McCain is or has been wrong on First Amendment, Second Amendment, right to life, immigration, and economic issues …
But wait, theres more. The most damaging thing that a victorious McCain does is to modify the paradigm of a successful Republican candidate; a new standard will have been developed by this unprincipled “main chancer”. His success will take the republican party to the left along with the rest of the country for a long time, perhaps forever.

The current President’s father did all of this 20 years ago.

I disagree. McCain is or has been wrong on First Amendment, Second Amendment, right to life, immigration, and economic issues. PLUS he seems to be neither emotionally or intellectually of the first rank. Re. SCOTUS appointments: will he appoint a justice who will not support his views on the issues mentioned above? Everything we know about the willful guy suggests he would not make an appointment that would disagree with his views.

But wait, theres more. The most damaging thing that a victorious McCain does is to modify the paradigm of a successful Republican candidate; a new standard will have been developed by this unprincipled “main chancer”. His success will take the republican party to the left along with the rest of the country for a long time, perhaps forever.

If Clinton or Obama won then the move to the left would happen more quickly and emphatically than it would with McCain. I imagine that the results might be quickly felt by the population at large, possibly in time for the 2012 election to bring in a more conservative administration to fix what has been broken.

I admit I’m still mulling it over but….

One nice feature of our long campaign season is that it forces candidates to discuss the substance of their positions. It will be interesting, if Obama is the Democratic nominee, to see what he says when he is finally pinned down on issues. In reading his statements about issues I often get the sense that he does most of his studying the night before the test. Maybe this is a false impression, maybe not. We’ll see.

Personally, I never vote skin color. I read Obama’s policies, and saw how he treated his constituents (abandoned them as soon as he could, just ask the people in the futures business in Chicago). His policies are out of touch with 21st Century America. I think a French intellectual dreamed them up in a cafe around 1930.

Obama would be a dangerous president for the US. He could put into place structures that would take years and years to dismantle. Think FDR-except FDR was for a strong defense, and probably wouldn’t take a lot of guff from the terrorists either.

Clinton would be a policy wonk. She too could harm America with social structures.

McCain, while not inspiring economically at least has people around him that you feel like you can trust. Steve Forbes, Jack Kemp, Phil Gramm are not exactly middle of the roaders.

Even if you are a staunch conservative that listens to talk radio and takes their advice, you have to get out of your chair and vote McCain. He is the least damaging in the long run.

Romney’s semi-endorsement of McCain has the potential to really change the tone of the race. Will conservatives agree with Romney’s logic, that “in this time of war, I simply cannot … be a part of aiding a surrender to terror” and that a vote for McCain is better than a vote for either of the cheese-eating surrender monkeys?

So if they’re all about equally bad domestically, the best we can hope for is congressional gridlock to hold back the worst of their initiatives. My decision therefore defaults to how they would handle foreign affairs. I would rank them McCain-Clinton-Obama, with Obama much worse than either of the other two. He is by far the most pleasant, personable candidate — and I would expect another 9/11 to be a virtual certainty if he is elected, one with a wretchedly ineffectual initial response, followed by escalation to megadeaths, here and elsewhere.

It is not at all obvious to me, however, that Obama can get the nomination. There are only 3 high-population states left to hold Democratic primaries, and Clinton is heavily favored in the biggest one and is slightly favored in the other two. I expect Latino votes, plus perhaps some superdelegates, to secure the nomination for her, and most black voters to subsequently either stay home on election day or vote for McCain. It will be very, very difficult for her to win in the fall.

All this bothers me, in addition, because of the significant structural weakness we will continue to bear in the absence of Democratic buy-in to the war on terror, which we simply aren’t going to get until there’s a Democratic President. I do not say that they will be an outright fifth column, but I can only wonder how much unity we can trade away, and how much silliness we can tolerate, in the face of an existential threat.

“The Republicans always win.”
“Yeah, they always win elections.”

And from their seventeen or sixteen year old vantage point, I’m sure it seems that way. Twenty year olds serving in Iraq were how old in 2001? How odd the world must seem to someone that age.

Ok, so Obama probably resonates for lots of reasons – he is of a different and younger generation, he is genuinely charismatic, he doesn’t seem angry or bitter (a big one there, I think), he may speak in complete generics, but his biggest supporters probably understand that his politics are their politics, so there is substance enough behind his generics for them. What am I trying to say with all of this?

Oh, yeah. Anyone but Clinton.

McCain it shall be, I suppose. The anti-business schtick is gonna grate big time, though….

Of course, the CW is always wrong:

The Boston Globe has decided to recap the perfect 19-0 championship season five days before the game is played. The title of the book “19-0: The Historic Championship Season of New England’s Unbeatable Patriots.”

Links don’t work, it is no longer up on Amazon.

John Hinderaker:

It’s hard to tell sometimes whether he [Obama] actually thinks he is saying something coherent, or whether he is delivering a parody of a gasbag politician.

Hillary’s record is of surrounding herself with a cult-like staff of groveling acolytes and accepting outside advice only when a disaster she’s created is causing her PR trouble; then she does a U-turn while screwing her own allies.

I’ll set myself on fire before I’d vote for Clinton.

Still, watching the passionate women behind him bothered me. This is definitely not the relation I want between the American public & its president: big brother, protector, whatever. Of course, Thompson, who said things like, well, that’s not going to be solved in four years or even eight if I were re-elected isn’t in the running. Of course, he was right. But we don’t always want to hear it. If I were Israel, I would be afraid of Obama. And I figure yes, we’re more likely to get hit. But, then, with all that emotion backing Obama or all that old history moving around in the back of Hillary’s mind – well, if we get hit I suspect we will very quickly long for the interpretations of law by Ashcroft.

I agree that Hillary Clinton would be dangerous as president, but I am not confident that Obama wouldn’t be as bad. He seems honest and decent but he appears also to be frightfully naive about how the world works. And he’s old enough to know better — it’s not like he’s some sheltered college kid.

1976?