The first non-candidate causality of Election ’08 is surprising in its timing, but not unexpected.
At some point, the hearsay, innuendo and scandal mongering of the supermarket tabloids crept from the checkout isle and jumped onto Page One of The New York Times.
We have turned a corner however and before the Time’s smear of John McCain even reached newsstands, fair-minded individuals were all over the “paper of record” for their irresponsible journalism aimed at hurting the perspective Republican nominee.
Some will argue that the papers primary endorsement of McCain shows that the paper has no grudge against the perspective nomminee. That they were just reporting the news.
To this I say, go look at the Time's half-hearted, primary endorsement of McCain and then compare it with the glowing, rave which they printed on the same day endorsing Hillary. Who do you think that paper will give their stamp of approval to come election time?
After seven years of revealing clandestine government programs, giving favors to far-left advertisers and monolithic liberalism on their editorial page, a significant portion of the mainstream media finally got the message that any criticism of a Republican found on the pages of the Times is written in sand, not stone.
McCain's reaction made him look presidential, helped unify his base and diminished the Time's credibility for the remainder of this election cycle.
It's a big win for him and a big loss for the Gray Lady. However it is a loss that the paper richly deserves. Bill Keller is the next thing which that paper should lose.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Black, White and Yellow All Over
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
The Best So Far.....
Found this one elsewhere, but it's still appropriate:
Keep 'em coming people!
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
The Falling Panda Motivational Poster Contest
I know that you've seen them all over the internets, but what you may not know is that anyone can make one.
All you do is pick a picture, a bold word and a witty definition for that word.
So for the next few weeks Falling Panda will be holding a contest to see who can come up with the best motivational poster.
You can make your poster here:
Then e-mail it to us at:dan@fallingpanda.com
We'll post the best ones on the blog over the next few weeks.
Here are a couple that I made today:
Sphere: Related Content
Obama's Baby Mama
“For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country." - Michelle Obama
I'm not prepared to make any Theresa Heinz Kerry comparisons as of yet, however, all indicators point to the fact that Michelle Obama is not quite ready for prime time.
My first memory of Mrs. Obama is from the night of Nov. 2, 2004. Her husband had just been elected to the U.S. Senate and Michelle Obama introduced her husband for his victory speech, referring to him as her "baby's daddy".
While no one is arguing that it's a positive thing that the father of Michelle Obama's children is in fact married to Michelle Obama, the use of this slang term by a senator-elect's spouse caused everyone in the room that night to look at each other curiously and subsequently explode into laughter. "Did she really just say that?"
So now we find out that Mrs. Obama hasn't really been that big of an America fan for most of her life.
Now, for those of you who are regular readers here, you know that I'm not one of those tin-foil hat individuals who believes that Obama is a Muslim sleeper-cell, hoping to get elected so that he can infiltrate our government from the inside.
However, all of these little things are beginning to add up. His refusal to wear a flag pin, his ho-hum reaction to The National Anthem. While these small instances shouldn't get BHO sent to Gitmo or anything, they are odd behaviors for an individual who wants to be President Of The United States.
His wife's bizarre shame of her own nation is perplexing, especially coming from a woman who has benefited so greatly from being an American. She epitomizes the American dream, going from the south-side of Chicago to the Ivy League and now potentially to The White House.
Is it possible that Obama's entire campaign is aimed at those on the left who really don't like America? Those who believe that our nation is not a force for good in the world?
To disapprove of the actions of an administration or an individual is acceptable, but you really have to be delusional to see America's recent legacy as being devoid of things to be proud of.
And if it's too shameful for Mrs. Obama to be the First Lady of a nation in which she only recently found pride in calling home, I understand that there is a position that recently opened up just south of Florida. Perhaps she and some of her husband's supporters would be happier there.
Monday, February 18, 2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Obama Worship
Fantastic article by Mark Steyn in today's OC register.
