There's hope for you yet, Anderson Cooper

Perhaps CNN is starting to turn the corner.

Please Listen!

I hereby demand that some kind of real middle class tax relief be included in this stimulus bill.

A one time payout, a "rebate check" is not a tax cut!

Cut the actual rate of taxation! The percentage has to go down!

A temporary payroll tax "holiday" is a good idea, summarily rejected by lady and lord Pelosi and Reid.

Barack Obama's first move as President was to let those two hardcore leftists author his first signature legislative proposal? Fire the person who allowed that to happen.

Where is Rahm Emmanual? Isn't he supposed to be the hard nosed politician who values winning over ideology? What was he smoking when he allowed Nancy Pelosi to have sole proprietorship of this bill from the get go?

What a botched job debacle this stimulus bill is.

Stagflation here we come.

"Manifestly the best candidate."

Ann Coulter has written a very illuminating and somewhat scathing article explaining to Republican voters, hopefully once and for all, that Mitt Romney is "...manifestly the best candidate."

Coulter makes an argument that I have been making for about six months now and that Rush Limbaugh has been hinting at lately. The argument is essentially this:

"The candidate Republicans should be clamoring for is the one liberals are feverishly denouncing. That is Mitt Romney by a landslide."

Coulter chides voters who have thus far supported Mike Huckabee and/or John McCain. And as I have pointed out in various formats, the votes for McCain or Huckabee are derived from almost any other method than critical thinking. Emotion, identity politics, popularity contest, nostalgia, random implulses ... pick your poison, but those who take a moment to think things through in only even the most minor of ways will arrive at the same unmistakable conclusion that Ms. Coulter has.

"One clue that Romney is our strongest candidate is the fact that Democrats keep viciously attacking him while expressing their deep respect for Mike Huckabee and John McCain."

Coulter brazenly chastises her own audience, urging Republican voters to "...please do one-tenth as much research before casting a vote in a presidential election as you do before buying a new car."

I share her frustration with some of the voters so far who, other than in Michigan and Wyoming, seem to treat the election with a noticeable lack of seriousness and due diligence. It would be nice if voters could take a break from watching American Idol and tracking the latest Britney Spears news long enough to put at least some thought into who should be elected as the next leader of the free world.

Romney, Thompson, and Giuliani

The days of this race characterized by having unacceptable Republican candidates as front runners may be drawing to a close. Jay Cost of RCP makes some interesting points about the McCain candidacy, the Romney candidacy, and the (Republican) race in general.

"Examining congressional endorsements for McCain and Romney, excluding in-state supporters (as they often act more out of home state pride than ideological proximity), we find some interesting results. 34 Republicans have endorsed Mitt Romney, while just 24 have endorsed McCain. Furthermore, Romney's supporters are more in line with conservative opinion. Their average 2006 ACU rating was 84.1, and 26 of them come from states Bush won in 2004. Meanwhile, the average 2006 ACU rating for McCain's supporters is 70.7, and just 12 of them come from Bush states."

"I do not think that McCain can end the nomination battle with wins in Michigan and South Carolina. Because conservative leaders dislike him, I think they might 'rediscover' a viable alternative to him. Romney, Thompson, or even Giuliani could be brought back to life in a final effort to stop McCain."

"...Everything that has been written here applies to Mike Huckabee all the more. Huckabee is even more unacceptable to conservative leaders (he has the endorsement of only three out-of-state Republican members of Congress). His campaign even seems to be courting their contempt. McCain, to his credit, has worked hard since the immigration bill not to thumb his nose at conservative leaders. But not Huckabee. And I think that they would only accept Huckabee's nomination after he has won a majority of delegates. Until then, they'll find somebody, anybody to oppose him."

There is a growing consensus building amongst the Republicans who are not jumping onto the John McCain and Mike Huckabee popularity contest/populism bandwagon. That is, any combination of Romney, Thompson, or Giuiliani is preferable to John McCain or Mike Huckabee.

Escape & Evasion

Fred Thompson was strong in last night's South Carolina GOP debate. For once, it wasn't only Romney who effectively targeted Mike Huckabee for the pretender that he is.

In one exchange, Thompson ticked off a devastating litany of the not-so-conservative credentials of Mr. Huckabee. When given the chance to respond, as pointed out by the guys at Powerline, Huckabee addressed exactly none of the very valid points made by Thompson.

