Best To Stay Home In McCain vs. Huckabee?

It might be moot, as Huckabee will probably dust McCain. You really think the Huckster won't find a way to remind people McCain will be 72 by the time he takes office? Say it slowly - seventy-two. If fifty something prez's turn gray in office, just where does McCain have to go in that regard? America certainly won't elect him in the general.

While I think Huckabee is getting close to being inevitable, Allah offers up a poll for you on McCain vs. Huckabee. A good case can be made for why the smart play is to just stay home and stay home in the general, too.

It isn't about his being Evangelical. And that subset of the Republican coalition needs to get a clue. While we've never nominated a former minister, the Evangelicals always had their primary interests represented extremely well by Republican nominees.

If Huckabee gets the nod, that can't be said for small government, low tax, fiscal conservatives. And being President is more than just the office one holds. He or she also becomes the head of the Republican Party and has a great deal of influence in shaping not only its face, but also its organization. And Huckabee knows from his days as head of the Southern Baptist Convention how powerful shaping an organization can be.

He lost his bid to re-shape things along the liberal line in his day. The history is out there, I'm not going shopping for the links. But Huckabee, more than anyone, could re-shape the GOP in ways many grassroots conservatives do not want. To some extent, the same could be said of McCain. Though he likely isn't the threat Huckabee is to mainstream conservatives.

In either case, the best bet might be just to let the party hang for four years until 2012, when hopefully it can come together around someone that serves everyone's interest. I haven't made a final decision, but I'd be hard pressed to pull the lever for either Huckabee, or McCain.

I hate to say it, but right now it's looking like a Democrat year no matter what happens. Pundits can posture all they want. The fact is a lack of excitement over most of the current crop of candidates by one faction or another of the GOP base, is all but going to bring about a romp no matter what the pundits say.

Comments

[Terry Gain]

It's at least eight months too early to make predictions on what's going to happen next November. It looks like Mitt may not emrge as the front runner before Super Tuesday. If so, there will be no clear GOP frontrunner. This would be a big plus for Rudy. We will have to see whether Rudy's strategy pays off.

If Huckabee emerges as the GOP candidate I have no doubt the liberal MSM will describe every last one of his supporters as a bible thumper. I can't see him winning a general election but only time will tell what's on people's minds in 11 months.

[Sara]

Huckabee, Schmuckabee, he isn't going anywhere after Super Tuesday. Romney raised over $5 million today. He pulled his scheduled ads in Fl and SC and everyone thinks he did it because he's giving up. BS. I have a theory, unsubstantiated rumor of my own mind, that those ads were pulled because Mitt gets messages and the message last night is, we don't like negative or anything the media convinces us might be negative. I bet he redoes the ads and then puts them back on the air. Plus he got a huge endorsement in Michigan today with Tom Monaghan, founder of Dominoes. Hewitt calls him a Catholics Catholic, founder of Ave Maria Univ. and Law School and an ardent pro-lifer. Plus, you can't get around the fact that right now Mitt leads the delegate count. How in the world does anyone think Huckster has a snowballs chance of winning in California or New York or Idaho, Utah, Nevada and somehow I can't see him appealing to those liberals up in Oregon and Washington either.

Huck gets out West here and he is going to face alot of very offended Mormons, all who are conservative.

[Dennis D]

If I have to accept a GOP Liberal I want one that has a record of success like Rudy.

[mike]

Mitt is in it for the long haul. He pulled his adds in SC and FL to try an alternate attack. His campaign chief said today that they will run fewer tv ads and have more other media contacts. Plus, how do you count out a candidate that has 2 second place finishes and one first, the most delegates and the most votes with the most money???? Why not say Fred is out or Rudy or McCain for that matter. Why not say these guys are losers and should go home. There is no logic in the argument that Mitt has lost and will withdraw or any other permutation of coming up short. Mitt will continue to raise money, continue to fight for votes and snatch up delegates. Also, don't count out the Mormon contingent in CA. It is the most populous Mormon state in the nation.

[Mark]

I am a crabby Democrat, so you can ignore me if you want, but I wish you guys would stop worrying every day. Consider what you've got going on. Edwards, Obama, and Hillary. Two socialists and a Communist. All of your guys, with the possible exception of Ron Paul, can beat who ever wins the nomination. In my opinion, the more information that people find about Huckabee, McCain, and Paul, the fewer votes they will get. I have no idea what Rudy will do, but what I read about his tax plan today, sounds interesting. Can he get it passed, is the question. Much as I wish it weren't true, I don't see Duncan Hunter moving up very far. So, to me, that means Fred and Mitt will fight it out, most of the season. I think the fight between Obama and Hillary will go on long enough and be distasteful enough, that by November you guys will only have to point to all of the positive points of conservatism, to get the votes. Please make sure that you concentrate on getting all of your voters to the polls.

[Ralph]

Yet you're not onboard the Fred bus. And don't give me the self fulfilling prophecy wanna be Fred supporters ususally spout.

Also, nobody hates Mitt. Nobody except KLo & Hugh Hewitt likes him a whole lot either but in a general election campaign people would start to Love him.

