Dem Presidential Campaigns: Battle of the Empty Suits

Watching Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton continue to duke it out in these debates and on tv commercials really is getting laughable. Hillary loses primary after primary (10 in a row at this point, I think), yet refuses to drop out and instead tries to just smear Obama personally. This in between debates wherein she talks about how proud she is to be on the same stage with him. Obama tries to stay above it all and not respond, but in the meantime continues to talk in nothing but grand platitudes.

Hillary claims to be the better of the two because of her "experience," but in reality she has exactly zero experience. She is currently serving in the first elected job she has ever held. She was in the White House during her husband's presidency, but as Dick Morris and others have pointed out, so was the cook. Being First Lady doesn't qualify her to be POTUS. Sorry.

Obama, meanwhile, is also serving in his first-ever national position, among the most junior senators in the Senate (and alongside Hillary). At least he's not claiming to have experience. Instead he says he will provide "Hope" and "Change We Can Believe In," whatever the heck that means. I believe it means we will see "change" to a full-blown socialist agenda from our government, since both the Congress and the Presidency would be (God forbid) populated with liberals.

This is the best the Democrats can put up there? A couple of inexperienced pacifist socialists? This is the presidency of the United States, for crying out loud! The leader of the free world! In a time of great conflict, no less! The only question whose answer might be more humorous than, "who is more qualified, Hillary or Barack?" is "give me a couple of reasons why either Hillary or Barack are better qualified than McCain." I'm no McCain fan, but if the American people have any sense, he'll beat either of these two in a landslide (note that I'm not holding my breath).

If the thought of Nancy Pelosi running the House, Harry Reid running the Senate, and Barack Obama signing their ridiculous legislation as President doesn't send shivers up your spine, then nothing will. God Save the Country.

Mitt Goes Out With Class and Dignity

Mitt Romney surprised everyone earlier today by suspending / ending his presidential campaign. I had figured this would be coming eventually, but I didn't think it'd be so soon. I suspect that after he looked over his California results, he concluded that something just wasn't working, and decided to wait for another run in a few years. In my state of California, by the way, though he came in not very far behind McCain in the popular vote, when everything was counted up he had only won one or two congressional districts. At 3 delegates per c.d., he got maybe six out of 170 available. Given how heavily he had bet on a win here, that is just devastating.

Happily, Mitt went out in style, and with class. He made a statement by hanging it up today, before he really had to, and put pressure on Huckabee to do the same. Interesting to see how Huck responds. His speech was fantastic, in front of a friendly audience at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference. Watching Mitt speak, especially after having watched Robo-McCain deliver a speech, you see that he just plain gets it. As an experienced public speaker, I notice things like his poise, confidence, eye contact with the audience, emotion in his voice, and overall leadership ability. The guy ought to be president; I've thought so since the first time I watched him speak.

Here is the video of his speech at CPAC, courtesy of his HQ website.

Here are some choice quotes:

"Some reason that culture is merely an accessory to America's vitality. We know that it's the source of our strength. And we will not be dissuaded by the snickers and knowing glances when we stand up for family values and morality and culture. We will always be honored to stand on principle and stand for principle."

"I've found that most politicians don't seem to understand the connection between our ability to compete and our national wealth, and the wealth of our families. It's as if money 'just happens'; it just happens to be there. But every dollar represents a good or service that's been produced in the private sector. If you depress the private sector, you depress the well being of all Americans."

"Frankly, in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror (the democrats). This isn't an easy decision. I hate to lose. My family...my friends ... you ... my supporters across the country ... You've given me a great deal to get me to where I have a shot to become president. If this were only about me, I'd go on. But it's never been only about me. I entered this race because I love America. And because I love America, in this time of war, I feel I now have to stand aside. For our party, and for our country."

"America must always remain -- as it's always been -- the hope of the earth."

Here is a thank-you from John Mark Reynolds, an evangelical leader (hat tip: Hugh Hewitt).

I know he's planning to take some time off after such a long and energetic campaign. But I hope he doesn't leave politics and sticks around long enough to give it another shot. If McCain would choose him for a running mate, that would be great; but I don't see that happening, considering the bad blood between them.

A lot of staunch conservatives are still bashing McCain, but I believe that fight is over, now. Just as people should no longer be arguing about whether we should have ever gone to Iraq (that debate happened 5 years ago - get over it); we should just accept that McCain is going to be the nominee, and get used to arguing against the Democrats instead. The sooner, the better.