Instead, Huckabee smiled and trotted out one of his tired cliches:

"The Air Force has a saying that says that if you're not catching flak, you're not over the target. I'm catching the flak, I must be over the target."

This huckster-ism wasn't even appropriate. He's certainly not "catching flak" because he is too conservative, that's for sure. In fact, exactly the opposite. If the "target" is Reagan conservatism, he's at least three timezones away from being "over the target". Chuckabee must have zoned out during Thompson's laundry list because this generic answer, meant to charm the audience, was not a good fit rhetorically based upon what Thompson said.

I, for one, have had my fill of one-liners and quips in this election cycle. Mike Huckabee is trying to smile and wise crack his way into the White House at this point. He's the used car salesman of Presidential politics.

Here's what Thompson said of Huckabee to which the silver tongued Huckster escaped and evaded with no substantive response:

"This is a battle for the heart and soul of the Republican Party and its future. On the one hand, you have the Reagan revolution. You have the Reagan coalition of limited government and strong national security.

On the other hand, you have the direction that Governor Huckabee would take us in. He would be a Christian leader, but he would also bring about liberal economic policies, liberal foreign policies. He believes we have an arrogant foreign policy and the tradition of, blame America first. He believes that Guantanamo should be closed down and those enemy combatants brought here to the United States to find their way into the court system eventually. He believes in taxpayer-funded programs for illegals, as he did in Arkansas. He has the endorsement of the National Education Association, and the NEA said it was because of his opposition to vouchers. He said he would sign a bill that would ban smoking nationwide. So much for federalism. So much for states' rights. So much for individual rights.

That's not the model of the Reagan coalition, that's the model of the Democratic Party."

Right on Fred, right on.

the Silver (lining)

While real conservatives may be disappointed with a second place finish by Governor Romney in Tuesday's NH primary election, I would hasten to point out several items.

The state of New Hampshire, which allows independents to vote in either primary, is one well suited to a centrist like John McCain. Before the results were revealed last night, many pundits believed that there would be a heavy independent break towards Barack Obama resulting in the trouncing of Hillary Clinton. Needless to say, this analysis was woefully incorrect. Perhaps it was a case of the media shaping the results by leading independents to believe that since Obama was going to win resoundingly, independents could now vote for McCain in what may have been perceived by the public to have been the closer race. Whatever the case may be, McCain was able to garner the affections of moderate and even probably some left leaning voters and Romney did well amongst conservatives, as in, those of us you want the borders closed, want lower taxes and less government intrusion into our daily lives. The AP is reporting that, “In New Hampshire, McCain won among moderates and independents — despite his strong right-leaning Senate voting record — while Romney had an edge with hard-core conservatives.” If you also keep in mind the fact that McCain skipped Iowa to do several straight weeks of campaigning in the Granite State, I think it's fair to conclude that McCain had a kind of unnatural advantage. McCain may have been able to win over independents in New Hampshire using largely an emotional appeal, but it will be interesting to see how he does in states in which he cannot rely on voters who might usually vote for Democrats. Many anti-Romney pundits assert that since Romney has his own personal fortune to contribute to his campaign that there is no excuse as to why he did not win in NH. These same pundits never mention the fact that Romney out raised McCain in NH by nearly 2 to 1. So, the anti-Romney pundits can bash Romney for having the ability to contribute to his own campaign and spin it as a somehow a bad thing, but the fact remains that Romney is raising more money than all other Republican candidates. How you can construe either the ability to contribute to your own campaign or the ability to raise more money than your opponents, as a negative is certainly foreign to my way of thinking. How do these various right leaning, in some cases, pundits imagine that a Republican candidate would be better poised to defeat the now back on track Hillary Clinton coronation machine? The idea that raising or having more money for your campaign is a drawback is ludicrous.

Mike Huckabee proved in Iowa that in a presidential race, money isn’t everything. If you have a fairly mindless voting bloc that votes on the basis of identity politics and/or an ‘us vs. them’ message of economic populism, all the money in the world won’t stem a lemming-like tsunami of voters who vote more by mood than they do critical thinking. There are, luckily, objective criteria one can use for determining who is leading in a given presidential race. If you throw out all of the media noise, either the anti-Romney noise or the swooning media support for Huckabee and McCain, you can look at the actual scoreboard of the contest so far. On that scoreboard, otherwise known as the delegate count, Romney is way out in front of all other Republican candidates. The scoreboard is as follows, in terms of total delegates: Romney 30, Huckabee 21, McCain 10, Thompson 6, Ron Paul 2, Giuliani 1.

