More Curses From The Damned And A Christmas Look At The Rebublican Presidential Candidates

Mike Huckabee appeared on CNN's Late Edition on Sunday, discussing the latest in the endless string of desperate accusations. The indefatigable Mr. Maloney screeches on, ever more shrill and clawing as his candidate sinks over the horizon. Giuliani started with just a media profile, and whatever profile they preserve for him is about all he has left. But, he raises an opportunity to discuss the Candidates for President of the United States, with Christmas just over a week away and the primary season less than 3 weeks away.

Stephen R. Maloney said...

It's true that I think Larry Perrault is a model of verbosity and dishonesty. If you cut through the endless layers of crap that he dispenses, you find an adult mimicking a two-year-old. Larry's point since the beginning has been: "My way or the highway," that is, if Mike Huckabee doesn't get the nomination, then I sit home with my pacifier and blanket. But at the same time he believes traditional Republicans, a group three times the size of the evangelical group has some sort of obligation to support Huckabee if he gets the nomination. Well, Larry, this is politics (imperfect as it is) rather than the theological absolutism you prefer. If Huckabee gets the nomination, he will perform about as well as Goldwater in the 1964 election, when Barry carried five states and got roughly 34% of the vote. Mike Huckabee seems to be a decent guy, but he is clueless about foreign policy and military affairs, which is rather an important limitation. In short, he's no Giuliani and no McCain.

Some of the people endorsing Huckabee, such as Dr. Laurence White of Houston and blogger Larry Perrault, are America-haters who have no comprehension of what it means to live in a diverse and free society. Basically, they're theocrats who would be more comfortable in John Calvin's era than in 21st century America.
As this becomes clear to people, the support for Huckabee will sink like a rock. Who would be a better President of the U.S., Mike Huckabee or Hillary Clinton? My frank view is that Mrs. Clinton would be far superior. That's a problem for Mike because I've never voted for a Democrat for President, and in all modesty, I believe I speak for a lot of people. I do predict, however, that Huckabee would carry Mississippi, although not Arkansas, New York, California, or Illinois. As the Rev. Rudes (and trust me, he is no along) and Larry Whites surface, Mike might have to start worrying about carrying Mississippi. Meanwhile, I wait for Larry Perrault to denounce his favorite pastor (and Mike's?), Dr. White, and his garbage-laden piece in "God and Caesar." If Mike agrees even in part with Dr. White, then what is he doing running for President of this country? To Larry in Houston, I ask: have you ever considered Venezuela?

Larry

Mr. Maloney, who showed up months ago as a nice guy, has gone all ugly now that his money (or whatever it is) horse has fallen from his perch even in his erstwhile "firewall" of Florida. Call me wrong, but if anything, I’m honestly wrong. I’m also not the slightest bit tempted to “correction” by Stephen Maloney. Man, you’re too old to act that way! Don’t meet God in a bitter snit! Oh, and though I haven’t seen him in a couple of years, Laurence White is always smiling and pleasant to speak with. But, this conversation raises the opportunity to take a look at the Republican presidential field, as it stands.

Maybe you want to take a look at Mitt Romney, Steve, who at this point still holds forth in New Hampshire, though he's flailing in Iowa, where he should get 2nd, but if he doesn't win Iowa, he WON"T win South Carolina or Florida or probably not even his papa's stomping grounds in Michigan. But, he looks better than Giuliani. And btw, I might vote for Romney if he wins, though it's looking like I won't have to face that awful choice. It's bad enough that he is just a political opportunist who uses polls as a tuning fork for his rhetoric. But, the really awful prospect is that he poses another eight years of relative inaction on restoring the American spirit: he has more than adequately demonstrated his incompetence in that regard. Romney would be another establishment Republican administrator. George H.W. Bush confessed that he wasn’t much on “the vision thing.” But even he had the substance of more integrity and resolve than Romney. But, Dick Morris said that Romney “doesn’t have a prayer in Hell of beating Hillary.” Maybe he could beat Barrack on resume and plain o’ life experience.

But, it’s correct that I WON”T be voting for Rudolph Giuliani for a job for which he is definitionally unqualified, but for which he looks unlikely to even attain an opportunity to contest a Democrat for. John McCain is also demonstrably philosophically opaque and unsuited to be the chief executive charged with protecting and defending The Constitution. But, it’s conceivable that he could finish strong in New Hampshire and the public forgive him and turn back to a known quantity after rejecting everyone else: in some ways, he looks more likely than Giuliani or Romney. But, I think he’s a good man and an honorable patriot and would be happy for Huckabee to give him a suitable post in an administration, which doesn’t seem unlikely. Fred Thompson is also philosophically ambiguous and one might raise the same question about whether he should be in an administration but…WHY and WHERE? Anyway, if he doesn’t gain a respectable 3^rd in Iowa, he can probably start looking for acting jobs, again.

??What is Rudy Giuliani's experience in foreign policy? I ask not because it’s such a sober question: it isn't. America has, in fact, elected mostly governors as president. Governors don't have the kind of "experience in foreign policy" that Maloney is talking about. It doesn't take this vague idea of "experience in foreign policy," which surely people have who are all over the map in terms of ideology and wisdom. It takes principle and resolve. In fact, probably the two 20th century presidents with the most resolute and successful accomplishments had none of this prior "foreign policy experience": FDR and Reagan. Neither did G.W. Bush or Bill Clinton.

