’08 Election

7 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

it’s over

Hillary continues to struggle in these debates. She had some substantive things to say, but her attacks on Barack Obama did not achieve the desired objective. They didn’t change the mind of Obama voters. It doesn’t matter that she may know more on foreign policy, or that she has a detailed health care proposal. She is, and will always be, the kind of Washington insider and divisive figure that cannot be a agent of change. Barack Obama offers not only a clean break from President Bush, but also a clean break from the D.C. Democrats and from the Clinton nostalgia that has held the Democrat party captive since Bill left office. In some ways, the change Obama offers is radical. But most of his ideas aren’t new or original.  They are the same Democratic boilerplate policies that have failed in the past, and will continue to fail in the future.

The media has called this race for Obama, and they will continue to be biased and ask Hillary tougher questions.  You saw some of this last night in the debate.  Hillary got the majority of the hard questions, and Obama was able to dodge his few tough questions and emerge unscathed from the encounter.  The only hope Hillary Clinton has was for Barack to stumble, and so far he has not.   All her arguments for herself and against Obama have fallen flat.   Texas and Ohio will have their say, but Barack Obama will still be the Democrat nominee, because the Democrats are ready to move on from the 90’s.

There have been many articles written about the failures of the Clinton campaign to get Hillary to the nomination with all the built-in advantages she had in the beginning.  I don’t argue that Hillary’s team has run the most competent campaign.  They have made mistakes.  However, Hillary Clinton is (and always was) a flawed candidate, and it’s a credit to her team that she’s made it this far. I really did want the pleasure of voting against her, but if the Democrats end up rejecting her and picking Obama instead, I will be ok with that too.

McCain must get his game face on, because the media will continue to give Obama favorable coverage.  He needs to have a better game plan against Obama than Hillary did, or he will suffer the same possible fate as she does now.

2 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

nader and the dems: the love affair continues

The nation collectively yawns as Ralph Nader announces to Tim Russert that he is once again running for President. Time to re-think which candidate is the most liberal. The Democrats still blame Nader for contributing to Al Gore’s loss in 2000, and they tried to keep him off of the ballot anywhere they could in 2004. Apparently he hasn’t forgiven those Dems for actively working against him. He says that Barack Obama doesn’t have a challenging record. Nader’s into recycling… he recycles the same attack lines used by everyone else against Obama and the same criticisms of corporations that John Edwards already made earlier in this campaign. There’s nothing new to see here, and Ralph Nader won’t get any Republican or Democrat votes this time either. The Dems will be happy with Obama and the Republicans have no reason to vote for Nader over McCain — he’s much more liberal than either of the Democrats or McCain.

Hillary and Barack are not amused by this.

Hillary: “Wow, that’s really unfortunate. I remember when he did this before. It’s not good for anybody, especially our country”.

Barack: “Ralph Nader deserves enormous credit for the work he did as a consumer advocate. But his function as a perennial candidate is not putting food on the table of workers.”

I am amused. Nader’s time has passed, but if he hangs around to annoy the Democrats, that’s enough reason to cheer his doomed candidacy.

Tags: , ,

2 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals

rookies

That’s another term for people taking their first major swings in the big leagues — like Barack and Michelle Obama. Barack should be given credit for saving the good citizens of Illinois from the scary proposition of having Alan Keyes as their senator. That’s a worthwhile accomplishment. At some other point in time, it might not matter that the most attractive Democratic candidate who promotes change, hope and non-partisanship does so because that’s his strongest argument for himself. He can’t knock down McCain’s resume as easily as he could with Hillary’s. Forget for a minute that most of Obama’s policies break no new ground. Like Hillary, he says what his audience wants to hear. There are some hard choices the next president will have to make. Sometimes the best intentions fall short against foreign dictators and men like Ahmadinejad, Chavez, etc. The right person for the job of the presidency of the United States should know the good guys from the bad guys by their actions, not only by their words. I’m not looking for a candidate who can read the souls of foreign heads of state.

Speaking of souls, Barack’s wife Michelle said something interesting about that.

“Barack knows that at some level there’s a hole in our souls,” she said. This was a variation on her normal line that “Barack Obama is the only person in this race who understands that, that before we can work on the problems we have to fix our souls. Our souls are broken in this nation. “

As if it wasn’t scary enough to have Barack Obama’s big spending proposals and expansion of government bureaucracy as a threat, now we add a religious element to the mix. This is taking the role of the President to a whole different level. Michelle Obama is correct that people have broken souls, but it’s not the job of the federal government to fix broken souls. It’s not Barack’s job. It’s the responsiblity of the church.  If Michelle and Barack have this as their mission, maybe they should have chosen a different career path.

