Just Some Primary Stuff
I figure I should just get this stuff down before next week's Super Tuesday. What was a fascinating race has turned into the same old crap. Bye bye John Edwards, Rudy, and Mr. Law and Order. Huckabee remains in the Republican race to attract the anti-dinosaur vote and Ron Paul will stick around to spend all the money raised by my wacky libertarian buddies. But really, we're left with Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for the Democrats and John McCain and Mitt Romney for the Republicans. I'm not a fan of anyone left in the race, but I think I do prefer both the Democrats to Romney and McCain. Briefly, here are just a few thoughts on each of them.
John McCain- As I wrote in the last post, McCain is a moderate and let me come right out and say I don't like moderates. Moderates are liberals without the good intentions, conservatives without the philosophical underpinnings. I don't like McCain because of McCain-Feingold and the trashing of the First Amendment. I don't like McCain because he has a foreign policy that's just a bit too real for me. And it also scares me that he's admitted to having no understanding of economics, yet he wants to be involved in running the economy. Yes, he's opposed to pork barrel spending and has the right stance on immigration, but that just doesn't make up for the fact that he thinks the government needs to be butting it's nose in everyone's business- Just witness the baseball steroid scandal.
Mitt Romney- Mitt Romney's biggest problem is that he governed Massachusetts as a liberal Republican. The health care plan he adopted in Massachusetts is not all that different from the plans proposed by Clinton and Obama and he comes across as the ultimate corporatist. Just give him a chance, let him work with business, and he can get the country running smoothly again. And for my personal taste, he's taken a wrong turn on social issues, namely abortion. He talks like a conservative, but I can't help but thinking of him as the very worst of George Bush with no end to big government in site. And, truth be told, if he wasn't a Republican, would anyone really want to trust a governor of Massachusetts with matters of national security? Didn't think so.
Barack Obama- First, don't be fooled by the image of Barack Obama as "the honest" candidate. Sure, maybe he seems more trustworthy than Hillary or Romney, but he's still a politician. Truth be told, I don't think there's a lot of difference between his positions and Hillary's. And those positions are that they're Democrats that want to do a lot of stuff that I probably won't like. That being said, I think Barack has the potential to get a lot more done in Washington than Hillary- I don't think he'll face the same stiff opposition that Hillary would, and he has that affable, "get things done" sort of attitude.
Which is why the candidate that I've said would be president for the last three years, Hillary Clinton, is my ultimate choice as the lesser of 4 evils. In an odd way, she's the most trustworthy of any of the candidates. And by that I mean she basically wears her evil on her sleeve. We know she's a Clinton and we know what she's all about. I'm just not sure with the rest of them, especially with the supposed good guy, Barack Obama. Like Obama, I think she'll do a decent job of managing foreign affairs. But the truth is, I'm confident that the really big government liberal things I don't like about her will be stymied by Republican opposition.
My prediction is that Hillary will win the Democratic nomination, primarily because people will feel more confident with her baggage, good and bad, then they will with all of Barack Obama's promises of change. The Republicans are a bit more difficult to call, but I think Romney will have a slight edge because of all the conservative agitation the past week over McCain. It's possible you'll see a number of Huckabee supporters switch to Romney just to keep McCain from winning the nomination. We'll see.
John McCain- As I wrote in the last post, McCain is a moderate and let me come right out and say I don't like moderates. Moderates are liberals without the good intentions, conservatives without the philosophical underpinnings. I don't like McCain because of McCain-Feingold and the trashing of the First Amendment. I don't like McCain because he has a foreign policy that's just a bit too real for me. And it also scares me that he's admitted to having no understanding of economics, yet he wants to be involved in running the economy. Yes, he's opposed to pork barrel spending and has the right stance on immigration, but that just doesn't make up for the fact that he thinks the government needs to be butting it's nose in everyone's business- Just witness the baseball steroid scandal.
Mitt Romney- Mitt Romney's biggest problem is that he governed Massachusetts as a liberal Republican. The health care plan he adopted in Massachusetts is not all that different from the plans proposed by Clinton and Obama and he comes across as the ultimate corporatist. Just give him a chance, let him work with business, and he can get the country running smoothly again. And for my personal taste, he's taken a wrong turn on social issues, namely abortion. He talks like a conservative, but I can't help but thinking of him as the very worst of George Bush with no end to big government in site. And, truth be told, if he wasn't a Republican, would anyone really want to trust a governor of Massachusetts with matters of national security? Didn't think so.
Barack Obama- First, don't be fooled by the image of Barack Obama as "the honest" candidate. Sure, maybe he seems more trustworthy than Hillary or Romney, but he's still a politician. Truth be told, I don't think there's a lot of difference between his positions and Hillary's. And those positions are that they're Democrats that want to do a lot of stuff that I probably won't like. That being said, I think Barack has the potential to get a lot more done in Washington than Hillary- I don't think he'll face the same stiff opposition that Hillary would, and he has that affable, "get things done" sort of attitude.
Which is why the candidate that I've said would be president for the last three years, Hillary Clinton, is my ultimate choice as the lesser of 4 evils. In an odd way, she's the most trustworthy of any of the candidates. And by that I mean she basically wears her evil on her sleeve. We know she's a Clinton and we know what she's all about. I'm just not sure with the rest of them, especially with the supposed good guy, Barack Obama. Like Obama, I think she'll do a decent job of managing foreign affairs. But the truth is, I'm confident that the really big government liberal things I don't like about her will be stymied by Republican opposition.
My prediction is that Hillary will win the Democratic nomination, primarily because people will feel more confident with her baggage, good and bad, then they will with all of Barack Obama's promises of change. The Republicans are a bit more difficult to call, but I think Romney will have a slight edge because of all the conservative agitation the past week over McCain. It's possible you'll see a number of Huckabee supporters switch to Romney just to keep McCain from winning the nomination. We'll see.
posted by lonely libertarian at 3:02 PM
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