Politics 101

McCain, Romney neck-and-neck as Floridians head to the polls

“Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Gov. Mitt Romney of Massachusetts appear to be neck-and-neck in the Republican primary. If McCain wins in Florida, his status as the national front-runner will be cemented.”

For 5 minutes tonight, please go to CNN and see who is going to be the Republican nominee. I agree with a lot of predications that the winner of Florida will be the nominee for the party.

One by One, Angry Liberals Turn Their Backs on Team Clinton

“Like lovers scorned, Bill Clinton’s longtime liberal supporters are walking out on him, slamming the door behind them and rebuking the 42nd president for his behavior leading up to last weekend’s South Carolina primary.”

It’s confusing to me how Obama keeps getting random backing from key Democrats, but its not translating into the national polls. Do Democrats not care about the opinions of their elected officials? I’m missing something here.

White House 2008: Republican Nomination

Just to reemphasize: Click on the link to see Giuliani’s demise. He went from solid frontrunner to afterthought in about 2-3 months. I bet his campaign manager is not getting job offers anytime soon.

The Importance of Florida: Romney, McCain

As an amateur (simpleton) political commentator, this has been a fantastic presidential race to see how the nation as a whole responds to events external to itself. What I mean, is that we are a nation that loves frontrunners. We don’t vote for candidates that we simply believe in; we vote for a candidate that we sort of like and that has the best chance of winning.

With Romney and McCain establishing themselves as frontrunners, the Salt Lake Tribune wrote a price on the importance of Florida to the Republican race. They commented that:

“Tuesday's primary, coming only a week before the tsunami of states voting Feb. 5, could give a major boost to either John McCain or Mitt Romney, who appear to be the duo battling it out for their party's nomination….The Sunshine State's primary offers the best opportunity for either McCain or Romney to take the spotlight going into the 22-state contest on Feb. 5, a day with more than 1,000 Republican delegates at stake in a contest where 1,191 are needed to get the nomination.”

What this is implying is simple: 22 states vote on Super Tuesday. Right now, there are still tons of votes scattered around for Rudy Giuliani, Ron Paul, and Mike Huckabee. So instead of those voters continuing to vote first their “first choice”, many of them will switch their vote to either McCain or Romney. The reason is simple: Don’t throw your vote away. Vote for the best remaining candidate that shares most of your views on the issues. This drives me crazy. Why should we do this?

For example, in early November the leading candidates in the Tennessee Republican primary were Fred Thompson and Giuliani. Well, you know what happened there. Thompson is out and Giuliani appears to have “strategized” himself completely out of the race. (Somebody needs to write a book about that decision by the way). So we as Tennesseans have been limited to who we can/should vote for by a number of states, some that have vast different concerns then we do. Let’s assume for a minute that Tennessee’s primary was earlier in the year. If Thompson could have won this state, that would have propelled his national status and contributions to his campaign.

Hopefully somebody smarter than me can explain a simple question I have. Why aren’t all primaries held on the same day? Wouldn’t this be a fairer representation of the nation’s true opinions? Like I mentioned earlier, Giuliani was leading national polls early in the race. What changed about his policies? Nothing. Romney or McCain haven’t been THAT impressive. The reason he is losing is because he’s been out of the spotlight for 3 months.
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Our next president shouldn’t be decided by strategies or budget allocation. All candidates should run national campaigns until March, then let us all vote at the same time.

GTKTPRFP - Mitt Romney: Part I: (Seriousness Level: Severe)

For every candidate I’m going to devote 2 hours to look over their opinions on key issues and pointing out where I disagree. Then I’ll be looking at the major issues playing in the media that will dissuade people from voting for them. I’m trying to summarize thoughts, so please don’t take my words as absolute fact. If you have any grips with my summary, please look to the candidate’s website for their official opinion. This is my interpretations from 2 hours ONLY. I reserve the right to change my opinion as this proceeds.