Michelle Obama could have put this a different way.  She is only trying to make the case for Barack as the candidate who will be the strongest candidate the Democrats could put up this year, and she doesn’t have much practice in this kind of bright spotlight. Mistakes were inevitable, and it’s a credit to her that it took this long to say something stupid like this, or the more controversial — “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I’m really proud of my country.”  Because America is hungry for change.  It was a sign of political immaturity and temporary loss of message discipline in the campaign, but not anything more serious than that. Michelle Obama doesn’t hate America.  How could she?  It has given her and her husband great opportunities to succeed, and the Obamas have taken advantage of those opportunities.

Michelle Obama is no Teresa Heinz Kerry.  She is not a loose cannon.  Democrats don’t need to worry about that (although you can be sure you will see some of those soundbites in future McCain ads).  Barack Obama will stand or fall on his own merits — which should be a more serious cause for concern than anything Mrs. Obama says.

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

i’m amused by this

Yes…I’m aware that GOP.com could very possibly be a biased source, but that still doesn’t keep me from being amused by Barack Obama’s Spend-o-Meter. The graphic’s a little difficult to read here, so click the previous link to see the original.  That’s $874.35 Billion (as in BILLION) of our money.  I don’t think repealing tax cuts and closing corporate tax loopholes will be enough revenue to cover the checks we will be writing to fund all these proposals.
BarackObameter.jpg

Isn’t it always the Dems who say that Republicans must tell us how they are going to pay for any proposed new spending? Somehow they never seem to apply the same high standards to their own candidates than they do to candidates on the Republican side. Funny how that works. The GOP’s helpful list also illustrates that Barack is not much different from any Washington insider by the way he writes checks with OUR checkbooks. This is something all Washington politicians do, although John McCain is not quite as proficient as it as his Dem opponents. We can’t trust John McCain on many issues, but holding the line on spending has never been a problem for him.

I am also amused that the stock answer to the question of how all this new spending will be paid for is always to repeal the Bush tax cuts, and to punish corporations for making more money than the Dems think they should. There are quite a few dumb people out there who smile and nod, and say that this makes total sense. Increasing federal spending to the levels Barack and Hillary want would be incredibly reckless, because the government spends too much of our money already — and we still haven’t made a serious commitment to reforming entitlements. If no politician can make a genuine commitment to reducing the massive bureaucracy we have now, the least we could do is try to improve the programs we have without adding new ones. This is common sense. Unfortunately, that’s not the way Washington operates. I’m not sure that any presidential candidate has the ability to fix the status quo.

It would be nice to have a president who can do all the things Barack Obama is promising — and it’s easy to get sucked into the hopeful changemonger rhetoric and his promises of unity for the country — but is it too much to ask that a future president do more than give great speeches and to help Congress spend our money? The saving grace in all of Obama’s new spending proposals is that there is no way he will get all of that spending through Congress.

Promising everything to everyone. The Dems have done this for years. Barack Obama is no different from the rest of the party when it comes to extending the reach of the federal government through spending. Those who expect Barack to make a clean break from the Democrat party line will be sorely disappointed with President Obama.

2 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Liberals, Tony Blair, UK

barack’s third way

Even as a Republican, I like Obama. I think he’s a nice guy. He provides a sharp contrast to his opponent Hillary Clinton and to the presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, both Washington insiders. Barack Obama is indeed a fresh face with a message of hope, optimism, unity, and not much else. What is different about Barack Obama is that he has mixed the attacks on President Bush with the soaring rhetoric and optimism of the Huckster. There’s more than one spoonful of sugar in what Barack’s dishin’ out. In fact, I’m not sure that everything his supporters are taking right now is a legal substance. I joke about this, but how else can you explain the brainless fanaticism by some of his followers(who are enjoying the music while ignoring the lyrics)? May I remind the groupies out front with their raised lighters and massive cardboard signs that we are not electing a rock star? Doesn’t the substance matter with Democratic candidates?

All the comparisons fall short of the mark. Barack Obama is no JFK. He doesn’t have JFK’s political or military experience, and no one has ever accused him of fiscal conservatism (even though he should be given some credit for the attempts at earmark reform). He’s certainly not Ronald Reagan. Obama has too much faith in the usefulness of government to solve the country’s problems. He’s also no Bill Clinton. He has the charisma, but none of the weaknesses of the 42nd president, and that’s a strong point in his favor as far as being the right guy for the Dems this year.