By MARK STEYN
Syndicated columnist
Comments 8| Recommend 20
These days, Obama worshippers file two kinds of columns. The first school is well-represented by Ezra Klein, the elderly bobby-soxer of The American Prospect:
"Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair."
Er, OK, if you say so.
It seems to me that Barack Obama is the triumph of flesh, color and despair over word – that's to say, he offers an appealing embodiment of identity politics plus a ludicrously despairing vision of contemporary America (sample: "Trade deals like NAFTA ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wage at Wal-Mart") that triumphs over anything so prosaic as a policy platform.
On the other hand, if you're running for president not as an unexceptional first-term senator with a thin resume but as the new Messiah, the new Kennedy, the new Gandhi, the new Martin Luther King, you can't blame folks for leaping ahead to the next stage in the mythic narrative. Around the world, a second instant subgenre has sprung up in which commentators speculate how long it will be before some deranged Christian-fundamentalist neo-Nazi gun-nut deprives America of its fleeting wisp of glory. Setting a new standard for fevered, slavering Obama assassination porn, Earl MacRae warned Canadians in The Ottawa Sun:
"To be black and catapulting toward the presidency on charm, intellect and popularity is unacceptable to the racist paranoid and scary in America the beautiful. … They do not want to hear that he is a better American than they are, these right-wing extremist fascists in the land of America who no doubt believe it's God's will Barack Obama not get to the White House, no method of deterrence out of bounds, in their zealotry to protect and perpetuate Roy Rogers, John Wayne, Mom's apple pie and the cross of Jesus in every home."
By this point, Mr. MacRae wasn't so much warming to his theme as typing up his first draft for Miramax:
"Barack Obama is waving his arms. The crowd is cheering. … I see Barack Obama, one minute smiling, the people crying his name. I see Barack Obama grab his chest and his eyes widen and his mouth opens, and the crowd screams as Barack Obama, black candidate for the presidency of the United States of America, falls to the ground, dead, an assassin's bullet inside him."
Er, OK.
Right now Obama's more at risk of being taken out by traces of polonium-210 left in his hotel by a Clinton operative than by Roy Rogers saddling up for Jesus. Every president is a target for assassination, though George W. Bush is unique in having been the subject of explicit murder fantasies by so many non-right-wing nonextremist impeccably reasonable artists (the British movie "Death Of A President"; the novella "Checkpoint" by Nicholson Baker) and even the occasional straightforward exhortation: "On Nov. 2, the entire civilized world will be praying, praying Bush loses," wrote Charlie Brooker in London's Guardian in 2004. "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr. – where are you now that we need you?"
Well, wherever they are, they're probably saying: "Why bring us into it? When Lee Harvey decided it was time for JFK to get assassinated, he didn't sit around whining, 'John Wilkes Booth, where are you now that I need you?' Get off your butt and do it yourself, you big Euro-ninny." Ah, but for the armchair insurgents of the Western Left, the vicarious frisson is more than delicious enough. Anything else would interfere with dinner plans.
The Bush assassination fantasies are concocted by his political opponents and at least arise from his acts – invading the world; slaughtering 14 million Iraqi civilians; shredding the Constitution. By contrast, the Obama assassination porn is written by his worshippers and testifies to one of the most palpable features of the senator's campaign – its faintly ersatz quality, its determination to appropriate Camelot and every other mythic narrative.
A few days ago, a local news team went to shoot some film at Obama's Houston campaign headquarters. Behind the desks of the perky gals answering the phones were posters of Che Guevara and Cuban flags. Do Obama's volunteers even know who Che is? Apart from being a really cool guy on posters and T-shirts, like James Dean or Bart Simpson. I doubt it. They're pseudo-revolutionaries. Very few people in America want a real revolution: Life is great, this is a terrific country, with unparalleled economic opportunities.
To be sure, it's a tougher break if you have the misfortune to be the victim of one of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society programs or a decrepit inner-city grade school with a higher per-student budget than the wealthiest parts of Switzerland. But even so, to be born a U.S. citizen is, as Cecil Rhodes once said of England, to win first prize in the lottery of life.
