’08 Election

Posted on '08 Election, Republicans

it’s just not enough

If you scored this debate on points, then Mitt Romney won. Romney was able to get all of the arguments against McCain into this debate, and he was very effective in laying out the case against John McCain. Senator McCain is determined to make an issue out of something that Governor Romney said about timetables, and make him appear to be weak on the war in Iraq, just like the Democrats. He doesn’t have the evidence for that. Sure Romney could have had a stronger answer initially, but McCain has no additional evidence that Mitt Romney didn’t support the surge, once he got up-to-speed on what was going to happen. Mitt Romney isn’t comfortable being on the attack. He did land some punches on McCain, and he defended his own Massachusetts record the best he could. But once the focus gets off of Mitt’s strength (the economy) and shifts to the war in Iraq, that’s McCain’s home turf and Romney is a lot less comfortable talking about the war.

It’s a shame that we couldn’t see McCain/Romney head-to-head before Super Tuesday. They have plenty of differences that need to be further explored that we didn’t get to Wednesday night. Those two REALLY don’t like each other. I’m sure somebody will fact-check McCain’s slippery answers on immigration and his flip-flop on the reason for previously opposing the Bush tax cuts (twice). He said on Meet the Press on Sunday that in fact he would sign his own amnesty bill if it got to his desk. I’ve quoted it in a previous post. Then tonight, he said no, and then launched into the canned talking points he mentioned on Sunday. I feel like a broken record here talking about McCain’s record. His VP, Huck, is also ok with McCain’s views on immigration. He isn’t any more serious about bringing accountability to border security / immigration policy than McCain is.

Let’s talk about McCain and the tax cuts. His initial reason for opposing the tax cuts was that they “favored the wealthy too much”. Now he says that the reason was that Bush’s tax cuts were not offset by spending cuts. He was called on this by Janet Hook of the Los Angeles Times. McCain ignores that part of the question, and instead repeats his new position that tax cuts should require spending cuts. I’m sympathetic to this argument, but McCain is not answering the question she asked, and even though he doesn’t invoke class warfare in his answer at this point — he does in the rest of the debate.

Huckabee and McCain are shameless in their anti-business rhetoric. I thought one of them would mention the “two Americas” at some point. This isn’t representative of Republicans or of conservatives. We appreciate people who don’t have to (or want to) depend on a government check every month, and who take the initiative to make something of their lives without much interference from the government. Freedom and liberty are conservative ideas. So is personal responsibility for your own success. Small business people take risks, and big corporations take risks. Sometimes they work. Sometimes the small businesses and big corporations have to lay people off. It happens. But the last thing we want to do is demonize the producers in this country, whether it’s people who have big jobs or people who have small jobs. They all drive the economy and make a positive contribution to this country. Stop ripping the rich people. They support your big government agendas. (Of course this could just be anti-Mitt rhetoric, but I think Huck and McCain are talking about more than just Mitt’s personal fortune.)

I hope Mitt did enough, but he’s not comfortable being the attack dog. Maybe his campaign will launch a better assault on McCain’s record than he did in this debate. That’s the only hope he has at this point, regardless of Hugh Hewitt’s support and his rosy scenarios on how Romney pulls off the upset. If he really wants to make a comeback and win more delegates, it might be a good idea to keep running some ads in the Super Tuesday states.

Transcript available here.

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4 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

quitters

The dream is over for Rudy Giuliani, and for the President of the “Two Americas” John Edwards. Edwards announced his exit from the presidential race today, and Rudy Giuliani is expected to make it official some time before the debate tonight.  I’m sorry that Rudy decided to quit the race. Sure, at the end of the day, his campaign didn’t end up any better than Fred’s, but he would have had a real shot at stopping McCain in all those blue states on Super Tuesday.  I think the wrong Republican quit the race today, but if Rudy wasn’t going to make a serious attempt at retail politics in Florida or in any of the early states,  maybe it’s better that he recognized that now instead of waiting until later to officially end his campaign.

Meanwhile, Governor Huck still continues to smile and make corny jokes and to take votes from Romney.  It’s over Huck.  After Super Tuesday, it will be time to recognize that.  There’s a reason why the media has stopped talking much about your candidacy. Take the hint.  It’s time to make an outstanding “I give up” speech.

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Posted on '08 Election, Republicans

bad news for romney

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.

Posted on '08 Election, Republicans

lesson unlearned

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. 

Posted on '08 Election, Republicans

mccain

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 Mitt’s record, but when someone dares to question John McCain’s 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. 

 

1 Comment Posted on '08 Election, Conservatives, Republicans

fred is done

Kathryn Lopez writes the obit:

What his campaign may have lacked in organizational luster and ambition it made up for in authenticity and charm. You knew his greatest dream in life wasn’t to be president. You knew he’d be happy living life with his family, advising those who wanted his opinion and expertise, talking federalism with Beltway friends on weekends. When he was on Meet the Press a while back, Claremont’s Seth Leibsohn said, admiringly, “Fred came off like his hour there was not the most important thing he had to do that day.” There’s something attractive about that. And that it won’t get you elected president is today’s reality, it’s a reality to reflect on.