Baseball Card Statistics:

Full Name: Williard Mitt Romney
Age: 50
Marital Status: Wife, Ann – Married for 38 years
Party Affiliation: Republican
Most Recent Office Held: Governor of Massachusetts
College: BYU
Religious Affiliation: Mormon
Eric’s Official Nickname: Mittens
Official Candidate website: http://www.mittromney.com/
Randomness: His family has a blog called Five Brothers.

Interesting Issue Watch

Terrorism: Mittens seems to have a very practical approach to combating terrorism. He sees the issue larger than any specific country or any one terrorist group, i.e. Al Qaeda. A title of one of his “issue watch” pieces is “Confronting Radical Jihad”. He calls it this century’s nightmare. The main point that jumped out is his call for the creation of the Special Partnership Force. This sounds a little like a superhero club. I like it. Basically this would coordinate our anti-terrorist activities under one military banner. I think this is a wise way to combat terror. Focus on individual cells rather than blow up countries that harbor terrorists.

"This [Special Partnership] Force would work hand-in-glove with local host governments. Together, they would seek to target and separate terrorists from the local population, and to disrupt and defeat them. (Remarks At AEI World Forum, 6/21/07)

Illegal Immigration: Apparently illegal immigration has skyrocketed from 3 millions per year in 1997, to over 12 million last year. Who’s counting these people? Shouldn’t they be arresting them instead of counting? Just a thought. Anyway, snow Mittens agrees, and has two points I haven’t heard before (I’m learning these issues, so this may be a common thought):

From his website:

Implement An Enforceable Employer Verification System. Issue a biometrically-enabled and tamperproof card to non-citizens and create a national database for non-citizens so employers can easily verify their legal status in this country.

This sounds WAY too much like a George Orwell book for me. Maybe we should give them tattoos of I’s on their arms. Then we can catalog them in one of my wife’s fancy spreadsheets. Maybe this is good, sounds a little weird though.

Punish Sanctuary Cities. Cut back federal funding to cities that are "sanctuaries" for illegal immigrants and refuse to comply with federal law or aid federal law enforcement.

Now we’re talking. Just like cities that didn’t adhere to the national seatbelt law, let’s bring the hammer down on cities that aren’t complying. Let’s give something teeth, even though this would be almost impossible to imploy.

Eric’s Gut Feeling After 2 Hours of Research

Look, I’m trying to give each candidate a lot of my time. I know that 2 hours doesn’t sound like much, but it feels like a lot, especially because most party candidates say the same stuff. My opinions will grow, so more depth will be added as the time goes. There’s one thing that KEEPS getting brought up about Mittens: He’s a Mormon. So the question of the day is: Does religious affiliation matter when electing a president? Of course it does to some degree. I think it would be naïve to think otherwise. I live by a certain set of morale guidelines. The happen to run hand in hand with the Bible. They’re based solely from that. So why would I vote for somebody that differs dramatically from my personal set of moral guidelines?

So the larger issue for me is: Would Mitt Romney’s religious beliefs negatively impact the county as a whole? (Side note: I don’t understand the full differences between our two faiths. And there is a difference. This isn’t the time to address everything, but there are differences). I don’t see the difference between a Mormon and another candidate who calls himself a Southern Baptist just to get votes.

Eric’s Official Rating

As of today, my ranking system is out of 100 points. Those 100 points are arbitrarily thrown around. Anything under 50, I will not consider voting for and pretend they don’t exist. From 51-75, I will keep my eye on for new developments. If they do something interested, they get a second column. Anybody will an initial score of over 75 will receive a second column in the coming weeks. I know that’s about as simply as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but I’m new at this so give me a break.

I’m giving Mittens an early score of 80. We share a lot of similarities on the issues he comments on, but I’m not blown away. He has a very high appeal with voters and that makes him VERY relevant. Seems like a good guy and any Republican that wins office in Massachusetts has to have something going for him.

Tomorrow Afternoon: Ron Paul