Jan 21 2008
Why Be Stuck With ObaCain Or McHillary?
I am an admirer of John McCain, but even this independent conservative sees little point in selecting between ObaCain or McHillary this November. I might as well vote Obama over McCain for all the good it will do for the Iraq war. Bush has conservative support to hold vetoes against SurrenderManiacs trying to lose Iraq to Bin Laden. McCain has no such support. I see little difference in the results of McCain verses Hillary or Obama with a Democrat Congress in the mix.
As Ed Morrissey notes FL is where the action is at now. And there few opportunities to change shades of leftism into a real choice between conservatives and liberals. The GOP field is distilling down to shades of center right, not strong conservatives (again as noted by the esteemed Captain Ed). I have been for Romney or Giuliani from day one. Both are executives, both are Bush conservatives (will support the causes of conservatives). I know Rudy is tough on terrorism (not sure about Romney). McCain is good on terrorism and immigrants (as I think Rudy will be, just like Bush). But he is the most liberal of the three.
Here is how I see it for conservatives. McCain has spent is life fighting conservatism and trying to move the party and country left. He opposed tax cuts, he wants to close Gitmo and put terrorists under constitutional protections, he worked with Fiengold to limit political speech. He is moving generally left.
Romney is a weathervane. He plows a compromise path, not a principled compromise path. He seems to be all things to all people. Sadly he reminds me of Clinton, triangulating for the sake of checking off milestone charts.
Rudy is the one candidate left who pushes the pile towards conservatism. He pushed NY City toward conservative principles on crime and taxes and turned that city around. No small feat in the heart of east coast liberal thought. He has pledged to follow the judicial nominating pattern of George Bush – which has been a stunning success for conservatives. He seems to be the closest thing to the next George Bush who will stand up to leftists and moderates when it counts (e.g., stem cell research), yet garner centrists support when it counts (taxes, Iraq, national security). We need someone who can pull both the Santorums and the Snowes into a coalition – and that ain’t McCain. McCain will dump the Santorums for a Reid, as I fear Romney will.
A fair and objective look at where these men have fought their battles is all you need to know for Florida and beyond. McCain is pushing hard left. Romney is wandering around the center looking for an easy path and Rudy has pushed liberal NY City into accepting conservative principles. Left, middle, or right – those are the choices we have had from day one. The point is most of the GOP base is heading middle or left. We need to steer it back to center right at a minimum.
If you were/are a Huckabee or Thompson supporter, and want to see them play a role in the next GOP administration, my suggestion is you vote for Rudy in FL. At a minimum it keeps the race open longer for Fred and Mike to see if they can do something. But if Fred and Mike have had their 15 minutes of fame their supporters can and should hold the GOP from going too far left and throw their support behind a man who has shown he can convert liberals to conservative ways. we have democrats in the race, we don’t need pale versions of them on the GOP side. We need someone heading right, and that person has to be able to draw support from centrists and those farther out from center.
Good post and good comments, all.
I disagree with McCain on Rummy and McCain- Feingold (which isn’t a moot issue at all), but no one can realistically claim he would be submissive to the terrorists.
I agree Giuliani has it right on terrorism, but he seems to have character flaws and “character is king.”
Romney “flipped” on abortion, but he didn’t “flop” back, leaving him on the right side. On immigration, he wants to deal with illegals on a case by case basis. Seems sensibly to me.
Macker:
I think it would be fine with the average American if TV political ads were banned outright. People hate them. The average person equates freedom of speech issues with whether or not they can speak their minds, not whether or not some pol can get maximum money for ads for as long as possible. The president signed the bill and Fred Thompson among others supported it. I think the loopholes were so big that it the bill did not really do what it was intended to do, but then again if this is all people have to complain about they are pretty damn lucky.
And what “constitutional protections” does McCain want to put terrorists under? He was one of the Senators who helped write the Military Commissions Act, the whole point of which was to give Bush the authority to question, hold and try these people without handing them over to the ACLU.