Not even Obama supporters want real revolution: Ask the many peoples around the world for whom revolution means not a lame-o Sixties poster above your desk but the carnage and horror of the day before yesterday.
Poor mean, vengeful Hillary, heading for a one-way ticket on the Oblivion Express, has a point. Barack Obama is an elevator Muzak dinner-theater reduction of all the glibbest hand-me-down myths in liberal iconography – which is probably why he's a shoo-in. The problems facing America – unsustainable entitlements, broken borders, nuclearizing enemies – require tough solutions, not gaseous Sesame Street platitudes. But, unlike the whose-turn-is-it? GOP, Mrs. Clinton's crowd generally picks the new kid on the block: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama. I wonder if Hillary Rodham, Goldwater Girl of 1964, ever wishes she'd stuck with her original party.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Pelosi Fiddles, Obama Cowers
McCain '08. Exhibit "A"
Thursday, February 14, 2008
As Of Saturday, Even Roger Clemens Is At Risk
Posted by: Duane R. Patterson at 2:34 PM
You've got to love the priorities of the House Democrats. They spend most of the day yesterday going after Roger Clemens and what he did or did not have injected into his glutes eight years ago by a creepy trainer that seems to have a used syringe collection as a hobby.
Nancy Pelosi and Co. had one simple task today - pass the FISA law permanently. FISA is already in effect to make sure the country stays protected. It has led to the breakup of terrorist cells, and it's prevented attacks on American soil. And it expires tomorrow, meaning as of Saturday, our national intelligence agencies legally can't intercept phone calls outside the country between two parties planning attacks here or in the countries of our allies.
The Senate passed a clean version of the FISA bill Tuesday in a bipartisan manner. The President has already said he's willing to sign the Senate version. On a side note, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton failed to vote for the final passage in the Senate yesterday. I guess change and hope have little to do with defending and protecting the country.
Back to the House today, all that had to happen was for Nancy Pelosi to stop playing games with our country's defense and bring up the Senate version for a vote. But game playing seems to be what Pelosi does best. Instead of putting the country ahead of partisan politics, she substituted another 21 day extension of the existing law as a stop-gap. That was rejected immediately by House Republicans, the President, and even the hard left members of the House Democrats, who have their collective heads so far in the sand that they see no foreign threats. They want the bill to go away period.
Moments ago, John Boehner and the House Republicans got so fed up at Pelosi's antics that they walked out in a mass protest.
Ms. Pelosi, the time for games has long gone. If you want to stake the political future of your party on weakening the national defense and hoping we don't get attacked again, that's certainly your right. I hope you can live with the consequences when something bad happens because of your actions today.
Today is another reason why those of you upset with the specter of a John McCain candidacy need to realize why this election in November does matter so much. Obama and Clinton don't view FISA as important enough to even vote on. In fact, Obama was there and voted for amendments to weaken the overall bill that eventually failed. But when the final passage vote came up, Obama walked away and didn't cast a vote. John McCain was there, and McCain voted to pass it.
The Democratic Party, in spite of all the flowering press over the two Democratic candidates, just are not serious about protecting the country. The Republican Party, in spite of all the fissures and fractures on policy issues, still get national defense and security right.
The story that should come out of this, but won't, is how the Democrats were so beholden to the trial lawyers, that they refused to enact the absolutely necessary provision, which gave the telecom companies immunity from lawsuits involving terrorism related, government wiretaps.
Aren't the Democrats always telling us that it's the GOP that works for the special interests and not for the American people?
The Democrats appear to believe that the phone company is more dangerous than Al-Queda. Except for Mr. Obama of course who can't be troubled with trivial matters such as national security and terrorism. After all, including those issues in his speeches would take up valuable time during which he could be repeatedly saying the word "hope".
Wednesday, February 13, 2008
Is Obama A Straight-Talker
If I had to trace the implosion of the Clinton campaign to one event, it would be the evasivness which she displayed here:
A couple of weeks later Obama did essentially the same thing:
So where was the media coverage?