[Fred Beloit]

Mark, you are a Dem? Great. The country needs more Dems like you. You certainly can recognize dead, stinky fish when you see them: "Edwards, Obama, and Hillary. Two socialists and a Communist."

[Mark]

Ralph, I may not have been paying close enough attention. Could you explain your Fred prophecy statement. If I understood what you said, how would you feel about Thompson/Hunter 08 or Coulter/Malkin 08? Fred B., I thought I was a typical Democrat, but my party had been infected with the Communist virus. My family is basically thinking like me, but from something my brother said the other night, he may have joined you guys. I like it when Professor Limbaugh says "my goal is to have everyone in America believe like me". How would you like it, if people like Heath Shuller were pushing your candidates because they were too liberal. I hope (and prayer helps too) those are the first strains of the new Love America virus infecting my party. By the way, did you all see Michelle Malkin's story about the Mexican military border incidents. If they weren't such good friends and allies, you would think they were a hostile nation, or something.

[Fred Beloit]

I wasn't familiar with Shuler:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heath_Shuler

Sounds good, perhaps a future Republican. Although if the primary candidates we now have say anything about the GOP now, he may be too conservative to switch.

[Mark]

I believe he was one of the freshman Democrats that introduced the SAVE act. Curiously enough, it had over a hundred co-sponsors, one of whom was John Murtha. You can check at NumbersUSA to see if my memory is any good.

[TheSpartan]

Wasn't reagan almost 70 when he took office? It didn't turn him gray...

[Fred Beloit]

Perhaps, but his hair seemed to get rather orange instead. Only his barber, who has never talked, knew the truth, as I recall.

[TheSpartan]

Hell by the end even Reagan probably didn't know the truth.

[What's Going On Here?]

OMG...I NEVER thought I would write something like this:

Let's get behind Rudy. Unlike Romney, McCain, and Huckabee...he is not a smarmy flip flopper, is not a known liar, and is not a liberal in disguise.

He is a very liberal conservative. He would be more of an advantage against Hillary! rather than Obama...but since it looks as if all hope for Fred! is gone, what choice do we have?

Oh, the humanity!

[rwilymz]

"He is a very liberal conservative"

And? What's wrong with that?

It's the folly and masturbatory self-deception of both "sides" in modern American partisanship that suggests that either "liberalism" or "conservatism" are, in and of themselves, uniquely workable perspectives.

They aren't.

Conservatism tends towards stagnation; liberalism tends towards gratuity. Too much of either and a society will break down and become useless. Either by loss of continuity in the social patterns and institutions [i.e., raging liberalism] which holds one generation to the next -- and hence holding their combined society together -- or by continuing those social patterns and institutions long beyond the time they have ceased being relevant.

You need change to keep a society fresh and relevant, and you need continuity of the system and its structures in order to keep it together.

The problem with the major mouthpieces of both ideologies is that the idiots on the left view as corrupt anything that has been around longer than the internet, and the idiots on the right refuse to acknowledge that someone with sensibilities younger than Moses might have a decent idea.

And just to confound things, the idiots on the left, who had a great many of their programs and policies enacted between the 30s and the 70s, refuse to acknowledge that any of them have fundamental flaws [SocSec, "welfare" and entitlements in general, and corporate pacifism], while most of the innovative *political* ideas of the past generation have been made by the idiots on the right. This puts them both in a fairly Opposite Day scenario: Capital-C Conservatives are lower-case-L liberal, while Capital-L Liberals are lower-case-C conservatives.

In reality, we need both, and one is not expendable except for national suicide.

Modern "conservatism" needs to come to grips with a few realities, and the sooner the better:
1] we're going to have legal abortion in this country. Learn it now and save the time and energy devoted to whimpering about it to woodworking or gardening;
2] the quickest way to achieve technical ineptitude is to subordinate science to religion; technical ineptitude causes the migration of technical jobs to parts of the country [or parts of the world] which do not subordinate science. Dump "creationism" and its pseudonyms immediately, dispense with the token resistance to stem cell research -- you're making the nation look medieval;
3] big daddy guvmint does **NOT** know better than We, The People, except in areas specifically set aside to it.

Modern "liberalism" needs to come to grips with several realities of its own, and it's somewhat more critical than the other way around:
1] we're going to have limitations on abortion whether you like it or not, cuz the majority [we **are** a democracy] can be, and usually is, satisfied with a little bit of each: legal abortion but not all of them being legal. Like: a 15 y.o. girl who is not allowed to have sex can have an abortion on her own? I don't think so. This ain't the 50s, social sensibilities have changed [and you keep accusing conservatives of living in the past]. A woman who's known about her pregnancy for 6 months and is now in her 8th, and NOW decides she doesn't want it? I don't think so. You get between 3 and 6 months to choose; you snooze you lose.
2] Just because you've got a degree in English does not make you an expert on war; just because you have an opinion about people fighting does not make your opinion factual. Leave wars, foreign policy, and diplomacy to the experts. It's ironic, but those whose main political philosophy tends to run towards Mommy Guvmint Knows Best in so-o-o-o-o many areas reserves mob-rule for the arguably best purpose for central government in the first place: national self-defense. Hypocrits.
3] big mommy guvmint does **NOT** know better than We, The People, except in areas specifically set aside to it.