Thursday, May 8, 2008

Calling It Like I See It

It's something I dread to see.

It's something I hardly dare to say.

But from here, the view looks fairly certain that next January, we will be calling Barack Obama "Mr. President."

The fact that neither Reverend Wright, nor Hillary Clinton's new-found populism have been able to sink Barack Obama is a pretty good indicator that nothing else will, either. The baggage of having a "liberation-theology" preacher was handled by Barak's suddenly emergent disgust that pastor's message. Hillary Clinton's blue-collarism was beaten with more bromides about hope and change. If Obama is producing wins despite the dogpile of Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and John McCain, just wait until after the nomination. The Clintons will switch sides, sing Obama's praises and John McCain will be the man under the dogpile.

Despite the fact that Hillary hasn't acknowledged it yet, the general election race has already begun. And, despite some polls showing otherwise, it doesn't look good for John McCain. Two special elections for solidly Republican Congressional Districts, (one of them former Speaker Denny Hastert's) have gone Democrat. In many primary states, more people have actually cast votes for Barack Obama than voted for all the Republican candidates combined. In some of those states, Democrat primary voters outnumbered Republicans by margins as large as two to one!

In spite of this, the Senator from Arizona seems to be running a campaign that is largely incoherent and lacking any defining passion (excepting the Iraq War). He is campaigning, but not innovating. He is speaking, but says things no one cares about. He is going places, but moving nowhere. Add to this, the strange way that McCain is reduced to using public campaign financing. McCain is one of the richest Senators in Congress. No one is talking about the fact that although McCain has hundreds of millions at his disposal, he is not spending any of it on his last chance at the White House.

Republicans are not united. McCain is not uniting them. He continues to run to the left of the base in the party, hoping desparately to be able to capture the middle. The only problem is that the uncommitted middle tends to vote for the candidate that they like the best. McCain is not winning that front.

The weight of history is against Republicans. That weight could be countered. Unfortunately, the weight of current events and current campaigns seems to be against us, as well. It doesn't look like those weights will be countered by anything but an Obama implosion.

Since the Jeremiah Wright flap and Hillary Clinton combined haven't caused that implosion, I'm not sure anything will at this point. Having confidence in an Almighty God is looking better and better.....because from where I'm seeing it, nothing else is even looking good. I'm just calling it like I see it.

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Who Wants to Lose Worse?

Earlier in the election cycle, it seemed as if the Republican Party was insistent upon losing this election. Conservative pundits, the Party establishment and even the candidates themselves seemed to trying to throw the race to the Democrats.

The talkers trashed a great up and coming conservative candidate in Mike Huckabee, who came in second despite them. The establishment backed candidates that no one really wanted, like Giuliani and Romney. The stalwart, old-party candidates, Thompson and McCain, ran campaigns that drifted and spun wildly.

In the end, backed by reluctant conservatives, and a kinda-enthusiastic establishment, McCain became the candidate by default. It seemed that the GOP was purposely choosing the least electable candidate to be our Party's nominee. I thought the Republicans were trying to lose, and doing a fine job of handing the Democrats an easy win.

Until now....

Not to be outdone by the GOP's dismal and frantic nomination process, the Democrats are determined to give the Republicans a run for their money. At losing, that is. Now that the field has been winnowed down to just two, Obama and Hillary are trying their best to destroy any chances of a Democrat victory. To this conservative, it's almost laughable. Almost.

Obama, once the "race-transcendent" candidate, has become a stammering apologist for the hate-America wing of the black political movement. He's not defending what they believe, because he can't believe it and win. But he's not denouncing them, because he can't denounce himself and his own constitutency and win. So, Obama expects us to believe that he listened to his preacher just enough to be a Chrisian, just like us...but that he ignored his preacher so much that he didn't know (gasp) that his preacher was a raving lunatic who hated America! It's all the sound bite's fault anyway.

In all fairness, nearly anyone can have a sound bite lifted out of context. But this is more than the press playing sound-bitus with an unpopular man. What kind of preacher wants God to damn America? What kind of preacher uses racial slurs, even to make a point? What kind of people listen to this stuff? What kind of people believe it?

