’08 Election

Posted on '08 Election, Republicans

uneasy relationship

Bob Novak has a column today about McCain’s attempts to reach out to Christian conservatives.  He argues that McCain hasn’t managed to close the deal with them.  There are a variety of reasons for this, and Novak lists a few of them.  There’s one he overlooked.  McCain, despite his personal faith in God, does not have much in common with evangelicals.  He doesn’t speak about his faith very much, if at all.  He doesn’t speak their language, and he’s not George W. Bush (who was much more comfortable doing both of those things).  McCain isn’t one of them, and they knew that before he (out of political necessity) threw John Hagee and Rod Parsley under his bus.

McCain may have gotten popular with some Democrats and with the media by opposing some of the policies of the Bush administration, but those days are long gone.   It doesn’t help him to lose leading evangelicals from his camp, but losing conservatives would be far more damaging in November.  I hope that the McCain people recognize this weakness, and that they try to fix it.

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

smart move

Barack Obama and his team of advisors don’t really want to pick Hillary as VP.  We all know this.  So how does he deny her a spot on the ticket without alienating her supporters?  Simple.  Jackie Calmes reports in the Wall Street Journal that they would ask Bill to disclose donors to his presidential library, and both of them would have to go through a thorough vetting process (that could potentially disclose more skeletons in the Clinton closet) in order for her to even be considered as a potential VP.   Looks like a deal-breaker to me. Genius move.

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

our democratic nominee

First of all, I want to congratulate Senator Barack Obama for running an outstanding campaign (for the most part) and especially for defeating the Clinton machine.  Hillary is still standing, but my guess is that it won’t be for much longer.  He deserves credit for finding and exploiting the weaknesses in the Hillary candidacy, and for using his natural abilities to claim the second highest political title in the United States as one of the two candidates for president.   His achievement here is historic, and should be noted as such.

However, I fail to see why I should join in this collective group hug even though this milestone has been reached.  My intention is not to minimize what Barack has done.  I respect that achievement, but it would have the same distinction no matter which African-American became the first Democratic nominee for president.  We have our nominees — both imperfect representatives of their respective parties — and it is up to us to do our own homework and decide for ourselves which candidate can best represent our interests.  That would be easier to do if we could separate our personal feelings for Barack Obama with his ability to do the top job in the country.   It would also help if the media would do its job and keep both sides honest.  Guess that’s just too much to ask of them.

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Republicans

no concessions

Silly Democrats. You thought that Hillary would just fade into the background after Barack clinched the nomination. Ok, so it was only a small percentage of your party who actually believed that, but still…the rest of you had to be surprised by the tone of her non-concession speech.

Thanks Hillary. Your speech distracted all of us from how totally uninspiring John McCain’s speech was.

3 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

that’s a very big bus

Barack Obama’s bus would have to be quite large to absorb all of the people Barack has thrown under it.  The current endangered organism is his former church, Trinity United Church of Christ. It would almost be amusing to watch Barack Obama disown people who he intimately or barely knows, except that we do expect better judgment or discernment from a guy who wants to be our next president.   This stuff is no-win for Senator Obama.  If he says that he attended Trinity for 20 years, and had no clue that Jeremiah Wright was someone who would be damaging to his political career in the long run, then I’m not sure he’s got the great judgment that he is alleged to have. If he is acquainted with other Trinity pastors/ministers like Father Pfleger and yet he still lacks the ability to take their true measure, this is very troubling to me.  Either Barack used these Chicago-area ministers to build his street cred and didn’t really care much about (or intentionally ignored) their political views, or he completely bought what they were selling in addition to using them to further his local political career.  Either way, it doesn’t reflect favorably on the man.

I was ready to believe that this Jeremiah Wright stuff would be old news by November.  After all, he’s gotten this far with a very compliant and willing press supporting him no matter what he does.  If these quotes from Father Pfleger hadn’t come out, Trinity and Jeremiah Wright would have become less of a compelling story than they were when this controversy first started. In addition to that, Obama is not even making a clean break from Trinity.  Here’s part of what he said:

I am not denouncing the church. I am not interested in people who want me to denounce the church because it’s not a church worthy of denouncing. And so if they’ve seen caricatures of the church and accept those caricatures despite my insistence that’s not what the church is about, then there’s not much I can do about it.

