Bill Kristol says that the GOP debate tonight is very important to Mitt Romney’s future prospects in the presidential race.
There’s some brilliant (and very ORIGINAL) analysis. McCain is inevitable and Mitt is doomed. Is there any pundit with good news still out there? Anyone?
Tags: ’08 election, Republicans, Mitt Romney, John McCain, Bill Kristol
John McCain wins Florida, and Rudy Giuliani, after a disappointing third place finish there, is expected to endorse him tomorrow. Not only that, but the eternally optimistic Govenor Huckabee is going to stay in and try to win over some of those southern states where there are votes left to be counted. Talk about a double whammy for the former Massachusetts governor. Rudy was going to be someone else who could have stopped McCain if he had he been more competitive in the early states like Michigan and New Hampshire. He just lost too much free press and momentum by pouring all his resources into one state. If it’s fair to criticize Fred for his one-state strategy, Rudy’s strategy deserves the same skepticism. Now Rudy is done. Thanks for playing, Mr. Mayor. He was never my #1 guy, but I would have voted for him over McCain or Huckabee. It wouldn’t have been a tough decision.
McCain is going to be hard to stop now. I hope Romney can do it. I am openly rooting for Romney to stop McCain, but moral victories don’t generally produce enough delegates to get the job done. There are many votes left to be cast, and I will wait until after Super Tuesday to decide whether my pessimism about the outcome of this primary process is warranted, or whether Romney will shock the world and stop McCain from winning the nomination.
It’s my belief that McCain is a slow learner, especially when it comes to his amnesty bill.
Tim Russert got another shot at him on Meet the Press on Sunday.
MR. RUSSERT: If the Senate passed your bill, S1433, the McCain-Kennedy Immigration Bill…
SEN. McCAIN: Mm-hmm.
MR. RUSSERT: …would you as president sign it?
SEN. McCAIN: Yeah, but we–look, the lesson is it isn’t won. It isn’t going to come. It isn’t going to come. The lesson is they want the border secured first. That’s the lesson. I come from a border state. I know how to fix those borders with walls, with UAVs, with sensors, with cameras, with vehicle barriers. They want the border secured first. And I will do that, and, as president, I will have the border state governors secure–certify those borders are secured. And then we will have a temporary worker program with tamper-proof biometric documents, and any employer who employs someone in any other circumstances will be prosecuted.
That means a lot of people will leave just, just normally because they’re not going to be able to get their job. Then, of course, we have to get rid of two million people who have committed crimes here. We have to round them up and deport them. As far as the others are concerned, we were in an ongoing debate and discussion when this whole thing collapsed, and part of that, I think, has to be a humane approach. Part of it has to be maybe people have to go back to the country that they came from for a period of time while we look at it.
But the principle that the American people want, secure the borders, reward no one ahead of someone who has either waited or has come to this country legally because they have broken our laws to come here. But I’m confident–look, there’s, there’s humanitarian situations. There’s a soldier who’s missing in action in Iraq. His wife was here illegally. America’s not going to deport her. We have humanitarian circumstances. America’s a generous Judeo-Christian valued nation, and we can sit down together. The–all leading Republican candidates now just about agree that with–using those principles that I just articulated, we can fix it. But secure the borders first.
Look at the way he answers Tim Russert’s question. He says that he would still sign that horrible bill he put his own name on, even though he claims to have learned his lesson about what the American people want in illegal immigration reform. He recites all the talking points, and pretends he agrees with those who want to secure the border first. He doesn’t. He doesn’t even have a plan to hold those governors accountable for their part in securing the border. He says that “maybe” people have to go back to their home country. He also has the support of open-borders advocates like Senator Mel Martinez (FL), his national finance co-chair Jerry Perenchio, and his own Hispanic outreach director Juan Hernandez, who has a questionable view of what defines a border.
There’s no virtue in being stubborn on a bad policy. McCain hasn’t changed on this issue, and we need to recognize that.
He obviously believes that Mitt Romney will do and say anything to win the Republican nomination. That’s probably why he thought that he could get away with mischaracterizing what Romney said about possible timetables for withdrawal of our troops from Iraq. McCain wants to portray Romney as someone who is not much different from the Democrats on the Iraq war. His scorched earth rhetoric against Mitt Romney will backfire somewhere along the campaign trail, and I’m hoping Floridians give McCain a thumbs-down on this strategy. This argument is dishonest, as others have said, and it is proof that McCain is willing to distort the truth to stop Romney from winning Florida and ultimately, to win the nomination.
