MUTINY
I don't know why Florida is a winner-take-all primary. That seems to winnow the field long before necessary. I've been leaning Giuliani but he may not even be in the race still when I cast my vote.
Momentum is one thing and it is being used as spin by the "winner" of all these states where the top two are merely splitting delegates. It would be terrible if McCain/Romney are within a few percentage points of one another yet one of them scoops all the delegates. That seems like a bad way to run this process.
I like McCain's insistence that national security is paramount in these times but I'm not sold on the rest of his package. He seems a decent enough guy usually, but I don't like the way it is so obvious to him that Romney is a buffoon. He would do better to stick with Reagan's eleventh commandment and not talk ill of fellow Republicans. We are supposed to call the other guy "Ozone Man" while remaining united within the large tent of our own party.
McCain is boring as hell to listen to and "experience" is a major turn-off for me, although I appear to be in the minority with that opinion. Any time a candidate righteously touts his/her experience, I puke a little in my mouth and hope he/she gets his/her comeuppance. A = Government is broken; B = I am part of Government; therefore C = I am in position to fix it. Alternate C = I am part of the problem, not the solution.
Reagan came into office when the misery index was high and he made people of both parties believe in a better future and then he made it happen. Obama gets that. His policies are a bit socialist but as a leader, he could do for America what Reagan did a generation ago and usher in a new era in which our differences define us rather than divide us.
The Democratic Party has been broken since JFK took a bullet. They have divided our country, rich against poor, black against white now for four decades. Billary was able to use the black vote to propel them to office but now they no longer can count on it and are courting the Hispanic vote, attempting to create a new division within the party and within our country. Obama more or less shares Billary's politics but his message is so much more inclusive. This guy is our country. He is rich, poor, black, white, American and foreigner all at once. It just feels that he is the right guy for the times. So long as we have military hawks staving off the Islamic jihadist threat, I would be thrilled if we had a president who could work to heal the racial divide that is destroying us from within.
And I'm a Republican, but I can see now how Reagan did it. There are certain times in history when conditions collude to make people put their politics aside and find a new direction for the country. I have always voted Republican but the party is broken. I voted twice for Bush and twice for his father even though I wasn't in love with either candidate, but it was the best my party could offer.
If 2008 comes to the point where the best my party can offer is John McCain, then I have to question if he deserves my unwavering support. If you take foreign policy out of the equation, there are only minor differences between how Democrats and Republicans govern anymore. Give me Newt Gingrich and I vote GOP without hesitation, but offer McCain v Obama and it might be worth the trade to root for the true agent of change, with fingers crossed that national health care just doesn't come to pass. Last time it got close, Gingrich came to the rescue and for a time, defined the GOP. We are in dire need again of being rescued so I'm holding out for 2010. I could certainly live with an Obama administration and a Republican congress. That could be just what our country needs.
2 comments:
Well said, Dude.
I fear that you are voicing what many Republicans are thinking. I too find myself liking Obama when I hear him speak, even though I disagree with him on most every issue. I think the argument (which Rush is making also) -- that if we can't get a conservative president, let the liberals have it and hope for a conservative backlash later -- ignores the reality that the liberal president will replace old liberal Supreme Court justices with young liberal Supreme Court justices, and that would be a very bad thing for a very long time. Funny how a couple years ago, all the talk was that the Democratic Party was fractured and broken. Now the same is said of the Republican Party. History moves quickly sometimes.
I agree with you that the primary process rules out candidates based on the whims of the calendar and state party rules. Here in PA, I haven't seen a political ad and no candidate has visited the state because we don't vote until April. I was a Giuliani guy also, but the way the primary calendar shapes up, he could be gone long before some of us get a chance to vote for him.
Edit: Ideologically I was most in line with Fred (among the announced candidates, not including Newt and others on the sidelines). See how it works? He's been gone for a week and already I forgot about him.
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