This is absolute nonsense.  What we are seeing with Trinity United Church of Christ is not a caricature. It’s a troubling pattern of behavior and attitudes, starting first with Jeremiah Wright and continuing with the new pastor as well as Father Pfleger.  But of course none of the people I’ve mentioned represent what the church believes or what its parishioners believe.  It’s only our misconceptions of what the church is based on the views of a few of their pastors.  How stupid does Barack Obama think we are?  Even when he makes the right decision, there is still this level of “pass the buck” in it.  Like we aren’t sophisticated enough to understand the true nature of people like Jeremiah Wright or his fellow travelers at Trinity.  We get it. He doesn’t seem to get it.  Even now.

Posted on '08 Election, Random Musings

please let this be true

Could it be that America’s favorite formerly bow-tied libertarian is throwing his hat into the presidential ring?  That’s the buzz from the Libertarian party convention in Denver now in progress — that Tucker Carlson is considering saving the party from the disaster of a Bob Barr candidacy.  Or something like that.  It should come as no surprise that I am in favor of Tucker Carlson seeking some kind of political office, since I was one of the first to suggest such a thing.  Ok, sure, I only requested a VP slot for him, but I was wrong then. As one of the few who watched his show on MSNBC, I am well aware of his limitations, but I think they can be overcome.

Say what you want about the bow-ties (now gone) and about Tucker’s occasional abrasiveness with stupid people.  He is the guy who has always been for smaller government and opposed to freedom-hating laws, unlike some of my fellow Republicans who only pay lip service to conservative/libertarian ideas like this.  Those who say that Tucker Carlson is any kind of shill for the establishment media aren’t really paying attention.  Bottom line:  I like the guy.  A lot.  If I’m going to cheer for any lost cause third-party candidate, he’s my candidate.  We can be guaranteed a fun ride no matter which Republican or Democrat we end up with in November as long as Tucker is in the race — and that’s what I’m rooting for.

3 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Iran, Liberals

reply hazy

Good to know that I’m not the only one who is still confused about Obama’s potential talks with Iran. Marc Ambinder has a few additional questions for the senator, like what the difference is between preparation and pre-conditions. He points out that Barack Obama’s own website clearly says that he “supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions” and that his own advisors don’t always follow the same script when discussing his position on Iran. Hunter at the Daily Kos assures us that no President would unconditionally meet with leaders like Ahmadinejad. It’s just a Republican talking point. Right.  Then those evil Rovian conspirators must have gotten to barackobama.com and changed some text around in that Iran section.

If Obama really believes that there should be strings attached to talks with Iran, he might want to change his website to reflect that and make sure that his advisors get that message out there.  There can’t be any confusion where he stands on this issue going into November against John McCain.  Right now, there is.

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

a challenge

John Bolton challenges Barack Obama’s non-cowboy diplomacy. Read it here.

At first glance, the idea of sitting down with adversaries seems hard to quarrel with. In our daily lives, we meet with competitors, opponents and unpleasant people all the time. Mr. Obama hopes to characterize the debate about international negotiations as one between his reasonableness and the hard-line attitude of a group of unilateralist GOP cowboys.

The real debate is radically different. On one side are those who believe that negotiations should be used to resolve international disputes 99% of the time. That is where I am, and where I think Mr. McCain is. On the other side are those like Mr. Obama, who apparently want to use negotiations 100% of the time. It is the 100%-ers who suffer from an obsession that is naïve and dangerous.

Negotiation is not a policy. It is a technique. Saying that one favors negotiation with, say, Iran, has no more intellectual content than saying one favors using a spoon. For what? Under what circumstances? With what objectives? On these specifics, Mr. Obama has been consistently sketchy.