The same standards Senator McCain applies to Mitt Romney he should apply to himself and to discussion of his own record. The straight talk express is in name only. He has no problem ripping Romney for what he sees as inconsistencies in Mitts record, but when someone dares to question John McCains own record, somehow that is out of bounds and an unfair criticism.
McCain’s strengths are well-known and so are his weaknesses. He is a war hero, and I admire and respect his service to our country. He supported the surge, and has been a strong defender of the war in Iraq. That gamble seems to paying off for him. But just because he was right about the surge, that doesn’t mean he’s got everything right in his approach to the war on terror. Read what Mark Levin had to say about that, as well as his flaws on domestic policy. We cannot give the enemy access to our courts and constitutional protections. The first responsibility of a President and someone who would be the Commander-in-Chief of our armed forces must be to protect American citizens from attacks on our soil. It’s not clear that McCain is willing to take the necessary steps to protect us. The first priority of an American President should be protecting liberty for Americans, not for illegal immigrants and not for captured terrorists. Is McCain someone who understands this concept?
I say that he is not.
Huckabee and his people are blaming Fred Thompson for their second-place finish in South Carolina.
Anyone else notice that we aren’t seeing much of that smiley positive Huck lately? Fred took quite a few votes from Huck, and I’m proud to say that I contributed to that effort. It wasn’t enough votes to get into the top two, so that was probably Fred’s last stand in this race. But if all he did was switch the focus back to conservative principles (and derail Huck), it was more than enough. I don’t regret voting for Fred, and I don’t think anyone else does either. I don’t do strategy votes. I vote for the person who I believe would be a good representative of our party and of conservative principles when facing off against the Democrats in November.
I don’t care that Fred being in the race may have helped McCain. That wasn’t intentional on my part (or on Fred’s). There are many good reasons why I couldn’t vote for McCain, no matter what his numbers were against the Democrats. I also don’t like the idea of independents and moderates choosing the Republican nominee. Those two groups are giving McCain an unfair advantage in a primary process that should ensure that the nominee is picked by the majority of the REPUBLICAN party. I hope that’s the way it turns out in the end.
I know that the delegate count is the all-important number, but to call McCain’s 3 point victory over Huckabee a sign that he’s now the frontrunner — forget it. He got 33% of the vote here. Huckabee got 30%. That means quite a few people voted against those two. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough to keep McCain from winning. The problem is that the anti-McCain vote was divided between Huck, Romney, and Fred. Fred was unable to sell himself as THE alternative, and as long as conservatives couldn’t decide on one guy to represent them, this is the result we get.
Please, fellow conservatives, do not blame us for this result. We did all we could to stop it. Now it’s up to the other states to find us an acceptable nominee.
Tags: ’08 election, South Carolina, Fred Thompson, John McCain, Mike Huckabee
It’s Hillary beating the juggernaut Obama and McCain dealing a second straight silver medal to Mitt Romney. You might have been able to predict McCain’s win over Romney, and maybe even Huckabee over Romney in Iowa, but the media got it all wrong about the Democrats/independents in New Hampshire. I would like to believe that Hillary’s win wasn’t because she got all weepy one day about how hard it is for a woman running for President. (You know…there’s an easy way to handle that — just drop out and let Barack have the nomination.) Maybe it’s just because I don’t like Hillary, but every time I see the clip of her crying, it annoys me instead of making me feel sympathetic toward her. It’s easy to figure out why McCain won, but he’s no frontrunner — at least not with conservatives in this country. The Republicans still don’t have a frontrunner.
Romney may be a terrific businessman, but he has yet to close the sale with voters. It’s true that he has a lot of money and has put together a great organization in many of the important primary states, but it’s hard to see how Romney wins the nomination if he loses Michigan. South Carolina is hardly a sure thing for Romney, even though he has a lot of support here. There is also a lot of support for Huckabee and some for Fred Thompson. Huckabee has enough momentum with his win in Iowa and surprising third-place finish in NH to be a serious threat.
Those predicting a McCain win in South Carolina may be underestimating the strong anti-McCain sentiment around here as a result of his positions on a variety of issues, mainly his views on illegal immigration. So I think it’s between Fred Thompson and Mike Huckabee. Why not Romney? I don’t get the impression that South Carolina conservatives completely trust his conversion on social issues or his commitment to the 2nd amendment, based on his record on guns in Massachusetts. I think Huck wins SC, and I hope I’m wrong. I can’t see conservatives here supporting McCain or Romney for the reasons I’ve previously mentioned. It would be an upset for Fred if he pulls it out, but I just don’t see how it’s possible.