Though Giuliani’s “foreign policy (in)experience” doesn’t dazzle me, he would rely on military strategists and thinkers like Norman Podhoretz, like any defense-responsible president would. (Come to think of it, Thompson might first need to hire someone to assemble a cabinet) Do you seriously think President Huckabee would leave the world untended and America undefended? In addition to McCain, he’s lean on people like Duncan Hunter and Frank Gaffney and others.

There are still 3 weeks for Romney, Giuliani, and McCain to smear Mike Huckabee with something that the public perceives as terrible and they will surely mightily try, so I won’t count them out, yet. At least it would be interesting to watch the Republican voters return to sniffing around the reject pile. Thompson looks like the longest shot, but his best chance might be if he’s the only remaining candidate that the voters can stomach. Hunter and Tom Tancredo I like some things about. But, they definitely lack a leadership quality for uplifting America that Mike Huckabee plainly has. Have you really not looked at the Democrat blogs and seen the expressions of either electoral fear or personal admiration, or are you just too proud to admit it? I have conversed with such people on the ‘net and in person. Huckabee definitely weakens one of the strongest sentimental motivations that Democrats have on their side: that Republicans are rich guys only looking out for rich guys. Never mind how true that sentiment is or isn’t. The perception is an indisputable reality. And, it is plainly untrue of Huckabee.

Oh, and what about Ron Paul? He has the money and the intensity (his own and his followers”), so that I don’t think he’s going away. But, I don’t see him getting less than 5% or more than 15%. Look for a melee from his followers at The Republican National Convention

I hope Huckabee faces Clinton, who has unprecedented negatives. There are a LOT of Democrats who wince at the prospect of voting for Hillary Clinton. Oh, well: at least she might have YOU. Hillary’s brightest potential is that her gender might draw out voters who otherwise wouldn’t vote. Otherwise she’d probably need a third-party or a great population of stay at home Republicans protesting social conservatism “stealing OUR party!”

Any Republican nominee would ride the youth and inexperience angle against Barack Obama, and appropriately so. Give him credit for belting out syntactically correct sentences. He needs them, because substantively, there isn’t a lot there.

NARAL: Giuliani Victory 'Would Help' Pro-Choice

NewsMax published the below bulletin, today. NARAL isn’t about to publish an actual endorsement of Giuliani. We “wicked anti-choice” types could only dream of that.

The pro-Giuliani Republicans are either tragically deluded or secretly pulling for Hillary (incidentally, you do recall that Mayor Giuliani endorsed Democrat Mario Cuomo over Republican George Pataki, don’t you? Check it out! YouTube - Rudy Giuliani -- Fiscal Conservative?) And Pataki didn’t even differ with Giuliani on abortion. Pataki was “pro-choice," too. So OK, if you’re pro-life, you differ with Giuliani on abortion (for me, this is not just a difference, but an incapacity to understand American principle – and he wants to be a Republican president!?).

But plainly, there is more going on than just social liberalism with Giuliani’s endorsement of the liberal icon, Cuomo. The trumpeted justification for backing Giuliani is that “he can win.” But, the opposite is true: Giuliani can’t win. Social conservatives put a lot of the phone-bank-envelope-stuffing-pushcard-passing into Republican campaigns, in addition to getting out and voting. With all of that gone, Republicans can kiss the election goodbye.

To me, Rudy Giuliani is a fun guy. But, he’s bad for the Republican Party and bad for American principle. And even if he could make it, he would be a bad American President. In one of the debates, Giuliani was asked about the similarity of today’s defiance of the respect of life to the defiance of liberty 150 years ago, with slavery. I don’t know how many listeners accepted Giuliani’s response: “I can’t imagine anyone defending slavery…” But, that was a perfectly horrible response to the question from the perspective of debating a proposition. At the time, there was a very live and bitter debate about slavery. We should overcome this American atrocity, just as we overcame that one. I’ll never vote for an American president who can’t even understand the problem, much less engage the question.

1. NARAL: Giuliani Victory ‘Would Help’ Pro-Choice

The pro-choice political action organization NARAL believes a win by Republican Rudy Giuliani in the 2008 presidential race would be a boon to pro-choice forces.

Giuliani’s stance on abortion rights has alienated many social conservatives and evangelical Republicans. But NARAL’s political director Elizabeth Shipp told the Huffington Post that a Giuliani victory “would help” the pro-choice movement by showing it is possible to win the presidency while still supporting abortion rights.

“The Republican Party used to be about the conservative principles of limited government intervention in private life,” she said.

“It seems to me if they went back to that and stood out from the wicked mainstream, anti-choice agenda, I think yeah, it would be good for the movement.”

But Shipp stopped short of saying that NARAL would support Giuliani’s candidacy, although she acknowledged that he is the only GOP candidate in the field who could conceivably win the group’s backing.

NARAL — formed in 1968 as the National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws — has endorsed only one Republican presidential candidate in the history of its political action committee, the Huffington Post notes.

In 1980, the group made a donation to Rep. John Anderson around the time he was leaving the GOP to launch an independent White House bid against Ronald Reagan.

Giuliani had a pro-choice record as mayor of New York City. He said in Republican debates in May that “it would be okay” to repeal Roe v. Wade, but added that he “would respect a woman’s right to make a different choice.”

Some Christian conservative leaders have threatened to bolt the GOP and support a third-party candidate if Giuliani wins the Republican nomination, and a number are urging Republicans to support Mitt Romney’s candidacy as a way of heading off a Giuliani win.