Bolton also says that countries like Iran can use negotiating talks as a ploy to buy time while they continue to chart the same destructive course. To be fair to Senator Obama, we do need more specific details under what circumstances and conditions he would agree to meet with countries like Iran. It’s possible that his foreign policy vision has undergone some evolution from the beginning of his campaign until this particular challenge, so if Barack Obama really wants to fight this battle directly with McCain, I’m with John Bolton — bring it on.

I’m anxious to hear his grand plan on how to get dictators and other foreign heads of state who desire our destruction and Israel’s to stop their evil intentions. In truth, foreign policy is a difficult business. No president has ever handled it perfectly. We have no guarantees that Barack Obama or John McCain will make every right decision, but we should have this foreign policy debate before we decide who should be President.

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

not so fast

You know that conventional wisdom that this overwhelming Democratic turnout in the primary will lead to certain electoral success in November? Not so fast. The Washington Times found some researchers who insist that’s there’s no coorelation there. Jay Cost of Real Clear Politics says that, at best, the connection is unproven, and that the financial advantage Obama currently enjoys would have more significant impact on John McCain’s chances in November than the Democrat primary turnout numbers. I agree.

It’s not that the enthusiasm shown by the Democrats for their two candidates (but mostly for Obama) shouldn’t be a cause for concern for Republicans going into the general election in November.  What we have seen so far is that nothing is guaranteed for the Democrats, unless John McCain succeeds in completely alienating the rest of the conservatives who were resigned to voting for him with his stupid climate change nonsense.  I’m not ruling out that possibility, by the way.  McCain is trying very hard to separate himself from George W. Bush, and he might just succeed.  I can see how this would be a strategy his internal polling might suggest, but he won’t win with just Democrats and independents.  He still needs conservatives and other Republicans, even though he would like to pretend we don’t exist.

Obama will lose a significant amount of his appeal if he selects Hillary as VP.   She represents what has become the old politics.  It’s not 1992 anymore.  Many Obama supporters weren’t even paying attention during the Clinton years (with a few notable exceptions). He doesn’t need her, and she makes him less electable than he is now.  You can’t talk about the new politics and embrace a Washington insider like Hillary.  I know the Democrats want to end this process, but this isn’t the way to do it.  He can withstand the attacks that the Clintons have thrown out there.  She hasn’t put a glove on him, even with all this bad publicity he has gotten lately.  Obama can wait for the nomination.  He knows that he will eventually win it.

More disturbing for the Republicans and John McCain is that all these side issues that are affecting Obama will be old news by the time the election rolls around.  We need a better game plan than the Clintons had, and a candidate willing to make the case against Obama.  Is McCain that guy?  Stay tuned.

Posted on '08 Election, Conservatives, Republicans

conservative cred

My favorite senator Jim DeMint has it, and he’s willing to help out John McCain. Senator DeMint is the kind of conservative that McCain should pick for VP. We need DeMint where he is now, but someone like him would be awesome as second in line to McCain.

Here he is defending McCain’s health care plan.

Why not nationalize health care and allow the government to control the entire system? Because as Americans we believe in the individual and in freedom.

Since the dawn of our nation, Americans have resisted government control over their daily lives. Unlike Europeans who have mortgaged their futures in the name of nationalized health care, we have an innate distrust of big government schemes. We have seen time and time again that the greatness of our nation comes from its people, not from the government. Perhaps most importantly, we understand, as Thomas Jefferson understood, that “Government big enough to supply everything you need is big enough to take everything you have.” Jefferson went on to explain that “the course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.”

The history that Jefferson observed then is the same that we do today. Those principles still hold true, and as we consider the health care crisis we face today we would do well as Americans to bear these thoughts in mind.

Do we want a solution that offers American more freedom, more choice and more competition? Or do we forsake our principles and follow the path of the Europeans, which has resulted in rationed health care, less choice, less freedom and future fiscal ruin?

I’m much more confident that Senator DeMint understands the way conservatism is supposed to work when applied to the federal bureaucracy than I am in McCain’s grasp of the concept. But his endorsement of McCain’s health care plan goes a long way with me, and I’m sure, with many of my fellow conservatives.