As for me, I haven’t decided who I will vote for next weekend, but it’s not going to be Huckabee. Like I said before, he’s not ready for the job.
Tags: ’08 election, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, John McCain
Let me be clear about this: I don’t see John McCain rebounding enough in the presidential race to knock off Romney or Giuliani. He has burned quite enough bridges to make more than a few enemies along the political road. His dogged stubbornness to defend stupid policy like campaign-finance reform and that misguided illegal immigration bill is the main objection conservatives have with him. He is also seen by some as arrogant because of this. Not exactly the perfect Republican messenger.
That’s the case against him. Let me attempt to make the case for him.
McCain is a bona fide fiscal conservative. If we want someone who has always been committed to reducing government spending, John McCain fits that description. When he calls for spending cuts, he has credibility because he’s done it many times and he has fought pork projects every time they pop up in a bill. I think McCain is being overlooked as a small-government guy because of our focus on the more outspoken Ron Paul and Rudy incessantly talking about his NY tax cuts.
McCain is a bona fide social conservative, if by that you mean pro-life. He’s always been pro-life, no conversions, no fudging it, nothing like that. Sure he’s not totally with us on gay marriage, but his overall record in the Senate shows that, as he says, he is a reliable conservative vote on the family issues that count to the social conservatives.
McCain has solid military experience. He served in Vietnam. So did John Kerry (if you hadn’t heard). If that qualification was good enough for Senator Kerry, why wouldn’t it be for John McCain? He can speak with authority on the military and on national security matters, because he knows what needs to be done to keep our military strong and to respond to future threats against our country. If national security and the war on terrorism is the main concern of the base, why would you consider this a strength of Giuliani and leave McCain out of that conversation?
Giuliani isn’t the only one who can claim that he has taken unpopular positions, and never wavered from them. McCain can also make this claim. We may not like some of McCain’s policies and proposals (campaign finance and illegal immigration), but I believe that he’s closer to everything we want in a candidate than Rudy Giuliani is. If we are trying to elevate Huckabee or Thompson, or to a lesser degree Romney, on the basis that they are currently pro-life (and Rudy is not), then we should take a second look at John McCain. He brings the pro-life record, fiscal conservatism, and a solid military background as just a few pieces of his presidential resume, and it’s a resume that we should take a closer look at before rejecting him as a Republican nominee.
As I said, I think the die has already been cast against McCain, but we should give him another look before we settle for Rudy Giuliani.
Tags: ’08 election, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani
In a New Hampshire speech, John McCain, shall we say, seriously questions Mitt Romney’s authenticity.
Courtesy of the Corner:
I don’t usually do this but I’m going to depart for a moment from the issues I want to talk to you about today. One of the other Republican candidates made an extraordinary statement yesterday. Former Governor Romney yesterday proclaimed himself the only real Republican in this race. As we all know, when he ran for office in Massachusetts being a Republican wasn’t much of a priority for him. In fact, when he ran against Ted Kennedy, he said he didn’t want to return to the days of Reagan-Bush. I always thought Ronald Reagan was a real Republican.
When Governor Romney donated money to a Democratic candidate in New Hampshire, I don’t think he was speaking for Republicans. When he voted for a Democratic candidate for President, Paul Tsongas, I don’t think he was speaking for Republicans. When he refused to endorse the Contract with America, I don’t think he was speaking for Republicans. And when he was embracing the Democratic position on many major issues of the day, I don’t think he was speaking for Republicans.
So you’ll understand why I’m a little perplexed when Mitt Romney now suggests that he’s a better Republican than me, or that he speaks for the Republican wing of the Republican Party.
I think I’ve gotten to know the people of New Hampshire pretty well. I know that before I can win your vote, I have to win your respect. And to do that, you expect me to be honest with you about what I believe. You might not always agree with me on every issue, but I hope you know I’m not going to con you. The most important thing we have in this life is our self-respect. And I’m not going to trade mine for anyone’s vote or for any office. I’m going to tell you what I believe and let the chips fall where they will. I’m confident New Hampshire Republicans feel the same way about your self-respect as I feel about mine.
Ouch. That’s the kind of message that can resonate with people. That’s McCain’s strength as a candidate. He is authentic. You know where he stands. Unfortunately, he stands opposed to conservatives on issues like illegal immigration and campaign-finance reform. He has burned a lot of bridges with us, and this is what is keeping him from being a factor in this presidential race.
Tags: ’08 election, John McCain, Mitt Romney