I know this happened a long time ago, but shouldn't Obama's poor attempt at avoiding taking a position on the issue, have been called into question by the MSM in the same fashion that Clintons was?
Think about this when you ask yourself whether or not the media is in the tank for one candidate or the other this year.
To be fair, once shamed into it by Blitzer and the rest of the audience, Obama came out in favor of drivers licensees for illegals. Let's hope that John McCain takes more notice of this than did the rest of the mainstream media.
By the way, did Obama ever quit smoking?
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
Sunday, February 10, 2008
More Defeatism From The Democrats
AP- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said twice Sunday that Iraq “is a failure,” adding that President Bush’s troop surge has “not produced the desired effect.”
“The purpose of the surge was to create a secure time for the government of Iraq to make the political change to bring reconciliation to Iraq,” Pelosi said on CNN’s “Late Edition.” “They have not done that.”
"There haven't been gains, Wolf,” the speaker replied. “The gains have not produced the desired effect, which is the reconciliation of Iraq. This is a failure. This is a failure."
Didn't Pelosi learn anything, when her partner in dumb, Harry Reid was pilloried from all sides for proclaiming the war "lost"?
Ten years from now, if Iraq is a stable, peaceful democracy, and history has proven that Bush's actions were not only justified but also beneficial to the reigion and to security here at home, I hope that Americans have the collective memory to remember how Reid and Pelosi attempted to undermine and politicize the war effort at every turn.
Political reconciliation can only come if people are not getting blown up in the streets. Any honest observer- as well as Rep.Murtha - can clearly see that the surge has worked magnificently in quelling violence around the country.
The Democrats new strategy, as witnessed by their collective hissy fit when John McCain implied that the U.S. may need to have a presence in Iraq for 100 years, is to insist that our strategy in Iraq isn't working, simply because we're there.
The Democrats can't stand the thought of U.S. success in Iraq. They know it would set their party back another 25 years on the issue of national security, just as their refusal to take on the Soviet Union and their bungling and subsequent surrender in Southeast Asia, made them the party of defeat throughout the later part of the 20th century.
Between Hillary crying for a third time last night after losing another handful of primaries and Democratic congressional leaders doing everything they can in order to force the U.S. military to run home from Baghdad with their tails between their legs, is it any wonder that the GOP has picked McCain as their standard bearer?
Despite all of his faults, at least McCain can be trusted not to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory or to allow the Democrats to send harmful messages to our troops in the field, when the truth is that they are changing the world for the better, by democratizing a region, which so desperately needs it.
Saturday, February 09, 2008
Friday, February 08, 2008
Fear-Mongering Fear
Over the past six years, some on the left have accused the Bush administration of using "fear" or "fear-mongering" in order to gain politically from the threat, or as the left claims, the imagined threat of radical Islamic thought.
Most recently, the Democrats' Rookie of the Year, Barack Obama accused the GOP of this in his Super Tuesday speech, garnering a supportive reaction from his audience of political neophytes and starry-eyed idealists. He said:
"When I’m president, we will put an end to the politics of fear, a politics that uses 9/11 as a way to scare up votes. We’re going to start seeing 9/11 as a challenge that should unite America and the world against the common threats of the 21st century, terrorism and nuclear weapons, climate change and poverty, genocide and disease."(APPLAUSE)
Ironically, using "...9/11 to scare up votes" is exactly what Obama was doing with this statement.
This was the first time during his relatively substance-free campaign that I felt the same anger towards Obama that I have felt towards the other Democrats who have used the same kind of unpatriotic rhetoric over the years.
That's right, I used the word "unpatriotic." I do not use that word lightly.
Despite what those on the left say, neither I nor anyone that I can think of in the administration has ever used that word to describe those who disagree with them on the War On Terror. Here it applies perfectly.
