointment and, in some cases, anger with where we are in Iraq. We made a lot of mistakes. Look, this has not been — once we knocked down Saddam Hussein, the war has not been conducted perfectly by any means.

We are, to a certain degree, responsible for the mess we find ourselves in. But as long as there’s a reasonable probability that a pathway exists for us to maintain a central government in Iraq, with a central military, albeit with strong sub-states, that’s a pathway which is in the best interest of America.

governor romney had a very strong interview here, in my opinion. what i’m still trying to understand about romney is why he feels the need to not only support conservative positions like gun rights, but also to insist that he has always been the strongest supporter of those positions. romney’s strengths and weaknesses will always be competing for the public’s attention. rudy guiliani has never been a favorite of the SoCons, but at least he is what he is: a strong supporter of abortion (even public funding of abortions) and gay marriage.

let me pass along some free advice for mitt romney: what conservatives want to know is whether you will do what you say you will do when in office. i think you are trying too hard to sell yourself as the most committed conservative candidate in the field. i’m not sure that this will work for you, based on your past history. we want to be able to trust you. don’t go to extremes to impress us. be who you are. that just might be enough to get the nomination.

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Posted on '08 Election, Conservatives, Republicans

this can’t be good for mccain

the republican party almost lost their maverick back in 2001. you can characterize arlen specter and chuck hagel as apostates for their occasional straying off the republican reservation, but the one thing you can’t say is that they seriously considered leaving the republican party. (maybe we sometimes wish they would, but it hasn’t happened.) to be fair about it, the article doesn’t say that mccain would have become a democrat, but becoming an independent would have had the same effect on the senate.

this is a more serious flaw than romney supporting democratic candidates, or guiliani and his judicial picks. if mcain is bidding to be the “one true republican” then he’s got to come up with a good explanation for this. there doesn’t seem to be one. frustration with the republican party is perfectly normal, but the way to deal with that is not to look for an escape hatch. whatever his reasons were for having even preliminary conversations with the democrats, he risks being tagged a sore loser since this happened so soon after the 2000 elections. that charge is already out there.

mccain was in trouble before this story came out, and i don’t know what he would have to do to catch and pass giuliani in the polls. could it happen? sure, but he’s got a lot of work to do. it wouldn’t surprise me if romney passes mccain. if it happens, you can say you read it here first.

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Posted on '08 Election, Democrats

elizabeth edwards

first of all, i can’t imagine what the edwards family is going through right now. we can disagree with john edwards’ politics, but when finding out that his wife’s cancer has reappeared and that her condition is incurable, there’s only one response to this. that response is to express support for them, and to hope and pray for the best for their family. a situation like this requires many hard choices, and john and elizabeth edwards made the decision together to go forward with his presidential campaign. i agree with this decision, even though i understand the opposing argument. it’s easy for us to say that of course we would stop the campaign immediately if we were in john edwards’ shoes, but it’s not our choice to make.

video here.

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Posted on '08 Election, Conservatives, Republicans

the lloyd bentsen question

who are we, and why are we here? ross perot’s former running mate has the right question for conservatives. the first part requires a definition of our core — what we consider important values for a conservative. the second part requires an explanation of our purpose and vision — what we need to do to restore this ideology as a viable governing philosophy in DC. grassroots conservatives know what makes us who we are, but as far as getting the politicians to listen to us, well, we are still working on that part.

karen tumulty in time magazine:

Conservatives are in many ways victims of their successes, and there have indeed been big ones. At 35%, the top tax rate is about half what it was when Reagan took office; the Soviet Union broke up; inflation is barely a nuisance; crime is down; and welfare is reformed. But if all that’s true, what is conservatism’s rationale for the next generation? What set of goals is there to hold together a coalition that has always been more fractious than it seemed to be from the outside, with its realists and its neoconservatives, its religious ground troops and its libertarian intelligentsia, its Pat Buchanan populists and its Milton Friedman free traders? That is why the challenge for Republican conservatives goes far deeper than merely trying to figure out how to win the next election. 2008 is a question with a very clear premise: Does the conservative movement still have what it takes to redeem its grand old traditions — or, better, to chart new territory?

these are questions our future standard-bearers should answer. we will continue to wait until it happens, or until someone steals newt’s notes on the subject.

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Posted on '08 Election, Random Musings, Republicans

john mccain: bracketologist?

as if there weren’t enough people foolishly filling out NCAA basketball tournament brackets, talking about “cinderellas” and “glass slippers” and such, now we must add john mccain to that list. the arizona senator and letterman fan has filled out his bracket, and let’s just say he didn’t put much thought into it. somebody should have advised mccain that not every #1 seed in a region makes it to the final four.  he doesn’t have a prayer of winning his own contest, but if you want to try to win some kewl mccain swag, feel free to take his bracket challenge.

it’s an interesting compulsion politicians seem to have to pander to sports fans. for example, john f. kerry: he LOVES the red sox, but someone had to inform him who the manager was and who some of the players were.  hillary clinton: she used to be a cubs fan, but she had a miraculous conversion to becoming a yankee fan while running for senator of new york. amazing how that happens. my money says she never really watched either team, deciding instead to pursue an interest in a different kind of sport.

seriously, people…why does everyone feel compelled to fill out a NCAA bracket at March Madness time? you know your picks will be done after the first 10 games.  you are not going to win big money. give up.  i can understand the addiction with the game though. however, if you find yourself filling out NIT and NCAA women’s basketball brackets…GET.HELP.FAST.

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2 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Random Musings

the silly season

as if we needed any more proof that the ’08 presidential campaign season is too long, we now have even more people considering jumping into the race. i’m not sure if this says more about the quality of the current candidates or about the monstrous egos of the other possible candidates. either way, it’s an amusing little circus and it gives bloggers more interesting storylines than we would have otherwise. to that end, i applaud the dark horses, vampires and other assorted persons who could shake things up while the republicans are deciding whether rudy is really their guy or not.

apparently senator chuck hagel believes that there could be a hole for him for him to fill in the republican field, but he’s not ready to save us from all these pro-war candidates just yet. he says that he has more important work to do in the senate before he could even consider doing us the favor of running for president. how considerate of him. how selfless of him to put the needs of his constituents first. if only all politicians were like chuck hagel! so he calls a press conference, and the media are all a-twitter…what will he say? will he run for president? not quite. he simply announced that he might have something to announce in the future.

what a disappointment for the media that was. this is a bad tradition mccain started, and it needs to stop. having press conferences or going on letterman to announce that you might have a big announcement later on is just obnoxious. if you want to have separate pressers announcing the exploratory committee and the official “i’m in” statement, that’s fine, but press conferences announcing nothing in particular are just silly.

if you are still unconvinced about the field of democrats and republicans who want to be your next president, you are in luck. there are other options. our favorite vampire jonathan sharkey, in addition to running for governor of minnesota, is also running for president as a member of the vampires, witches and pagans party. as dave barry would say, i’m not making this up. i have no doubt that he would be tough on crime, but i’m not sure the country is ready to be represented by a vampire. mormons? sure. women? no doubt. african-americans? why not? i think, however, that we must draw the line somewhere.

welcome to the circus, ladies and gentlemen. grab some popcorn and enjoy the show.

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