Thursday, January 24, 2008

2008 Presidential Election

One of my blog readers (yes, I do have a few, apparently) wanted to know my take on the Democratic and Republican presidential primaries. I haven't really talked all that much about them, for the simple reason that my candidate of choice, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, appears to be tanking so badly. That is not a matter of opinion; it is an objective fact: http://www.miamiherald.com/457/story/391293.html.

When he announced his candidacy, Rudy was the favourite to win the Republican nomination, if not the overwhelming favourite. He has since proceeded to run one of the most incomprehensibly bad electoral campaigns that I have ever seen. Simply put, he elected to sit out the early primaries/caucuses, focusing instead on Florida and the Super Tuesday states. The only effect of this was that he made himself an afterthought. While Mike Huckabee was scoring points with evangelicals in Iowa and John McCain was resurrecting his campaign by repeating his 2000 primary triumph in New Hampshire, and then Mitt Romney knocked 'em dead in Michigan, Giuliani was ignored, to the point where Ron Paul has more delegates at this point than he does. Now, he is even trailing in Florida, in a distant third place, which is a state on which he had effectively staked his whole campaign. He is also trailing Senator McCain in his proverbial "backyard" of New Jersey: http://www.usaelectionpolls.com/2008/articles/rudy-giuliani-losing-bread-butter-states-012008003.html.

The worst part of this for me is that I thought Rudy was by far the best positioned candidate to take on the threat of Islamofascism. He is not afraid to tell it like it is, a trait not shared by very many of the other candidates. His lacklustre campaign has left me unenthused about the whole campaign, hence my lack of posting on the subject.

The bottom line is that on the Republican side, I think that we are looking at either John McCain (pro-Amnesty, and possibly tied to James "F-- the Jews" Baker, though he has backpedaled away from the latter individual) or Mitt Romney (very vulnerable to charges of being a John Kerry-like flipper, the claims to the contrary of pundits like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, et al., notwithstanding). The way I see it, Romney in particular would be clobbered by Hillary Clinton in a presidential election (more about her below). McCain might be a tougher out, but I can't see him beating Hillary in California, New York, Florida, Ohio, Michigan or any of the other large states, with the exception of Texas.

On the Democratic side, I think that Hillary will steam to the party's presidential nomination at this point. Barack Obama had his moment of glory, and while he will be close the rest of the way, and may even win a few states here and there, he will NOT beat the Clinton machine. Let's face the ugly facts here: When do the Clintons EVER lose? They specialize in winning elections. That's all they do. If Hillary is smart about her running mate--and you can be sure that she will be (don't bet against a Vice-President Obama)--she will be almost impossibly to beat in November, especially given the prevailing anti-Republican sentiment in the country.

The scarier thing yet for Republicans and/or conservatives, a President Hillary Clinton will have a pliant Senate and House of Representatives to do her bidding. I expect that the Democrats will pick up anywhere from 2-5 Senate seats and will at a minimum hold their majority in the House of Representatives. Ready for the reimposition of the Fairness Doctrine? Socialized medicine? A complete repeal of the Patriot Act? The return of that "Chinese wall" between the FBI and CIA in terms of sharing information on terrorist suspects? A ban on treating terrorists as anything other than criminals? That's all coming your way, and more...........

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