To imply that this administration has used "fear" unnecessarily and for political gain, without any evidence to back up that claim is unpatriotic and a bit nauseating. Mr. Obama should be called out immediately for this statement which has no basis in fact and which reeks of exactly the type of political opportunism and divisiveness, which Obama's supporters claim that they are sick of.
Ron Silver, an actor who broke away from the monolithic liberalism of the acting community after the events of 9/11, has a terrific piece on his blog regarding this issue. The left's recent proclivity to attempt to erode trust in their own government on the most important issue of our time in order to win elections should be rejected by all Americans. Here's that article:
http://pajamasmedia.com/xpress/ronsilver/
http://pajamasmedia.com/xpress/ronsilver/
Six and a half years ago, we saw the damage brought about by the actions of fewer than 20 Islamic-extremists. There are many more out there who want to attack us again and in a fashion that would dwarf the attacks on the Pentagon and The World Trade Center. If you refuse to take this threat seriously, you're naive. If you're a presidential candidate who refuses to take it seriously, you're clearly not ready to assume the office.
Thursday, February 07, 2008
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
The Mitt Hits The Fan
"Hey. Where did everybody go?"
It appears that the silver-medal express has reached the end of the line.
For the good of the party it's time for Mitt to bail out and back the inevitable nominee.
If he does, we will rememeber it in 8 years when it's time to pick another standard- bearer.
Sphere: Related Content
For the good of the party it's time for Mitt to bail out and back the inevitable nominee.
If he does, we will rememeber it in 8 years when it's time to pick another standard- bearer.
Tuesday, February 05, 2008
Faces Of The Left
This is Robert Anbian. He writes haikus.
Haikus for the White House
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Wanna guess where this guy's from? If you said San Francisco, YOU WIN! I hope that you didn't spend too long figuring that one out.
Monday, February 04, 2008
Crying Her Way To The White House
Stop crying Hillary. You want to be the leader of the most powerful military on Earth. Your recent tendency to open up the waterworks -whether intentional or not- is not exactly instilling me with much confidence in your abiltiy to take on Muslims who enjoy blowing up buildings. Not that I had much confidence in you to begin with.
So is the face of modern feminism streaked with tears? Probably only if it helps the ladies get what they want.
Thursday, January 31, 2008
Hillary Is Bill's Last Chance At A Legacy
Bill Clinton: Clawing for a Legacy
By Charles Krauthammer
WASHINGTON -- Legacy? What legacy?
There was general amazement when (the now-muzzled) Bill Clinton did his red-faced, attack-dog, race-baiting performance in South Carolina. Friends, Democrats and longtime media sycophants were variously perplexed, repulsed, enraged, mystified and shocked that this beloved ex-president would so jeopardize his legacy by stooping so low.
What they don't understand is that for Clinton, there is no legacy. What he was doing on the low road from Iowa to South Carolina was fighting for a legacy -- a legacy that he knows history has denied him and that he has but one chance to redeem.
Clinton is a narcissist but also smart and analytic enough to distinguish adulation from achievement. Among Democrats, he is popular for twice giving them the White House, something no Democrat has done since FDR. And the bouquets he receives abroad are simply signs of the respect routinely given ex-presidents, though Clinton earns an extra dollop of fawning, with the accompanying fringe benefits, because he is (a) charming and (b) not George W. Bush.
But Clinton knows this is all written on sand. It is the stuff of celebrity. What gnaws at him is the verdict of history. What clearly enraged him more than anything this primary season was Barack Obama's statement that "Ronald Reagan changed the trajectory of America in a way that ... Bill Clinton did not."
The Clintons tried to use this against Obama by charging him with harboring secret Republican sympathies. It was a stupid charge that elicited only scorn. And not just because Obama is no Reaganite, but because Obama's assessment is so obviously true: Reagan was consequential. Clinton was not.
Reagan changed history. At home, he radically altered both the shape and perception of government. Abroad, he changed the entire structure of the international system by bringing down the Soviet empire, giving birth to a unipolar world of unprecedented American dominance.
