Presidential Politics

I was off the mark in my last posting when I predicted a showdown between Romney and McCain in the GOP race for nomination. It is now down to McCain v. Huckabee. The race among Democrats is a tight one between Hillary Clinton and Obama. Obama has shown amazing popularity, presenting a much warmer persona than Clinton. The word now is the "super delegates" will decide the outcome for the Democrats. These delegates have shown a tendency to favor Clinton, but that could change if Hillary stumbles in the remaining primaries.

McCain appears to be the GOP winner although there is concern among conservative Republicans that he's a loose cannon and too close to the middle of the road. I admit to being a conservative but I'm also a realist. Present-day Americans simply don't like political extremism in their Presidents, and on that basis conservatives who refuse to support McCain almost certainly will give the Presidency to the Democrats.

My personal view is McCain could beat Clinton in the general election, but might have trouble against the charismatic Obama. I don't trust Clinton any further than I could throw her and Obama has very little record to base a sound judgment on. I'm even more concerned about Congress. With a larger majority of Democrats possible if the Democrat Presidential nominee wins, conservatism will be a non-factor until 2010 at the earliest.

As of today(03/12/08), Clinton an Obama are still very close in delegate count for the Democrat nomination. McCain now has more than enough delegates to win at the GOP convention. Now a lot of the talk is about who should be the VP nominees. It could very well be a Clinto/Obama or a Obama/Clinton ticket for the Dems. Just who McCain might want as his VP is wide open for now. If Obama ends up on the Dem ticket, I wouldn't be surprised to see Condi Rice on the GOP ticket as McCain's running mate. She could win over enough of the Black and women's vote to put McCain into the White House.

The Issues


The issues concerning me the most in this election are the economy and our military. We are in a recession whether we want to accept it or not and it could get a lot worse if we aren't careful both as individual consumers and as a nation. The worst things we can do right now is to bail out the mortgage loan and credit card industries and put a freeze on foreclosures as so many on the political left are pushing for. Such moves will only push interest rates through the roof to make matters even worse the next time around. We consumers must learn to manage our finances which will never happen if we take the misleading financial community and ill-prepared borrowers off the hook.


Our military needs more than our moral support. They need state-of-the-art equipment and the training necessary to maximize the effectiveness of that equipment. Our military is the only thing standing between us and an enemy intent on our destruction. Diplomacy can carry us just so far against an enemy willing to die to destroy our liberty and way of life.