Turning to Hillary, evidently she was not able to stand the thought that Obama might help the Democrats lose more than she would. She just had to join the fray. For reasons completely unknown to any sane person, she began to concoct war stories. Claiming to have come under sniper fire may sound brave, but it stretches the imagination. Especially to think that Hillary told us this knowing that nearly every moment of her public life is on video tape. What's next, is she going to claim to have invented the Internet? Perhaps, it wasn't Neil Armstrong taking one giant leap for mankind, after all.

So, the Democrats continue to kill the win while pursuing it. My prediction is that the Democrat establishment will let the two fight it out, even up until the convention. That same establishment will then order them onto the ticket together, to try and unify the party. Watch out, because Obama will win, and Hillary will be forced to the VP spot. She'll be madder than a wet hen because of it. Yet, her hunger for power will force her to smile and campaign madly.


In fact, the "Dream Ticket" will not be Barack and Hillary. It will be Barack, Hillary and the side show formerly known as Bill Clinton. They will gang up on McCain with all the pent up fury of a plugged volcano, finally spewing. It will be worse than scorched-earth against McCain. It will be nuclear.

To beat this, McCain desperately needs to be likable. That's about as likely as Bill Clinton being invisible. A likable Vice Presidential candidate would help McCain, but it would almost take Ronald Reagan himself to bring charm and warm fuzzies into the McCain camp. In the twenty or so names that have been mentioned, only two or three even remotely have what McCain needs. The Veepstakes are the only unknown on the GOP side of the equation, and they need to be more than just substantive. For McCain to compete, they need to be brilliant, and brilliance is in short supply this season in both parties.

In the end, this election will not be about who won. It will be about who insisted upon loosing. I don't see anyone winning right now.

Friday, March 21, 2008

Obama's Achilles Heel

Obama has a typical politician's problem, one especially prevalent in those who come from the legislature and try to go to the executive. That problem is the fact that he has to be sufficiently appealing to his base constituency to be elected to the legislature while he's running for the legislature. This leads him to do the traditional "things" that a legislator from his district or section of the country does. Then, when he tries to appeal to a national base, he finds that the local positions and rhetoric which once got him elected have now come back to haunt him.

In Obama's case, his was a Harvard-Princeton black family, and he ran for legislature among people who didn't relate to such a privileged upbringing. To combat that potential vote-killer, he chose to adopt the angry rhetoric of some people in the black community. Hence, he takes a pilgrimage to a known black terrorist in his district. He attends Jeremiah Wright's church. He chooses to be around the angry blacks; people more in the line of Malcom X than Martin Luther King, Jr. For many years, Obamba has been exceedingly comfortable in the more militant half of the black political scene.

Now, he's running on a broader stage, where not only does most of his audience not share his angry black views; they don't understand them. They feel threatened by them. They are aghast when Obama's preacher spews what is basically nonsense about whites and the government. They don't relate to the anger coming from the pulpit, and are tempted to respond in kind. There does not seem to be much room on the national stage for this militant black political view, simply because it is so foreign to most Americans.

So Obama finds himself in a most unenviable place. He must appeal to the national base, yet he must not disavow his home-town crowd. Unfortunately for Obama, that home-town crowd simply is not representative of most Americans. Unless he is more successful at distancing himself from them, he will not succeed. His past success at being comfortable among militant blacks may undo his very real chance of success on the national stage. Obama may be his own Achilles heel.

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

The McCain-Times Surge

So.... the prestigious NY Times releases a "scandal" piece on John McCain. And I'm thinking that John McCain is loving every minute of it.

No, really, stop and think about it. The whole thing is nonsense. The universal reaction in the press is to (gasp) be astonished and (gasp) wonder how the Times could resort to such gossip rag techniques.

But what better way to advance the liberal agenda by advancing the nearly un-electable McCain? Yes, I said advancing. You see, this "unfair attack" is almost guaranteed to garner conservative sympathy and support for McCain. So, here comes a "big" attack from the "big, bad liberal newspaper."