For myself and other former Fredheads, this authenticity is something McCain doesn’t have. Huckabee doesn’t have it either, once you start digging into his Arkansas record and finding out that this Baptist minister-turned Arkansas governor was not the guy he is now. Mitt Romney suffers the most from his perceived lack of authenticity, and I think that he struggles when he tries to be someone he is not. This is something he is improving on throughout the primary process, and I am encouraged about his future prospects because he is emphasizing his strengths and his resume instead of trying to be the most conservative guy in the field. (Although you could argue that this has changed now that Fred is out…)

I liked Fred Thompson because he was the closest thing we were going to get to someone who agreed with us on all the issues we cared about. He was a consistent conservative, even though he did support campaign finance reform in the past. He was never going to be another Reagan, and we need to quit looking for one. But what he did have is the willingness to fight for conservative principles, and the conviction to make us believe that he was one of us and had always been one of us. He wasn’t afraid to challenge the media on their stupidity, and to challenge Michael Moore on his flawed view of health care. Conservatives find that a very attractive quality in a candidate.

The Fred fascination was only partly about Fred himself. Conservatives feel that the Republican party establishment has shifted to the left, as far as being more accepting of illegal immigration and bigger government/reckless spending. We are trying to push back against the direction Washington Republicans want to take this party, and Fred was somebody who I thought would do that. It was more than just saying all the right things. Any candidate can do that. But Fred was the most believable based on his past record.

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Posted on '08 Election, Conservatives, Republicans

thanks fred

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.

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3 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Republicans

mitt gets gold

Mitt wins Michigan, so his medal count is now 2 golds (Wyoming and Michigan) and 2 silvers(Iowa and New Hampshire). That’s not too shabby for someone who remains a serious contender for the Republican nomination. The media has its favorites, but now conservatives get to decide who our nominee should be. We are not a monolithic group. Some consider fiscal issues the most important, others are concerned with social issues, and the third group makes our national security their top priority in a candidate. Not surprisingly, we come up with different answers to which candidate fulfills our requirements. I think it says something important about Mitt’s win in Michigan that he got a majority of conservatives to support him. He also had an slight edge over Huck with evangelical voters.

Read the numbers here. There’s some good stuff in the exit polling info as well.

If Mitt can continue to get the support of evangelicals and conservatives, he shouldn’t have much problem winning Southern states. It might be too soon to declare this any kind of pattern, but it is a positive sign for Romney as we head into the South Carolina and Florida primaries.

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5 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Conservatives, Republicans

right said fred

gc sign2.jpeg

It’s real people. Fred is here in South Carolina. He had an overflow crowd of very enthusiastic FredHeads today at the local Golden Corral, and there are similar reports of this all across the state. Unfortunately, not many of us actually heard his speech. This sort of dampened the mood, but I’m not sure that those who came hadn’t already made up their minds for Fred. There were some technical issues with the microphones, and I heard that every time they tried to turn it up, it was interfering with the media’s cameras and mics. So…another thing to blame the media for. 🙂 What the people heard, they really liked. Fred knows the issues of importance to SC, and he didn’t hesitate to hit on those themes. I’m feeling very confident in the ability of the local folks to understand which candidates are the best fit for our state, and to ultimately reject McCain and Huckabee. More on that later.

fred with the press2.jpeg

An NRO reader writes in to the Corner:

My son and I just returned from the Fred lunchtime rally at the Golden Corral Buffet & Grill in Rock Hill, SC. His bus rolled in at noon from Spartanburg where he had already done a rally and some national TV. The crowd was large and enthusiastic. A York County Republican official told me they estimated there were far more than 500 people there. Unfortunately the sound system would have been better for a group of 100— it was difficult to hear him from very far back. Those who could hear were very pumped up and loud as he hit his key points. When he was through speaking he was mobbed for a long time by fans and signed autographs on FRED08 signs, DVD’s of “Hunt for Red October”, and anything else people asked him to sign. Fred was gracious and my son pointed out on the way home that he sure didn’t look or act like a guy who doesn’t enjoy campaigning. He finally made it back out to the motor coach and headed for our county seat, York, SC for another event before heading to Columbia for a 6PM rally. He’s campaigning hard here in SC and had a very enthusiastic, large crowd at lunchtime in Rock Hill.

After Fred left, I went back to get something to eat. There were some Fred fans still hanging around at that point, and I talked with one of the guys at length about his impressions of the Republican field. He said something interesting that completely goes against the MSM narrative. About McCain, he said that he’s the kind of guy who will stick his finger to the wind to decide what to do next. We need a President ready to make tough decisions, and he didn’t see McCain as that kind of guy. Before this conversation, I bought into that conventional wisdom of the tough, decisive McCain who would defy the odds and earn the forgiveness of South Carolina conservatives.

I then asked about Huckabee and Romney. He said that Huckabee’s Arkansas record did not do much to recommend him as a Presidential candidate. He didn’t trust Huck, and good for him. He also said that he thought that Romney was more liberal than Rudy Giuliani. That’s something I hadn’t heard before, but it confirms my suspicion that not everyone has bought into the Romney conservative conversion. I’m not sure how representative this man’s view is, but I don’t think this is a unique view.

Like I said before, the local folks are plugged in and well-informed on the issues and the candidates. I am confident they will vote to reject McCain and Huckabee, and maybe even vote for Fred. But I’m making no predictions about the rest of the state. Not every Republican here is a conservative.

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