There is one comparison that would be somewhat accurate. It involves another man who was selected to sell the old, failed policies of his party by watering down its hard left origins. That man was former British PM Tony Blair. He too was a talented speaker and salesman. The problem was that Labour had always been a hard-left party, and the reason that Labour had spent so many years in the political wilderness was because people didn’t buy into their socialist policies once they became part of the working class. (They also had various non-photogenic types trying to sell Old Labour, and somehow this brilliant strategy failed…) Then Tony Blair came along, and the party recognized his talent and rhetorical skills, and elevated him to be the face of the party. This was a brilliant move on their part, and with a few tweaks in the wording, the Brits bought into this re-packaged version known as New Labour, and voted the Labour party into power in 1997 with Blair as the new PM.

Continue reading →

Posted on '08 Election, Democrats, Republicans

priorities

It’s all a matter of priorities. What we consider important in a President determines how we will vote.  I know I have been ignoring the Democrats lately, and I fully intend to remedy that in this post.

If you believe you have too much control of your own life, and would like to give some of that control to the government, vote for a Democrat.

If you believe that your fellow citizens should be paying for your health care, and that it’s the right of all Americans to have government-funded health care (no matter how much it costs), then vote for a Democrat.

If you value experience over change (and you are a Democrat), vote for Hillary.

If you think that George Bush has irrevocably hosed the country,and that it doesn’t matter who’s President because the problems in this country are unfixable – then you probably need to take a break from politics for awhile.

If you can’t handle any of the pieces of good news coming out of Iraq, don’t worry, Hillary and Barack will fix that soon enough.  I do think that, despite what Hillary says, she would take a wiser course on troop withdrawals than Barack would. Hillary has tacked left and right on the war in Iraq, but I suspect that once the war is her responsibility, she will act differently than she claims now.

If you are pro-choice, vote for a Democrat.

If you value change for the sake of change, vote for Barack.

If you think your taxes are way too low and that the rich aren’t paying enough, vote for a Democrat.

If you hate corporations, who employ people and create jobs in addition to making a profit, McCain, Hillary, and Obama all have a little red meat for ya.

If you care more about making a statement to the national Republican party instead of settling for someone who will give us more of what conservatives want than either Democrat, don’t vote — and no matter who wins, you can’t complain about the result. By the way, how did that work in ’06?

But if you care what happens to Iraq, and you want to see more justices on the Supreme Court like Alito, Roberts, and Thomas — vote for McCain.

If you are willing to settle for less than Reagan (and you should), then McCain is the best of the non-Reagan group.

I’m not saying that McCain should get a pass for all those dreadful pieces of legislation bearing his name.  I’m just pointing out that yes, there are significant differences between McCain and the Democrats opposing him in this election.

Conservatives have a decision to make.  It’s not about falling in line with the wishes of the Washington elites or the talk radio pundit class who disagree with the Washington elites.  We have to decide what is in the best interest of our country at this point in our history with the problems we face as a nation.  I think McCain is the candidate we should support.  I’m not thrilled about the choice, but it’s not just about me.  It’s not only about Rush, Levin, or Ann Coulter.  It’s about all of us.  We should be making decisions on that basis, not merely in our own self-interest.

Posted on '08 Election, Republicans

mccain makes his pitch at CPAC

Here’s part of it:

All I ask of any American, conservative, moderate, independent, or enlightened Democrat, is to judge my record as a whole, and accept that I am not in the habit of making promises to my country that I do not intend to keep. I hope I have proven that in my life even to my critics. Then vote for or against me based on that record, my qualifications for the office, and the direction where I plainly state I intend to lead our country. If I am so fortunate as to be the Republican nominee for President, I will offer Americans, in what will be a very challenging and spirited contest, a clearly conservative approach to governing. I will make my case to voters, no matter what state they reside in, in the same way. I will not obscure my positions from voters who I fear might not share them. I will stand on my convictions, my conservative convictions, and trust in the good sense of the voters, and in my confidence that conservative principles still appeal to a majority of Americans, Republicans, Independents and Reagan Democrats.