And, to some degree, it seems to be working. McCain's fundraising and poll numbers have both enjoyed a bump after the Times fiasco. But, I think it will only be a matter of time before the Time's real strategy comes to light. Now that McCain is on the outs with them, it will be a perfect time for them to embrace the fight with McCain and push Obama or Hillary.

You watch, the Times will continue their fight with McCain, conservatives will sort-of gather around him, and the Times will have a perfect excuse to be both against McCain and for him. They'll keep up a phony attack until the Republican convention; then they will attack for real. They will prop up McCain until he's in the way...then all bets are off. The surge will be against McCain then. For real.

Thursday, February 7, 2008

What Now?!

In my profession of teaching, I'm often struck by the phrases kids use. Some are odd. (Brotha from anotha motha) Some are lame. (Oh yeah? Well, yo mama!) And some have an odd little twist to them. (What NOW?!)

That last little phrase is usually delivered after a particularly strong athletic performance in the face of direct opposition. Like today when a 17 year old student of mine rared back and threw a basketball like a baseball...very hard and very straight -- and made a three point shot. Even though it was quite on accident....

"What NOW?!"

It's also the phrase that seems to fit the political season right about now.

To all those who said this was a two man race between McCain and Romney...

"What NOW?!"

To all those who said Huckabee should "have the dignity" to not attend the Reagan Library debate...

"What NOW?!"

To all those who have belittled (Bill O'Reilly), attacked (Rush Limbaugh), slandered (Ann Coulter), condescended to (Sean Hannity), revealed bias against (Laura Ingraham), or made up bogus reasons to dislike (Glenn Beck) Mike Huckabee...

"What NOW!?!"

Not only did we win states and delegates on Super Tuesday, we've outlasted Fred, Rudy, and now Mitt.

"What NOW?!"

But frankly, we need to ask ourselves the same question.

"What now?"

An honest observer will note that Mitt's suspension of campaign was a very classy move, designed to unite the party. At least that's what he says. Even if it isn't, he left the race in a very gracious and dignified manner. Not only do we need to respect that, we need to consider if it is time for us to do the same.

Don't get me wrong. I'm usually a "never say die" person. But is it truly in the nation's best interest for us to stay in? Is it in the party's best interest? Is it in Mike's best interest?

If we truly cannot win, we ought to bow out gracefully in a few days, and stay away from a VP position. Why? Because if we truly cannot win, we are a nuisance to the party winning. We're a laughable distraction.

If we accept a VP position, it will reek of a backroom deal, and look very bad for Huckabee. Not to mention the fact that if McCain loses with a Huckabee VP, Romney becomes the heir apparent for 2012, rather than Huckabee.

But...

If we can really win, we ought to give it one last go. This thing is not sewn up yet, and we have always defied the pundits, pollsters and predictors. They've never really given Huckabee a chance, anyway. The only time they took the Huckster seriously was during the time between Iowa and South Carolina. The media follows the polls; we set the polls on their ears. Time after time, Mike has defied tremendous odds and outperformed expectations. If anyone can pull an upset win, Mike Huckabee can. If anyone can beat the Democrats with less money, Mike Huckabee can. After all, what does he have to lose?

If we stay in, they're going to come after us. We need to be ready to defend Mike against charges of being arrogant and selfish for continuing to seek the nomination. They're going to accuse him of making it easier for the Democrats to win, by battling McCain, the presumptive nominee. They're going to call him a spoiler. Expect some of the talk jocks who hated McCain to suddenly love him and continue a savage attack on Huckabee.

But, we've been through all that before. We can handle it.

What now? After examining the case for getting out, and finding it lacking...

After looking at the case for staying in and deciding we have nothing to lose....

I say, "What NOW!?!"

We're still in the race.

Thursday, January 31, 2008

Are We Willing to Win?

A previous post detailed why the Republicans will likely lose in the fall. For more details, see the post below, in which I lay out the scenario for a Republican defeat. But does it really have to be this way?