Ugly

Once again, things haven't gone the way I had hoped, or expected, in this race for the White House. Despite a lot of rallying at the last minute, Mitt Romney did not do particularly well in any of the states he needed to do well in. He won Massachusetts and Utah, big deal. Colorado was a good win, but beyond that they were relatively small. He was about to win West Virginia this morning, until McCain's people stepped in and gave their votes to Huckabee. Romney had 47% on the first ballot, to Huck's 15%. But McCain did his dirty work and Huck then won with 51% of the vote. More dirty tricks.

Mitt almost caught McCain in Arizona, which would have been a real story, but fell short. And they called California for McCain very early-on, which was surprising. Romney had been said to be ahead here by as much as 8 points yesterday. But even die-hard supporter Hugh Hewitt said the other day that Mitt needed to win California and Georgia to have a credible shot at "the title", and he won neither. In fact, he placed third in Georgia, which was won by Huckabee.

Huck was the big surprise tonight, winning 5 states. It seems Romney supporters (myself included) look a little foolish for having said he ought to drop out. Huck had been getting 15% in every race, not even anything respectable. And if you exclude West Virginia, where he really did get 15%, 4 solid wins is still very good for a guy who was in the basement. Still, at the end of the day our party is scattered all over the place.

Unless Romney can show some credible reason why the remaining states will vote for him, he probably ought to drop out very soon. It pains me terribly to say this. But at some point we have to look at the writing on the wall: For some reason, Mitt is not connecting with Joe Lunchbox. For crying out loud, Fox reported tonight that in California, of voters who considered the economy to be their number one concern, they picked McCain overwhelmingly!! Given how poor McCain truly is on the economy, and how great Romney is on it, this result tells me that Romney has a lot longer way to go than I believed. Frustrating when you see something so clearly that so many others can't see.

I watched Romney give a very upbeat speech despite the results tonight; he really is a great speaker (the first thing that attracted me to him when I saw him speak at the Olympics). Then, later, I watched McCain give his victory speech. He looked awful. I figured out why he's always looking off beyond the camera and to the side: He's looking at the teleprompters, and he's lousy at disguising it. Then Fox cut off McCain's speech to go to Obama, who was speaking in Chicago. The contrast couldn't have been more severe. Obama is a very good speaker. Not as good or as polished as Romney, but very good. McCain? Stiff and scripted. Obama had tons of twenty- and thirty-somethings behind him, hanging on his every word as though he was the Second Coming. McCain had a collection of dinosaurs alongside him, also stiff. Romney, by the way, had a crowd similar to Obama's. My point is, if Obama gets the nomination we are going to be in a world of hurt. The man is an empty suit, and he's incredibly liberal in his philosophy. But he's hypnotizing young people in a way I haven't seen any politician do before. McCain had better watch out: He looks like he's about to get what he's been wishing for.

By the way, Hillary Clinton is still ahead of Obama (for the moment). Part of her support came from Latino's in L.A., about 2-to-1 versus Obama. Here's one jaw-dropping reason why.

It's late and I'm headed off to bed. Tomorrow is another day, and the beginning of my move, I think, to try and get my head around supporting McCain. It's like swallowing really nasty medicine: You know you have to do it, but boy is it painful. The only thing for it is to consider the consequences of not taking it.

Tomorrow is also Ash Wednesday, so all you Catholics, make sure you get to church, and fast all day. God Bless.

Why I Cannot Support McCain

John McCain, despite his protestations to the contrary, is not a conservative. He can (and does) say over and over and over how proud he was "to have been a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution," and that plenty of bona-fide conservatives (like dinosaurs Jack Kemp, Warren Rudman, and Phill Gramm) support him. But I'm not buying it.

Talk show host Michael Medved has taken a lot of heat over the past week or two because he has been going on his nationally-syndicated (and great) talk show talking up John McCain, talking down Romney, and claiming that John McCain is, in fact, a true-blue conservative. He takes it a step further, though, and claims that conservative talk shows that are lambasting McCain right now are only doing so on the basis of emotion - because McCain is a meanie - and not based on anything substantive. Callers to his show last week were met with what I thought were lame responses whenever they tried to point out McCain's shortfalls as a Republican senator. This is unusual for Medved, but not unexpected, as he strongly backed the McCain-Kennedy amnesty disaster a few months ago.

I was going to post a list of reasons I don't like McCain for president anyway, and Human Events has published an article and accompanying cartoon that sums up most (not all) of my complaints, so let me run them down quickly, in the hopes that others who support him now will think twice.

