Saturday, October 08, 2011
Attitude Adjustment
Okay, I started out undecided about the GOP primary. I've known since before the 2008 election that ANYBODY would be preferable to Obama, and nothing that's happened since then has caused me to change my mind. On the contrary, many things--particularly that abortion of a health law (pun intended)--have deepened my antipathy to President Obama into something that approaches hatred.
Romney seemed like more of the same, though less offensive and in-your-face than Obama. I could hold my nose and vote for him. Bachmann is simply too socially conservative for my liking. I like her stance on abortion, but that's one of the few areas where I would be considered a social conservative, and that seems to be most of what she's about. In addition, her negatives in the polls are very high, and I'm not sure she's electable in the general. WRT electability, the same sort of holds true for Ron Paul. I like his hard money ideas, his general attitude toward economics (let's face it....faux Keynesianism got us where we are today, and given the political environment true Keynesian economics isn't possible). I even like his stance on the wars we're in. We gave it our best shot, and nobody can say we didn't try to help the people of Iraq and Afghanistan stabilize and recover after removing abusive leaders. Time to let them sink or swim on their own, I'd say. But he's just got such high negatives in the polls. I don't understand why, really, but it's the reality we have to deal with. I liked Rick Perry more than those two simply because he seems plain-spoken. He's another big-government guy though, and not big about securing borders and liberalizing LEGAL entry into the US...and he's got a bit of foot-in-mouth disease. Not great on many fronts, but I could vote for him, maybe even without holding my nose too hard.
Up until that point, I had not really looked at Herman Cain. This guy I really like. I don't give a fig about his lack of experience in elected office. People with lifetimes in elected office got us where we are, which is where we're trying to escape from. He DOES have political experience, though, and anyone who disputes that just doesn't know what CEOs do. He's much more in line with my own fiscal conservatism, and practically speaking he would finally remove the race issue so we could focus on actual issues in the general. And I think he'd mop Obama up in a landslide approaching what Reagan did to Mondale in 1984.
Then this morning, I got my first look at Gary Johnson. I'm absolutely BOWLED OVER.
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/129298/
Here's a guy who promises to propose a balanced budget to congress his first year. He promises to veto any budget that is out of balance. As he freely admits, congress can override the veto and likely will. But then the disaster that is overtaking us is squarely on them, and it will force their voting record to reflect that. He acknowledges that the drug war is lost, and advocates legalizing marijuana. While acknowledging that the problems with drug use and abuse won't magically go away, he wants to treat it as more of a public health issue than a legal issue.
In short, Johnson's seems to be a reality-based campaign. It's not hard, then, to see why the media has worked so hard to keep him out of the debates in favor of candidates that polled lower than he did. A guy like this will finish the job that their own shoddy reporting has done halfway already....blowing up their carefully constructed world. I don't know what his politics are as far as foreign policy, and I'll be interested to see. He CANNOT be worse than Obama, though. He doesn't seem the type to bow to foreign leaders, gratuitously and/or accidentally insult the Brits and other allies, force the Dalai Lama to take the back door at the White House and so forth. I don't know his views on energy policy, either....but assuming it is closer to "drill baby drill" than financing losing solar companies, 1,000,000 electric cars on the roads in a couple of years and other unicorns-crapping-skittles nonsense then I'll be putting a Johnson sign in my yard postehaste.
It would be nice if Cain kept his current momentum. He'd beat Obama, and he'd be a good president. But if somehow Johnson could catch fire...he would destroy Obama also, but would represent the real "transformative change" this country needed 4 years ago and needs much worse today. And if that makes me a racist the same as I apparently was in 2008 when I felt McCain, while definitely flawed (I preferred Thompson), would be a better president, then I guess I'm a racist. But the definition of that world must have certainly changed since Obama came on the scene. I used to think it meant that you hated people of a color different from your own simply because their color is different from your own. Now apparently it's a synonym for "sane".
Romney seemed like more of the same, though less offensive and in-your-face than Obama. I could hold my nose and vote for him. Bachmann is simply too socially conservative for my liking. I like her stance on abortion, but that's one of the few areas where I would be considered a social conservative, and that seems to be most of what she's about. In addition, her negatives in the polls are very high, and I'm not sure she's electable in the general. WRT electability, the same sort of holds true for Ron Paul. I like his hard money ideas, his general attitude toward economics (let's face it....faux Keynesianism got us where we are today, and given the political environment true Keynesian economics isn't possible). I even like his stance on the wars we're in. We gave it our best shot, and nobody can say we didn't try to help the people of Iraq and Afghanistan stabilize and recover after removing abusive leaders. Time to let them sink or swim on their own, I'd say. But he's just got such high negatives in the polls. I don't understand why, really, but it's the reality we have to deal with. I liked Rick Perry more than those two simply because he seems plain-spoken. He's another big-government guy though, and not big about securing borders and liberalizing LEGAL entry into the US...and he's got a bit of foot-in-mouth disease. Not great on many fronts, but I could vote for him, maybe even without holding my nose too hard.
Up until that point, I had not really looked at Herman Cain. This guy I really like. I don't give a fig about his lack of experience in elected office. People with lifetimes in elected office got us where we are, which is where we're trying to escape from. He DOES have political experience, though, and anyone who disputes that just doesn't know what CEOs do. He's much more in line with my own fiscal conservatism, and practically speaking he would finally remove the race issue so we could focus on actual issues in the general. And I think he'd mop Obama up in a landslide approaching what Reagan did to Mondale in 1984.
Then this morning, I got my first look at Gary Johnson. I'm absolutely BOWLED OVER.
http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/129298/
Here's a guy who promises to propose a balanced budget to congress his first year. He promises to veto any budget that is out of balance. As he freely admits, congress can override the veto and likely will. But then the disaster that is overtaking us is squarely on them, and it will force their voting record to reflect that. He acknowledges that the drug war is lost, and advocates legalizing marijuana. While acknowledging that the problems with drug use and abuse won't magically go away, he wants to treat it as more of a public health issue than a legal issue.
In short, Johnson's seems to be a reality-based campaign. It's not hard, then, to see why the media has worked so hard to keep him out of the debates in favor of candidates that polled lower than he did. A guy like this will finish the job that their own shoddy reporting has done halfway already....blowing up their carefully constructed world. I don't know what his politics are as far as foreign policy, and I'll be interested to see. He CANNOT be worse than Obama, though. He doesn't seem the type to bow to foreign leaders, gratuitously and/or accidentally insult the Brits and other allies, force the Dalai Lama to take the back door at the White House and so forth. I don't know his views on energy policy, either....but assuming it is closer to "drill baby drill" than financing losing solar companies, 1,000,000 electric cars on the roads in a couple of years and other unicorns-crapping-skittles nonsense then I'll be putting a Johnson sign in my yard postehaste.
It would be nice if Cain kept his current momentum. He'd beat Obama, and he'd be a good president. But if somehow Johnson could catch fire...he would destroy Obama also, but would represent the real "transformative change" this country needed 4 years ago and needs much worse today. And if that makes me a racist the same as I apparently was in 2008 when I felt McCain, while definitely flawed (I preferred Thompson), would be a better president, then I guess I'm a racist. But the definition of that world must have certainly changed since Obama came on the scene. I used to think it meant that you hated people of a color different from your own simply because their color is different from your own. Now apparently it's a synonym for "sane".
Labels: Bachmann, Cain, Johnson, Obama, Perry, Republican Primary, Romney