Is there a way out for the GOP?

I think there is. There are still three candidates in the race. I think one of them still has the ability to win in the fall.

By many accounts, we are race that is nearly unwinnable. If, in fact, the race is about money, the Democrats will certainly win. They have already surpassed the Republicans in fundraising by tens of millions of dollars. If the race is about change, John McCain has been in Washington forever and Mitt Romney is an Establishment Republican. They don't give us much. The Democrats will be the party of change whether Clinton or Obama win. And they will trump us on that issue.

But there is one Republican candidate that can still pull off a win in the fall.

We need a candidate who can squeeze every drop of value from his money. We need a candidate who can connect with the common man who votes. We need a genuine conservative who has not padded his story with fabrications. We need a governor with executive experience, not a legislator with committee experience. We need a candidate whose principles are solid and whose ideas are out of the box. That candidate is Mike Huckabee.

Right now, the story has him losing. With no money and sinking poll numbers, his candidacy is in its last days. Right now, the narrative will have him bowing to the inevitable McCain campaign soon after Super Tuesday. Right now, Huckabee is almost done.

Right now.

Right now, though, we can still change the story.

Rather than bow to the polls and pundits, we need to make them bow to us. We are the people. We are the voters. We are the only poll that really matters. We are Republicans, and we need to coalesce around the one candidate who can still pull off a win.

We can still prove the pundits wrong one more time. We can still pour money into a campaign that gives tremendous returns for every dollar we give. We don't have to go with the polls; we set the polls, for crying out loud!

The question is not "Will we lose?"

The real question is "Are we going to do what it takes to win?"

The question is not, "Who is leading in the polls?"

The real question is, "Are we willing to let liberal media pundits decide our race for us?"

I know we can.

I hope we will.

How Republicans Will Lose

Unless things change radically on Super Tuesday, the main story of this election year will be how the Republicans lost.

I know, I know, I'm supposed to be a common-sense conservative, and the Republicans are supposed to be my party. Supposed to be.

But for each of the major candidates, it's much easier to paint a scenario where a seemingly great candidate manages to lose a winnable race. Let's examine the first victim of this phenomenon, Fred Thompson.

Fred Thompson was the conservative's darling back during the summer of 2007. He promised a no-nonsense candidacy that would put the liberals back in their place. When Fred finally officially announced, he was instantly in the race. He had nearly $12 million dollars overnight and poll numbers putting him instantly into national contention. Fred Thompson should have been the Republican nominee.

Instead, he squandered $12 million and 20 percentage points in the polls and comes away as the first major candidate to leave the race. Deciding to skip the first three debates he could have been in, Thompson never seemed to know how to campaign. He took a winning proposition and turned it into a massive waste . And his is only the first story.

Next we see the story of Rudy Giuliani. The man to beat, Rudy was seen as the presumptive nominee. Getting an early start with a nice warchest, Rudy took the lead in polls, and never looked back. Rudy Giuliani should have been the Republican nominee.

Yet, the mantles of fiscal conservatism and national security were not enough to hide the fact that he was a social liberal, totally out of touch with most of his party. And with a puzzling campaign strategy that ignored some states and made him invisible during political media frenzies. Another one bites the dust.

Mitt Romney is another nearly perfect canidate who will lose. Mitt brought the biggest war chest an incredible business record into the race. With no hint of scandal around his candidacy, and a squeaky clean good-guy image, Mitt Romney sculpted his message to appeal to the Reagan coalition of social and fiscal conservatives, and national security hawks. Mitt Romney ought to wind up as the Republican nominee.

He won't. Simply because he did sculpt his message, the coalition didn't coalesce. His packaged presentation designed to unite a divided party failed because it was simply too packaged. Romney failed to sell himself as a genuine conservative, because he has not been one. And Republican voters saw through it. Mitt Romney will bite the dust.

The next man likely to lose is Mike Huckabee. If anyone shouldn't be on this list, Mike is the man. Mike never was supposed to get this high. Defying conventional wisdom, his message and retail political style catapulted him into the elite first tier of candidates. In a tremedous campaing, he won a David vs. Goliath battle in Iowa. Mike Huckabee should be the Republican nominee.