So, at this early phase of the race, Romney is leading all other candidates if you look at the most objective criterion, the delegate count. On top of that, Romney is raising more money than the other candidates and, as the anti-Romney press loves to point out, he has more money of his own to theoretically contribute to his campaign. The only evidence that I see that Romney is not doing well overall comes from the fact that the media keeps telling me to think so. As someone who is able to look at the facts of the situation rather than the media spin, it is clear to me that Romney is leading all other candidates at this point. Anyone who preaches that Romney is not doing well overall is either a closet liberal who wants the most articulate champion of conservative principles out of the race or they are a very confused conservative who is not familiar with the not-so-conservative records of Mike Huckabee and John McCain. To be fair, Fred Thompson and Giuliani haven’t started to really compete yet but certainly their supporters would not claim that their guy is beating Romney at this point.

I welcome any explanation of the position that Romney is not leading at this point in the race. Hopefully you would agree that, while it was disappointing for Romney voters to see another ‘silver’ in NH, there is still plenty of upside to his campaign's performance thus far overall. By looking at objective criteria such as the delegate count and money raised, Mitt Romney is beating all other Republican candidates at this point in the race.

The man from hope

Today is one of those days I remember why I consider myself a conservative, if anything, rather than a Republican. If Mike Huckabee represents what it is to be a Republican, then I want no part of it.

I'd consider voting for Barack Obama rather than Huckabee.

Mike Huckabee, cultivating the popularity of populism.

Why I don't 'Like Mike'

By now Mike Huckabee has proven himself to be an utter fraud, a complete charlatan.

He was "for negative attack ads before he was against them".

He has despicably played the 'religion card' against Romney and is playing, as Rush Limbaugh calls, 'identity politics' to the highest degree.

His shamelessly populist rhetoric has been, at this point, vetted and analyzed to be the thinly veiled liberal philosophy that it is.

His main criticism of Romney, the amount of money Romney has spent in Iowa, is classic liberal backwards logic. The Huckabee campaign would have us believe that being able to raise money and run a well-organized campaign is a bad thing. What does the Huckabee campaign imagine is a good approach to beating say, Hillary Clinton I wonder? That running a campaign "out of your back pocket", as Rich Lowry calls it, is somehow a viable way to defeat the entrenched Democratic apparatus? This kind of John Edwards-esque backwards logic is what we can expect from the other side of aisle, which represents yet more evidence that Huckabee is a RINO.

Pastor Huckabee has bungled every single opportunity to prove he knows a thing about foreign policy. Even his most ardent supporters would concede that, as Huckabee himself would probably quip, that his foreign policy experience amounts to that he has twice eaten at the International House of Pancakes.* He actually did say something like “I may not know a thing about Pakistan, but I did stay at a Holiday inn Express last night.” Sorry Mike, we are not electing a comedian-in-chief, we would prefer that our candidate at least know that illegal immigrants from Pakistan do not outnumber those from all other countries but Mexico.

That I haven't heard more about his completely inappropriate responses to the so-called negative ads that Romney has been running is somewhat puzzling to me. Huckabee has vindictively whined about the Romney campaign contrast ads running on TV in Iowa and elsewhere. The ads, which stay miles away from any personal attacks, highlight the substantive differences between the two candidates. Claiming that he is running a positive campaign, Huckabee counter attacks Romney about the ads with all the pettiness and vitriol of a classic Harry Reid or Nancy Pelosi anti-Bush rant, yet never does he address the substance of what Romney is saying. Does anyone still fall for this kind of obfuscating, smoke screening defense? I'll make it very simple. If candidate A makes a charge against the record of candidate B, candidate B when addressing the charge, should do so squarely. Save the one-liners, the folksy quips, the homespun logic, and the personal attacks, just address the direct subject at hand. Such as, do you support in-state tuition for illegal immigrants under any circumstances or not? Or, did you grant pardons to X number of violent criminals while governor or not? I have to believe that I'm not one of the only people to notice that for all the caterwauling regarding Romney's ads, never does the Huckster address the substance of the ads.

I could go on for days about Huckabee and why he is a fraud but I just hope he does not win Iowa tonight.

Like Susan Estrich, all those who want Republicans to lose in ‘08 want Huckabee to finish first place in Iowa.

*credit, Jay Severin