And McCain deserves better, he spent years in a POW camp and he has not wavered in his devotion to his country. People might not always agree with him, but he deserves to be treated with respect
It sounds like someone is saying that since he suffered so much for his country he deserves the presidency. Treated with respect yes but not the presidency.
You might as well say Hilary deserves it because she is a woman and Obama deserves it because he is black.
Well, I don’t care about any of that. I want a president who is strong on national security and will make that his priority not a liberal who wants to lose a war already won or a wishy-washy woman who holds her finer up to see how the wind blows and want to turn this country into socialism.
I also want a president who has a reliable even temper not a reliably horrible temper like Hilary.
And call me racist if you want to but I don’t want a president who is a former muslim aligned today with an anti-American, anti-white church. Obama has charisma and speaks well but he has no foreign policy experience and has made some pretty asinine statements like “I will invade or bomb Pakistan” or Musharaff should step down and give democracy a chance. But then so has Hilary. She knows zilch about Pakistan politics. The smartest woman in the world could not even pass the DC bar and does not know the politics of the most worrisome country today. I’ll bet she didn’t even know theirs is a parlementary government not a republic like ours.
McCain is too chummy with the dems in the senate and so is Fred. We need either Romney or Guilani. They are the ones who will protect this country and not sell it out like some people would. Remeber China? Remember Obam’s cousin is responsible for 600 lives in Kenya? I don’t want a president who is so closely related with foreign leaders or wannabees.
So many 1/2 truths in replies here, thanks AJ for an excellent post.
I believe the nuclear option pertained to judges only and it always was simple majority vote until Dems used the filibuster.
I fail to see how we repulicans are hurt by demanding a simple majority ,we generally gave the Clintons the judges they wanted.
McCain served his country, great, but he has stuck it to conservatives over and over again. Has sided with the most liberal of dems doing great harm to the party and country.
He is arrogant as in you will accept my amnesty plan that I am forcing through the senate in the middle of the night without even time to read the whole thing.
Hes’ too old, cranky, and Hillary will eat him alive poking him until his temper blows.
He sounds good on the war I just can’t trust a thing he says anymore.
All the hype from the left about Guantanamo has caused most all of us on the right to automatically oppose any criticism of that program. The left’s criticism’s are wrong, it was vitally important to detain and interrogate those people.
However,… there is one huge problem with it that the left has missed with it’s emotional knee jerk criticism and which supporters never discuss. Simply put, how does it end? What happens to those people in the end? We can’t let them go, we can’t bring them here, what do we do? If they were prisoners of war they would be released at the end of a war – but we all know this war won’t be over in our lifetimes. (although hopefully it will diminish somewhat) So are we really locked into keeping these guys 10, 20, or 30 years with no trials and no sentences? As a short term emergency measure, it was necessary. As a long term plan, it looks terrible. And I think this is the problem that McCain, to his credit, is trying to address.
I’ve always supported our policy regarding the Guantanamo detainees. But it can’t and shouldn’t go on forever. How do we eventually end it?
No Barbara, I am saying that since the man has proved himself a patriot he deserves to be treated with respect. That does not mean he can not be critcized or that you have to vote for him. But people have been so obnoxious in their attitude toward McCain that it makes other people feel some sympathy for him. It is not necessary to be so nasty.
Hunter:
Oh please, McCain’s record is almost the same Thompsons. He has not stuck it to anyone. The fact that he does not always say what a self anointed few want to hear does not make him a turncoat.
George Bush had to put up with a lot of name calling from the likes of NRO and Malkin. He was a conservative himself. he was pro life…and what good did it do him? They stabbed him in the back.
The most difficult thing that Bush had to face in his tenure was the war on Terror. And a lot of those socalled conservatives were more than happy to snipe at him and call him Jorge and weaken a war time president. For all his faults, McCain stood with Bush and he kept a lot of moderate Republicans from balking. He deserves some credit for that.
That is all I am saying.
WWS:
Last I heard McCain wants to bring them to Fort Leavenworth, the military prison. I do not know if that has changed.
And Barbara, McCAin is the man most likely to beat Obama. So if you do not want Obama to be president then you need to run someone against him who actually has a snowball’s chance of winning the general election.