Yet, two fatal flaws have hamstrung this brilliant campaign and will likely be the death of it. First, Mike's fundraising machine was simply non-existent. Without much needed cash, Huckabee was forced to make critical cuts at terribly wrong times in the campaign. Secondly, the potential free media given by conservative talk radio that Huckabee should have recieved, turned into a feeding frenzy. For some strange reason, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and their ilk decided that Mike Huckabee was not conservative enough and decided to kill his campaign. Now that it isn't far from dead, the talkers will have to live with their creation: a likely McCain candidacy. Huckabee's lack of the ability to connect with these talkers probably killed his campaign.


This leaves us with the obvious: someone's got to win. But even the one remaining candidate is likely to be a looser. John McCain will be the default nominee; the last one standing. In a year when voters are seemingly screaming for change, the GOP will offer its usual strategy: give it to the guy who's next in line. John McCain has reversed a dysfunctional campaign and lagging poll numbers with a debt-ridden campaign that has managed to make something out of everyone else's mistakes.

By playing old-school attack politics better than the man who started it, McCain took Romney's negativity back to him, and beat him. He picked up Huckabee's slack in South Carolina and Guiliani's in Florida. By riding the divide better than anyone else, he has managed to (seemingly) be the last one standing. John McCain will likely be the Republican nominee.

John McCain's victory will result in his loosing the race to the Democrat in the fall. Despite the current poll numbers to the contrary, his droning stump speech will not match the aggression of a Clinton, nor the energy of an Obama. As the oldest candidate, and the one with the longest history in Washington, he is clearly not what the general electorate want. Only able to trump the Democrats on national security, he will be fresh meat for the energized Democrats.

The next question is....

Does it really have to be this way?

To be continued

Huckabee and Reagan

This article by Georgia Congressman John Linder is a must-read for any Huckabee supporter or detractor.

http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=10019&SectionID=17&SubSectionID=116&S=1

In it, Linder states why Mike Huckabee will be back in the future.

I say, let's make the future happen now.

Friday, January 11, 2008

Hillary Endorses Guacamole

Today, former First Lady Hillary Clinton opened up what may be a sweeping new campaign position. Chips and guacamole go together. Speaking on the stump in Nevada on Jan. 11, she reaffirmed her campaign's committment to making sure that no chip travels unaccomanied by that gooey, green goodness known as guacamole. "[O]ne is guacamole, and one is chips....they both go together," said the former First Lady, to cheers in the audience.

Speaking on the condition of anonymity, one campaign staffer said that "Hillary is trying to reassure the chip-eating crowd that she is the real person with the experience to change things for them. This stimulus package of guacamole will both make Hillary seem like she is a real person, and will appeal to younger voters, just like Obama does. We want voters to know that Hillary is a nice, yet tough agent of experiential change who is in touch with her emotions and knows how to eat guacamole."

By linking chips with guacamole, Clinton is reaching out to those who for years have eaten chips without guacamole. "And I keep urging people, get out and do this, for yourselves, your families, your future,"she later said. Clinton views this program as crucial to her campaign. "I come with all of my experience and my lifelong commitment to making positive change for people with a record on issues that matter to the people of Nevada," she said.

Clinton's endorsement of chips and guacamole comes as no surprise to those who know her. Former White House staffers note that she often ordered guacamole and chips be brought in to ease tension during sensitive negotiations. "She often brought chips and guacamole to the table while she brokered the peace deal between Northern and Southern Ireland," said a former aide, also speaking anonymously. "She had this great recipe she would just whip up. The entire Healthcare Task Force just lived on the stuff while we worked to socialize medicine."

Presidential Candidate Barack Obama also weighed in on the guacamole controversy. "Change is what we need in this country, because change is different than not changing. Now, guacamole has its place, and I respect Senator Clinton for her guacamole. But change is change. And we must not allow thought or logic to get in way of change. We need guacamole like John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King dreamed of. We must peddle the hope that America will unite around a bowl of guacamole! A bowl that embraces red chips! Blue chips! Chips of every color! Uniting into the noble sea of green goo that will carry us into a new era of change and hope!"