By comparison, Clinton was a historical parenthesis. He can console himself -- with considerable justification -- that he simply drew the short straw in the chronological lottery: His time just happened to be the 1990s which, through no fault of his own, was the most inconsequential decade of the 20th century. His was the interval between the collapse of the Soviet Union on Dec. 26, 1991, and the return of history with a vengeance on Sept. 11, 2001.
Clinton's decade, that holiday from history, was certainly a time of peace and prosperity -- but a soporific Golden Age that made no great demands on leadership. What, after all, was his greatest crisis? A farcical sexual dalliance.
Clinton no doubt wishes he'd been president on 9/11. It is nearly impossible for a president to rise to greatness in the absence of a great crisis, preferably war. Theodore Roosevelt is the only clear counterexample, and Bill is no Teddy.
What is the legacy of the Clinton presidency? Consolidator of the Reagan revolution. As Dwight Eisenhower made permanent FDR's New Deal and Tony Blair institutionalized Thatcherism, Clinton consolidated Reaganism. He did so most symbolically with his 1996 State of the Union declaration that "the era of big government is over." And more concretely, with a presidency that only tinkered with such structural Reaganite changes as tax cuts and deregulation, and whose major domestic achievement was the abolition of welfare, Reagan's ultimate social bete noire.
These are serious achievements, but of a second order. Obama did little more than echo that truism. But one can imagine how it made Clinton burn. He is, after all, a relatively young man who has decades to brood over his lost opportunity for greatness and yet is constitutionally barred from doing anything about it.
Except for the spousal loophole. Hence his desperation, especially after Hillary's Iowa debacle, to rescue his only chance for historical vindication -- a return to the White House as Hillary's co-president. A chance to serve three, perhaps even four terms, the longest in history, longer even than FDR. The opportunity to have dominated a full quarter-century of American history, relegating the George W. Bush years to a parenthesis within Clinton's legacy.
It was to save this one chance, his last chance, to be historically consequential, that Bill Clinton blithely jeopardized principle, friendships, racial harmony in his own party and his own popularity in South Carolina.
Why not? Clinton knows that popularity is cheap, easily lost, easily regained. (See Lewinsky scandal.) But historical legacies are forever.
He wants one, desperately. But to get it he must return to the White House. And for that he must elect his wife. At any cost.
Why was he out of control in South Carolina? He wasn't. He was clawing for a second chance.
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
The Electability Factor
When it comes to presidential primaries, I’m what you call a strategic voter. What this means is that I cast my ballot, based on which one of the primary’s viable candidates is the best for the long-term prospects of the party.
For example, I am a Rudy Giuliani supporter. However, I believe that Giuliani will finish no better than third in Florida this evening and after that loss, he will cease to be viable in any way. Therefore, if I were voting in the Sunshine State, I would cast my ballot for John McCain who is currently polling even with Mitt Romney.
I like both of the GOP front-runners. I also have issues with both men. However, it appears that John McCain is the most electable of the remaining Republicans and first and foremost, I want a GOP victory in Novemeber.
Unfortunately, my primary is in Virginia on February 12. Things are likely to be wrapped up by then. My absentee ballot is on its way, just in case.
In 2004, I ordered an absentee ballot for the Virginia Democratic Primary. The plan was to cast a vote for Howard Dean in hopes that he would win the nomination, thus ensuring a general election landslide for President Bush in the fall. Of course, by the time the primary rolled around, John Kerry had the nomination locked up. That ballot is now carefully tucked away, a unique piece of Americana.
So as you can see, I’m not the only primary voter for whom electability is a top concern.
If John McCain wins Florida tonight, I believe the nomination is his. The momentum which he gains from a Florida victory will be nearly impossible for Romney to overcome on Super Tuesday, where he already trails McCain by double-digits in most of the big states.
If Romney pulls it off however, the GOP will have to seriously consider the general election appeal of all four of the major party candidates, one of whom will be the next President of The United States.
Here’s how I see it.
