14 December 2007

Contingency...


Remember this? Howard Dean riding high and then collapsing in a primal scream of goofiness. I can only hope the same holds true for the weight losing, Mike Huckabee.

The presidential race is certainly heating up. MSNBC, also known as Major Source of News for Backroom Communists, is predicting a wild turnover of events in the primaries. I am not surprised. With the duration of the campaign season, it is inevitable that cracks would appear in the heir apparent's armor. Personally, I am excited. Politics has seemed to come alive again in the American spirit and a more civil discourse of issues appears to be taking place.



Let me offer a few of my own plans for election day in 2008. As the selection of potential candidates is essentially out of my hands, I will present a simple IF-THEN approach to voting.



Fair warning, I am a registered republican. In college I worked on George H. W. Bush's campaign. I was a registered libertarian for a period in the mid to late 1990s, but never voted the party ticket. I abandoned them after better understanding their overly "hands off" approach to too many critical issues.



1) I see no third party candidate of any interest. The fact that multiple parties still offer up candidates. However, the winnowing of candidates into two parties is efficient and effective. I am of the strong opinion that all politics is local.


2) If Mike Huckabee secures the GOP nomination or VP slot – I will vote against him, even for Hillary Clinton or Mahmoud Ahmadinejad .


3) Barack Obama, for all his naïve nature is VERY electable.



In general I am optimistic. Our foreign policy has not converted the world into a firestorm of US hatred – anymore than it was prior to September 11, 2001. The real challenges remain as global security and human freedom, the economy and managing growth (thus its impact on the environment).



Healthcare, in my opinion is a red herring. This goes for immigration as well. Both require detailed solutions to some of the programmatic and fiscal aspects, but from a policy perspective – no major change is truly warranted.


8 comments:

ep417 said...

Ferris Bueller, you're my hero!

Sadly,I feel that the same country which elected King George II twice would not have any qualms about putting a ranting right wing Christianist loon into office.....I pray I am wrong.

Andrew Sullivan has some great "I Told You So" columns on his blog which chastise the GOP for being so heavily infiltrated by the Christian Right, and I sadly have to agree with him. I hope that they find a way to tell Huckabee to Huck Off (I think they are already making the bumbersticker....)

Citizen Deux said...

I think Huckabee will implode a la Robertson in 1988. If you will recall he did well in Iowa and nowhere else.

Huckabee is about to find all his chickens coming home to roost. This can only be good for McCain and Romney. I think Guiliani is lost.

sonicfrog said...

Hey, if Huckabee isn't your bag of tee, you can always vote for Alan Keyes!!!

Yep. You read that right. He's apparently officially entered the race. The WSJ featured a good editorial by Peggy Noonan this morning, who noted that while the Republican party pays lip service to Ronald Reagan on the one hand, the man probably could not be electable by the current version of the party. Reagan was not an avid church goer, finding evidence of God as he rode horseback on his ranch. I note that he also provided virtual amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants (which, depending on how it's accomplished, I don't thing is a bad thing, in of itself).

Gotta go fix the car. Will chat later.

sonicfrog said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
sonicfrog said...

PS. I don't worship RR, but all and all, I do think he was a good president. Did he make mistakes? Sure! But so has every other president, even Washington and Lincoln. I see Reagan as the Republican version of JFK - both men made some serious blunders during their tenure (JFK is hard to judge because his tenure in office was cut short by a bullet), but they both contributed a great deal to history.

BostonMaggie said...

You have depressed me, I am going back to listening to Dvorak's "New World Symphony"

Anonymous said...

GOP backing Obama
Dems backing Huckabeeeee

Both believe they are defeatable in the general election.

Issue: bi-polar primary system, run by party faithful, almost ensure parties present candidates "off-center".

There are no candidates out there to me that make say, HEY! He/She has it in "one sock".

1983=Jean Kirpatrick in a red teddy! Yea Baby! :)

(visualize whirled peas!)
Mud Shark

Citizen Deux said...

Eeeek!

It is clear that the GOP is doing as much frittering as the DNC. However, I think the eventual DNC candidate could be a tougher argument than any GOP contender. If Hillary gets the nomination at this point, I think she will end up as a paper tiger.

Iraq will be a tough topic as the progress is sound, but could be intentionally destabilized by Iran in the run up to the election.

Let's just say that Iran sees Iraq as a serious center of gravity for us.