Mar 04 2008
McCain & Clinton’s Super Tuesday
Watched the returns from Reston, VA. McCain sews up the GOP nomination and Hillary is the come back kid. With OH and RI in her corner Clinton wins enough to go on. And I suspect she will eek out a win in TX. Right now I would prefer the vacuous phenom Obama up against McCain. But it looks like the Dems are heading to a brokered convention – which is all good for the GOP. Mike Huckabee ran a great race and he should be shoe-in in 2012 or 2016. My hat is off to the man for making the GOP tolerable again.
Addendum: Well the dems are still heading to their convention crack up with Clinton winning OH, TX and RI yesterday. In a total mess in TX Clinton won the primary and popular vote 51-47, and this morning the WaPo has Obama up 52-48 in the caucus count (36% reporting). My predictions were right this time (have to be lucky at least some times) and I believe I was right when I said Obama peaked too early and his campaign of sweetness and light was starting to get old. Those of us who said Clinton was not through yet knew she and her husband will do anything to win.
And so now comes the let down for the Obama groupies. Their hopes are being dashed not by their enemies – those evil republicans – but by those power hungry traitors in their own party. You can feel the frustration rising on both sides. Here is someone over at DailyKos clearly angry at Hillary for winning:
Mccain and the GOP were the ones who were REALLY partying it up last night.
Obama will now probably head negative.
while Mccain builds his base and attacks both and uses whatever they throw at each other.Hillary winning last night was about the worst possible outcome. the Delegate count was about even meaning Obama is still way ahead and now with only 600 left Hillary needs 385 or 61% of them to get back even. though she won Texas and Ohio did she ever break 55% in the big states? no.
meaning Hillary can’t actually catch back up in the Delegate count, Obama is not going to just let her be negative against him while he does nothing. so now for 7 weeks Hillary has insured that the democrats will destory each other. and make no mistake she STILL wont win the nomination.
That last prediction is not very solid in my mind. The convention is where the Clinton power will be at its maximum against a junior, one term senator from Illinois. Neither Clinton nor Obama can win the nomination now. And who has the most pledged delegates don’t matter under Democrats’ socialist rules.
What will happen is not that the candidates go negative – their rabid followers will be so angry they will start slighting the opposition. How do you think a Hillary supporter feels about this guy’s comments? Check out the comments to his post. The infighting is just beginning and will rage all summer.
And it will rage because too many on the left are simply naive about power in DC. Check this out:
Despite her primary wins yesterday, Hillary Clinton faces insurmountable odds against having enough convention delegates to win the nomination unless she resorts to destructive backroom arm twisting and dirty dealing to try to get over the top.
While Clinton is right to declare that it’s not over until it’s over, she did recapture some of her base in yesterday’s contests and her showing in Ohio was impressive, it is indeed over. The sooner that she can fashion a graceful exit the better that she, the Democratic Party and those of us already asking hard questions about a Barack Obama-John McCain showdown will be.
How naive can you get? Clinton bow out? Of course this is coming down to back room arm twisting and shady promises. Wake up people – this is the most powerful job on the planet and people like the Clinton’s don’t give up for the good of anyone else.
How exactly did Huckabee make the GOP more tolerable to you again?
Huckabee was a gracious candidate. He did not win, and I don’t know if he will ever win…but a lot of people liked the man and felt better about Republicans because he was on the ticket. People who just did not like him refuse to see that, but Huckabee is a gifted politician who came on the scene with almost nothing and lasted this long. Amazing when you think about it.
As far as Clinton is concerned, Obama is still ahead in the delegate count and thanks to the weird screwy system the Democrats have set up for themselves it will be difficult to get past that, unless the man just implodes. I do wonder about Michigan and Florida. How can the Democrats pick a candidate based on the votes of people in 48 states? I think they tried to hard to fix things and just made them more complicated.
Whippet1,
Huckabee made politics fun again – not nasty.
I’m a Christian Conservative and I felt Huckabee’s candidancy was a distraction against Mitt Romney and his rhetoric was too overtly Christian for my tastes.. (Though it pales in comparasion to Obama’s demagogeing regarding spirituality).
Yep, it’s a total mess in TX. It was too late for many but as I said previously……I personally know a few Pugs who voted Clinton. Heard Rove on FOX this morning say he had heard this also from someone in the know.
Huckabee? AJ, you’ve been at the vanilla extract again.
To a degree, this cycle is reminiscent of 1996 for the GOP…they are flushing a lot of not-terribly-appealing candidates out of the system.
Think about it….
You have Huckabee, who is a Big Government for Nominally Conservative Causes advocate – anathema to those of us who just plain don’t like Big Government.
Romney and Guliani were variations on the same theme – the Liberal DamnYankee. Which went over like a lead balloon in the South.
Thompson? He didn’t want the job. The rest of the pack? No base.
The wonder is that it took McCain this long to sew things up.