• He was front-and-center in creating the "Gang of 14" senators, 7 from each party, who came together to block Republican legislation to outlaw the filibuster in judicical appointment fights. We had Democrats' backs up against the wall on the "nuclear option" a couple years ago, and then John McCain stepped in and snatched it away. Thanks for the support, John.
• He was one of the architects of the McCain-Kennedy legislation that would have given illegal aliens a special "pathway to citizenship" after paying a small fine (and how would they have enforced that?) We need stronger action on the southern border, not weaker.
• He opposes drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, a potentially large supply of oil for our country in a time when everyone agrees we need to become more energy-independent.
• He appears to be anti-business, making such comments in last week's debate. He said he went into the Navy "for patriotism not for profit," which was a clear shot at Romney (and what is wrong with profit?). He also mentioned that some people on Wall Street had been greedy in the subprime lending crisis run-up, and that they should be "put in jail." And, he said in an earlier debate that pharmaceutical companies were "the big bad guys"and that we should do something to take away their power.
• He buys the global warming hysteria 100% and is trying to get legislation through the Congress that would place carbon-emission restrictions on American companies. Human Events reports that the EPA estimates that the cost of this legislation could be as high as two trillion dollars.
• He supports embryonic stem cell research
• He condemns "waterboarding" as torture, when it really is debatable whether it constitutes torture. McCain gets plenty of play on this because he was tortured while a POW in Vietnam, which is why he moves his arms sort of strangely. Again, bonafide war hero in my eyes, no doubt about it. But I don't believe waterboarding constitutes torture and it has been proven to get results with some of these terrorist leaders we've been capturing.
• He wants to close the Guantanamo Naval base in Cuba. I am unclear whether he wants to actually close Gitmo or just the use of it to house terrorist prisoners; but I think he's wrong on either count. Bringing detainees into the United States would allow leftist lawyers to get them into the American justice system and afford them all kinds of rights they don't deserve, plus it would serve to help Al Qaeda generate all kinds of propaganda here in the U.S. We definitely don't need any of that.
• Besides his comments on the pharma companies I mentioned earlier, he voted for the (in my opinion) disastrous Sarbanes-Oxley bill that came down after the big Enron debacle a few years ago. As a business software developer I often work with sensitive data, and I have seen firsthand the repercussions of "Sox" as we call it. Huge amounts of money to protect officers from huge personal liability; the hiring or re-tasking of auditors to handle "Sox Compliance" full-time; new, lengthy procedures and paperwork requirements for even the simplest tasks; more large amounts of money spent on hardware and software to handle the new rules. I guarantee smaller competitors went out of business, too, because they couldn't keep up with these new costs. And for what? Are we safer now than we were before? I don't think so; not at all. The CPA market already took care of the Enron fiasco by liquidating Arthur Anderson and toughening their own rules and procedures. Overbearing new regulation by the government was not necessary and is counter-productive.
• He doesn't want to repeal the "death tax" on inheritances. Explain to me why the government should get a cut of the estate I want to leave to my children. I pay taxes as I build my little empire, and yet that's not enough.
• He is extremely weak on the all-important illegal immigration problem, despite the fact that he comes from a border state with thousands upon thousands of people crossing through it every month. His director of hispanic outreach in his campaign is a notorious illegal alien activist who used to hold a position in Mexican president Vicente Fox's government.
• He did not support President Bush's tax cuts several years ago, one of only two Republicans to not have done so (the other was Lincoln Chafee, a RINO who was dismissed in the last election cycle). On top of that, as I mentioned in a previous post, he now regularly lies about his rationale for these votes. He claims now that it was because the tax cuts were not accompanied by spending cuts, which sounds reasonable enough. But if you look at the record, he actually complained that the tax cuts were geared to help "the wealthiest" among us, not the poor, so he opposed them. This is standard liberal class warfare-talk.
• I am not very familiar with the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law, but everyone complains that it restricts free speech around elections and is unconstitutional. The first actual example of this that I've heard about was a couple of days ago, when a filmmaker who produced "Hillary - The Movie" stated on the radio that he cannot advertise his new movie because of these new campaign laws. As I said, I don't know the specifics of the law, but McCain wrote it; conservatives hate it; and this movie I'm interested in is being unfairly held back because of it. That stinks.
• He opposes a federal Marriage Protection Amendment, which would define, federally, marriage as between one man and one woman. Clearly this is needed as the individual states may redefine it within their borders and potentially cause problems if those "married" people travel to another state. Pro-gay marriage referendums were tried in 11 states in 2006, and lost in every state by gigantic margins. The public doesn't want gay marriage, but gay activists will continue to push, and activist judges may force states to give them what they want, as they did in Massachusetts.

