Time to get serious about the vote!

1/30/08

Is the election going to be Clinton and Clinton against Clinton-Lite?

It is starting to look that way. Most people know that if you get one Clinton you get them both. Is that a good thing? Bill again?

It has looked all along as though the Clinton machine would be sure to have Hillary as the candidate. I haven’t seen anything to change my mind but at least it is somewhat interesting. Barack Obama is every bit as liberal as Hillary but we don’t have much of a history on him.

On the Republican side, I am a bit surprised to find John McCain as one of the two frontrunners. I expected Romney and Rudy. McCain has too much baggage at this time for conservatives to support him. He is winning independents and Democrats voting in the Republican primaries. He has a lot of credibility in the defense sector, one of the most important issues. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have much in the illegal immigration sector. To a lot of conservatives, that is a very important issue. He says he learned from the immigration fight earlier this year and now supports the fence.

He says he is conservative but on too many issues he has voted in a somewhat Clintonesque manner. He seems to be a version of Clinton-Lite. He didn’t support the tax cuts, he sponsored McCain-Feingold, and the McCain-Kennedy. He might be better than the Bill/Hill group but only marginally on a lot of issues. I don’t trust him to appoint conservative judges.

I think the media and the Democrats would love to run against him. He will probably cause the large conservative base of the Republican Party to stay home on Election Day. That would not be an optimal situation for the country. I hope someone else wins the nomination but I will vote for him if he gets the nomination but I will have to hold my nose. At least, he is Clinton-Lite, but not Clinton (or Obama).