In any event, the race can go one of two ways. If the Dems win, I would put money on Jeb Bush for 2012. If McCain wins, it’s an open field – but I’d bet on Bobby Jindal.
Now the question is..
Who will McCain nominate as his VP running mate?
Lurker,
How about Michael Steele of MD?
Let me explain my proposal more. McCain’s big weakness is he is not ‘change’ in the sense of new blood in DC. He can fix that in his VP selection. He can pull someone in from the countryside (as it were) to show America this will not be the old boy’s network inside DC.
And Steele is that kind of great candidate who is edgy, articulate and who could debate Clinton or Obama himself.
It saddens me that this group is now hanging their hopes on McCain’s VP candidate. Had you boldly gone for a young and dynamic conservative, you wouldn’t be in this position now. No VP candidate can save the republicans this election (nor any election, for that matter). I surely hope I’m wrong but the last thing our party needed was McCain. Huge mistake backing this horse. Again, I sincerely hope I’m wrong but I’m preparing myself for the worst, a Democratic house, senate, and White House. We needed a bold throw of the dice and we threw a 7.
Sour grapes, 75. Sorry that anti-mexican thing didn’t work out for you, but nobody’s “hanging their hopes” on a VP candidate – it’s just the obvious next step now he’s got the nomination.
Personally, I favor Tim Pawlenty – shores up support in the midwest.
And for all the percieved problems that Rep’s may have, they pale in comparison to Hillary’s “Get in the Back of the Bus, Boy!” message to Obama and his supporters.
They’re all our grapes now, WWS. But now that you’ve brought it up, what makes you think I’m anti-Mexican?
75,
We have McCain because of the purity wars the ‘true conservatives’ waged over immigration, Dubai Ports, etc. They railed personal attacks on anyone who went for progress with some compromise. People were called traitors and worse for being willing to work out compromises.
And so the conservative coalition responded by nominating the most infamous ‘RINO’ (another insult from the insecure far right) as payback.
McCain is the response to the vitriol from the right. What could have avoided McCain (not my choice by a long shot) would have been civil disagreement and the far right learning to lose votes as mature adults.
Don’t blame McCain on anyone but the far right – who were dissed by the conservative coalition they themselves dissed first.
I think McCain can win on his own merits. The importance of his VP is what he adds to the ticket and that he will be the “annointed” candidate for 2012.
Repubs are blessed with young talent: Steele, Jindal, Romney, Thune and Jeb B. Take your pick.
Any of the choices The Macker suggests are good. Palin is another good one.
The problem with Steele is that he lost his own election. Guys like 75 won’t go for Pawlenty without a big whine fest. He will be too liberal blah blah blah.
McCain has months to pick a VP and as for hanging hopes on that VP, whether the right wants to admit it or not McCain is one of the most popular politicians in the United States. People from both parties give him overall positive marks. I think he won because rank and file Republicans realize that. They nominated someone who could actually win rather than picking a “true” conservative that two thirds of the country would never vote for.
As for who will win the Democratic nomination…I think Hillary has an uphill battle, but it is not impossible. I do think Obama is stumbling.
Jindal is too young and too untried. Romney is not a bad choice, but then again I am not sure he would add that much to the ticket.
Conservatives might go for Mike Pence from Indiana.
When is someone going to tell us if any of these candidates are going to put Americans first? I am not excited about any of them. None of them offer any real change from Bush’s policies of catering to the Muslims to convince them he believes all of them are engaged in “The Religion of Peace’s’ peaceful activities. Apparently Bush thinks these fanatics can be won over with love and kindness. Clinton embedded Clintonista loyalists in all our government agencies. It looks like Bush has embedded Muslim fanatics in sheeps clothing in all our agencies . It was outrageous that Clinton would appoint Johnny Chung , a Chinese agent, to a high government position with top secret clearance. . It is just as outrageous that Bush has appointed Muslims with ties to terrorist and terrorist funding organizations to positions in our government. Do we not have American citizens who are qualified for these jobs? I am waiting for just one of these candidates to say “It’s time we stopped trying to accomodate the enemy and clean house ”
In addition to hiring enemy agents to approve all our actions so we won’t offend any Muslim’s tender feelings, we are giving billions of borrowed dollars to Muslim controlled countries around the world. We are practically supporting the Palestinians, and giving them arms which they are using to attack our military and Israel. If those people had to work to feed themselves instead of lining up for free handouts they wouldnt’ have time to engage in jihadist activities. It’s bad enough that our government aided and abetted in the Albanians in “liberating” Kosovo, which is now another Muslin country with a vote equal to ours in the UN. Now we are told we must give them $2 billion as start up money. Give me a break. Just which side are our leaders, both Democrat and Republican, on?
momdear1,
No one wants to change from the success we have been having under Bush. No need to go too liberal or to far right.
Muslims represent a large portion of the world population – so we can not have a war with it. And why would we? We have them coming to our side fighting against al-Qaeda, rejecting terrorism?
You want to fight those Muslims in Iraq who have allied themselves with us???