Former Senator Jonathan Edwards had little to say, except to note that his grandfather ate chips while he worked at a guacamole mill in South Carolina.

Republican hopeful Mike Huckabee disagrees with the First Lady's proposal. "Everyone knows that Democrat guacamole is full of pork," he told reporters earlier today. "I've always been a salsa man myself."

Thursday, January 10, 2008

The Talkers Will Come Back

It's been an interesting yet disgusting phenomenon. I'm talking about the way that the typical conservative talking heads have turned on Mike Huckabee. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, Lara Ingraham and (ugh) Ann Coulter either attacked the Governor, or dismissed him outright.

He's been called a populist; he's been called a homosexual-lover; he's been the subject of a Sean Hannity grilling and a Rush Limbaugh monologue. He's taken a lot of flak from typical conservatives because as largely secular thinkers, they don't understand his Christian worldview. He's taken hits from the wise guys because they don't want to understand pragmatic governing. And he's taken hits from the talkers because he is truely his own kind of Republican. And none of them is quite sure what to do with it.

Except for Coulter, they'll all be back. Watch and see.

They'll be back, first of all because they'll want to back the Republican nominee for President, and I still think it will be Mike Huckabee. None of these guys want an Obama or Clinton presidency. And they will all sing the praises of Mike Huckabee because they will want to defeat the Democratic nominee. These talkers are by and large mouthpieces for the Republican party, and they will flock to the nominee whoever he is. I think it will be Mike Huckabee.

Secondly, they will be back because the are loosing audience. I don't have hard numbers to back this assertion. But I've been a listener to a lot of these pundits for a while, and when they went after Mike, they lost me. I have been very disappointed in their treatment of the Governor and his record. Turning a long-time fan into a disappointed and angry listener is not the way to build audience numbers. And I know I'm not the only one. These guys will have to get their audience back, or someone else will get it from them.

The talkers will be back.

Obama on the Second Amendment

The newest Democratic phenom is the Junior Senator from Illinois, Barack Hussein Obama. And what a phenom he is. Upsetting both the Clinton and Edwards machine in Iowa and nearly upsetting the old Clinton machine in New Hampshire. Casting himself as a catalyst for "change" and peddling "hope," he seems to be taking the Democratic establishment to school. He's suave, good-looking and on fire when he gives a stump speech. He's also very liberal.

To begin with, let's examine how he stands on the Second Amendment. An important part of his stance on the Second Amendment includes banning all semi-automatic weapons. According to the 1998 IL State Legislative National Political Awareness Test, Barack Obama favors the ban or sale of all semi-automatic weapons. That means certain models of guns will be banned simply because they use a different loading mechanism. It shows Obama probably has no personal experience with firearms and has no working knowledge of how or why guns are lethal. He would limit a homeowner's ability to protect himself based on an apparently knee-jerk pander to those who dislike guns.

Obama also favors other restrictions on gun ownership. He showed a position on the VoteMatch quiz indicating that he favored limiting "availability of guns by whatever means are effective." This is a candidate who is clearly against guns and who is no friend to the millions of gun owners across the nation.

He's also who the Republicans are going to have to beat. Here's one piece of ammunition against him. And this pun WAS intended.

Wednesday, January 9, 2008

How Mike Wins the Race

After a beautiful first place win in Iowa and a respectable third place showing in Hew Hampshire, the Republican Race is wide open. And man for man, my money is on Mike Huckabee to emerge as the winner. McCain's surge will split moderates up between himself and Guiliani, while Fred Thompson's cash problems could force him out of the race early.

With moderates split, and a bounce from Fred's conservatives, Mike could carve out a very nice coalition to challenge Romney for his party's mantle. And I'm not the only one who thinks so. For a more polished and professional opinion, read the article at this link:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2008/01/huckabee_has_momentum.html

Until next time, happy blogging!