John McCain certainly has a chance of being elected president. GOP voters who are somewhat turned off by McCain’s positions on tax cuts, immigration and campaign finance reform will come home eventually. They will do so enthusiastically if faced with the prospect of a second Clinton presidency.
McCain will also likely nominate a very conservative Evangelical Christian as his running mate, brining the powerful voting bloc that put George W. Bush in the White House into the mix.
Finally, McCain will garner support from a significant number of independents who rightfully see the maverick as an individual who is not beholden to special interests and Washington partisanship, those political bogeymen which voters claim to hate so much.
Against Clinton, McCain would capture independents despite the fact that they are currently leaning towards the Democrats.
By contrast, it is my view that Mitt Romney would not be viable against Hillary Clinton in a general election.
His second place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, states in which he spent an incredible amount of time and money, show us that folks have had a very hard time warming up to the former governor. He won Wyoming and Nevada where none of the other candidates campaigned and Michigan where he benefited from a family legacy.
In Florida, he is competitive only because so many conservatives have issues with McCain.
Romney comes across as over-polished and much like the Clintons, willing to say anything in order to win votes. You can do this in politics, but only if people don’t catch on. In this matter, Romney is transparent.
Romney’s faith also poses a potential problem. While open-minded individuals such as myself would have no problem voting for a Mormon candidate, I’m not confident that I can say the same for the rest of the electorate. Especially when Hillary’s surrogates begin equating Romney with his Mormon forefathers who had some beliefs and practices which the majority of Americans find repugnant. It’s not fair. But politics rarely is.
Despite Hillary Clinton’s high negatives and the viciousness with which she and her husband attack her opponents, her electability is an unfortunate political reality.
Women--espeically single women--will support her in large numbers even if many of them disagree with her politically.
The Clintons are experts at destroying their rivals. As her primary opponent is now learning, they do so by polarizing the nation along race, gender and economic lines, 
Her political machine is so well oiled that she will make sure that every single person who is even considering casting a ballot for her will turn out at the polls, making it nearly impossible for her opponent to pick up a victory in any blue state in which she now leads. Once again, I expect her current opponent will learn this the hard way next Tuesday, when he runs up against her behemoth of a political machine.
If she can rein in her husband--who is becoming an increasing liability with the potential to turn off independents by reminding them of the partisanship and divisiveness which defined his presidency--she has a good chance of winning the election. Perhaps Al Gore was on to something in 2000
It’s to her credit that an individual as polarizing and as unauthentic as Mrs. Clinton still has a serious chance of becoming the leader of the free world.
So what about Barack Obama?
Democrats are so enamored of the golden boy’s charisma and speaking style that I don’t believe they have given a lick of thought to his prospects against a Republican in a general election.
I think he loses and it has nothing to do with the fact that he’s black, but rather due to the fact that he’s so green.
This is a candidate who is so inexperienced that it has enabled a woman with only slightly more “experience” to effectively run against him as the “experience candidate.”
John McCain would be able to bludgeon Obama as a political lightweight and create and atmosphere in which Obama’s rhetoric of “hope” and “change,” crumbles under the weight of real, proven leadership and nearly 30 years of political expertise.
Thus far, Obama has not been challenged much on his views, because he and Hillary essentially share the same ideological slant and are appealing to voters who agree with both of them on almost every issue.
Come summer, the GOP will have no problem whatsoever exposing Obama as a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, because….well…that’s what he is. His meager voting record proves it. History shows us that if a candidate is perceived as being a true liberal, their chances of putting together a winning electoral coalition decrease dramatically.
Once Obama is forced to stake out positions and explain his votes on taxes, terror, immigration, abortion and homeland security, many independents who are now considering him as a candidate will run for the comparatively moderate hills of John McCain.
Finally, Democrats currently seem oblivious to the fact that Barack Obama has never had to take on anything even remotely resembling serious Republican opposition. What drives Democrats to believe that he is now prepared to take on the entire party is beyond me.
- Dan Joseph
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