Often elections in this country are fought within the margins of small differences. This one will not be. We are arguing about hugely consequential things. Whomever the Democrats nominate, they would govern this country in a way that will, in my opinion, take this country backward to the days when government felt empowered to take from us our freedom to decide for ourselves the course and quality of our lives; to substitute the muddled judgment of large and expanding federal bureaucracies for the common sense and values of the American people; to the timidity and wishful thinking of a time when we averted our eyes from terrible threats to our security that were so plainly gathering strength abroad. It is shameful and dangerous that Senate Democrats are blocking an extension of surveillance powers that enable our intelligence and law enforcement to defend our country against radical Islamic extremists. This election is going to be about big things, not small things. And I intend to fight as hard as I can to ensure that our principles prevail over theirs.

The good news and the bad news about McCain being our nominee is that we know what we are getting with him. If John McCain says he is going to do something, he is stubborn enough to follow through with it, whether we like it or not. It is encouraging that he is making the attempt to find common ground with his fierce opposition, and that attempt should be acknowledged as the inward struggle it must have been for him. He goes on to admit that he has made mistakes, although he still doesn’t agree with most conservatives on illegal immigration. If we can’t find total agreement with McCain, maybe it would be possible for us to agree that in most ways, he is much more conservative than either Hillary and Obama. Voting for either Democrat would mean that we would definitely regret that vote later, because there are glaring differences between the Democrats and John McCain.

Posted on '08 Election, Republicans

romney suspends campaign

Mitt makes it official at CPAC:

I disagree with Senator McCain on a number of issues, as you know. But I agree with him on doing whatever it takes to be successful in Iraq, on finding and executing Osama bin Laden, and on eliminating Al Qaeda and terror. If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror.

This is not an easy decision for me. I hate to lose. My family, my friends and our supporters – many of you right here in this room – have given a great deal to get me where I have a shot at becoming President. If this were only about me, I would go on. But I entered this race because I love America, and because I love America, I feel I must now stand aside, for our party and for our country.

I will continue to stand for conservative principles. I will fight alongside you for all the things we believe in. And one of those things is that we cannot allow the next President of the United States to retreat in the face evil extremism.

It is the common task of each generation – and the burden of liberty – to preserve this country, expand its freedoms and renew its spirit so that its noble past is prologue to its glorious future.

To this task, accepting this burden, we are all dedicated, and I firmly believe, by the providence of the Almighty, that we will succeed beyond our fondest hope. America must remain, as it has always been, the hope of the Earth.

Thank you, and God bless America.

This was a classy exit, leaving the door open for the future if Romney should choose to try again.  I think he should.  We need someone like him on our side, and it certainly wouldn’t hurt his chances in 2012 if he becomes active in the conservative movement, and keeps displaying the passion he showed at CPAC today.  It’s going to be a transition of sorts for Romney, because I don’t think the guy has ever been the kind of ideologue that Newt or Rush or Fred is, and taking an active role in advancing conservative ideas would be something he might not be as comfortable with as those three gentlemen are.  I will keep an eye on Romney, because we haven’t seen the last of him in Republican politics.

Tags: ,

4 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Republicans

nothing left to say

McCain wins big, Mitt struggles, and Huckabee picks up some southern states. The future of the race doesn’t look good for anyone but McCain, and we may have to resign ourselves to the real possibility that John McCain will be the Republican nominee for President.  There are no guarantees that he can beat Hillary or Obama, despite what the polls seem to be telling us.  He definitely won’t win if conservatives stay home, so I hope he plans a significant outreach program between now and the election.  He can’t change his record, but he can do more to reassure us that he has learned from his past mistakes.  Whether McCain does this or not, ultimately we all have to make the choice whether to support him or stay home.  It’s hard to motivate the base in an election year when your nominee is someone like McCain.

Tags: ,

2 Comments Posted on '08 Election, Republicans

it’s not personal

There are still many people who have serious policy disagreements with John McCain.  I am one of those people.  It is possible to believe that McCain is wrong on many of the issues conservative activists and talk show hosts care about, and still find him to be worthy of respect for his military service to our country.  McCain doesn’t make it easy to like him, and conservatives are having a tough time trying to accept that he might be our nominee.  I’m fighting that possibility myself.

But we can’t start attacking McCain’s military service.  He’s wrong on so many issues.  Let’s stick to arguments about policy, and leave the personal mudslinging to the nutroots and the Clinton campaign.  We shouldn’t be ok with this message:

 mcain-arnold.jpg

I found this picture on Race42008.com.  It’s a picture that one of their bloggers took at a Mitt Romney event.  People have strong feelings about illegal immigration.  I understand that, but comparing John McCain to Benedict Arnold is wrong, and we shouldn’t have to resort to this type of personal attack.  John McCain served our country honorably in the military, and he deserves our respect for that, if for no other reason.