There are other reasons, as well, but these are the big ones for me (some bigger than others). Unlike Michael Medved claims, I don't complain about McCain (nor does anyone I know of) just because I don't like him. I complain because I don't agree with his views and he is claiming to be a conservative like me. And he looks like he's about to win the GOP nomination against a guy I really like.

Tomorrow we'll see what happens. But if you're an undecided voter on the GOP side of the equation tomorrow, please consider my points above before pulling the lever for John McCain.

Romney Surge: Too Little Too Late?

As I posted yesterday, conservatives have finally started mobilizing at the highest levels to back Mitt Romney's campaign in its struggle to get the 2008 GOP nomination over John McCain. McCain is still ahead in most states, but Romney has pulled to within striking distance in many of them (California), and is far ahead in a few others (Colorado). He also won the Maine caucuses yesterday, something no one appears to be reporting. He won there by a gigantic margin, too. People are finally starting to Rally for Romney.

But will it be enough? The surge didn't start until last Thursday, and Super Tuesday is 30 hours away. Hugh Hewitt pointed out in a post yesterday that other recent fights by The Base have taken a few weeks to come together, but their speed has been increasing, and their power once aggregated has been powerful.

The fight against McCain-Kennedy in the spring and summer took about two weeks
to first organize and then gather overwhelming strength.The battle against Harriet Miers (yes, I backed the president on the losing side of that one so I recall it well) took a week or so longer.But once the conservative voice begins speaking as one or nearly one, it is very effective, and that began to emerge on Thursday after the Reagan Library debate. When Rush declared on Thursday that a "vote for Huckabee is a vote for McCain," the focus became very, very clear for conservative voters --who heard it. That message has been repeated a few times by others from Laura
Ingraham to Mark Levin and most of us in between, as well as by folks like Rick Santorum and Denny Hastert. Messages take a while to get delivered, but they eventually get there.

Hugh's point is that the "new media" - blogs and radio shows - has finally embraced Romney and this impact should be felt soon enough. He hopes but doesn't necessarily believe that this will happen adequately by Super Tuesday, but that enough momentum will have been gained that it will propel the Romney campaign into the convention in St Paul, which I'm hoping to attend as a delegate. It will be an interesting couple of days...

Open The Flood Gates!

After Mitt Romney lost the Florida primary last Tuesday, I was pretty depressed. Months of telling everyone I know what a great president I think Romney would make was not working, as conservatives never flocked to him (I still don't know why). But something strange happened that same day. Notable conservatives all around the country suddenly woke up to the realization that John McCain was poised to take the Republican nomination for president, and the only guy in his way, Mitt Romney, was getting no help from hardly anyone.

That changed, and now long lists of conservatives have endorsed Romney; some will be campaigning for him. Every conservative talk show host, except for one, is backing him and talking up a storm in a frantic effort to get conservatives to stop McCain and get Romney in for the nomination.

The question is, is it too little too late? Romney told bloggers in a conference call this morning that he was in it for the long haul, but if he doesn't do really well on Super Tuesday, it's hard for me to see how this plays out well for him at all. And then what? Now that McCain is the official front-runner, the conservatives on the air and in the blogosphere are pulling out all the old clips, many of which I had forgotten about, demonstrating how McCain is really a Democrat in Republican clothing.

The most devastating of these, it seems to me, and one that Romney's campaign has already started using in an advertisement, is that McCain's people approached John Kerry back in 2004 about switching party affiliation and running with him as V.P. candidate. He's denying this, of course, but that raises another big issue for me: He seems to lie regularly. I have seen him do it a number of times just in this one campaign. Besides his lying about this Kerry debacle, he lied about Romney supposedly supporting a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, which may have helped him win the Florida vote. Also, when asked by a moderator during a debate a few weeks ago, about a comment he made in an interview that he was not well-versed on the economy, he said, "I don't know where you got that," and denied ever saying it, thus dodging the question. He's also lying when he is attacked for his position of voting against President Bush's tax cuts several years ago (one of only 2 Republicans to vote against it. The other, Lincoln Chafee, a RINO if ever there was one, was defeated in the next election, thank Goodness). He now says he voted against them because there were no spending cuts to go along with the tax cuts. But at the time, he said that the reason he rejected them was because the cuts supposedly benefited "the rich" and not the poor. This is textbook liberal class warfare, characteristic of Democrats. But again, the big problem I have is, he's lying about his position, and only liberals should do this.

Can he be stopped? It doesn't look good, but I'm saying a lot of prayers...