It looks as if Fred Thompson will finish a weak third in South Carolina. I suspect this was his best shot, and I frankly don’t see him with any chance now of getting the nomination. I think, depending on the nominee, he has a strong shot at the vice presidential nomination, but so what? In essence, the GOP has rejected the one real conservative in the race, and will now pick from a NYC moderate, a “maverick” RINO, a budding populist theocrat, and a Massachusetts country club Republican in the Rockefeller/First Bush vein.
None of them can be trusted very much on any of the issues I care about, from immigration, to liberty, to the Second Amendment, to a lessening of federal power, or to federalism itself. They are all, to a moderate or greater extent, wedded to statism, and I think it has now become quite clear that the GOP, once, but no longer, the party of conservatism, small government, and liberty, is now just another statist gang like their counterparts who are very slightly across the left/right divide from them.
I am now officially one of the uncommitted. Any party or candidate who wants my vote will have to earn it, by my standards.
I will not vote for any ticket headed by John McCain or Mike Huckabee. If McCain is the nominee, I won’t vote for any candidate. If Huckabee is the nominee, I’ll vote for the Democratic candidate. Yes, I would vote for BJ & Hillary Clinton before I’d cast a vote for that constitution-rewriting Christian reconstructionist theocrat in the making, Huckabee. In fact, I won’t vote for any ticket of which he is a part.
At the moment, probably the best I can hope for would be a Giuliani/Thompson ticket. I think that, absent Fred, Rudy would have the best leadership talents. My only problem is where he would try to lead us. But I’d vote for him. I’d vote, but with less enthusiasm, for a Rudy/Romney ticket, in whatever order, and I would vote for a Romney/Thompson ticket.
But McCain or Huckabee? Either one is a deal-breaker, and neither will get my vote. The only difference is that Huckabee will cause me to vote - for his opponent.
In a way, it’s a relief. I’m pretty well out of it now. I’m lukewarm at best as regards any of the most likely GOP nominees. The only thing I’ll be watching for is who the final nominee turns out to be, so I’ll be able to know what I’ll be doing on election day this year.
So, good luck, GOP. You may end up getting a vote from me. But you’re not really a party I have much interest in any longer. I think a lot of people feel the way I do, too. I could be wrong. But my antenna have been twitching for a while now, and don’t believe the near future for America looks particularly bright - and many of the seeds that will grow to ugly fruition in the oncoming gloom were planted and nurtured by George W. Bush, with the willing help of a party that has forgotten the principles it once stood for. But I also think that if the Dems get control of all three branches come November, in ten years they will look back and see that as the most comprehensive disaster their party has endured in a hundred years.
Most of all, I think that in ten years the entire political landscape will have been utterly remade. I honestly don’t know if the two currently dominant parties will be any more viable than the future facing pop music today. Both the Democrats and the Republicans are nursing century old coalitions that are facing unbridgeable chasms of internal inconsistency. I don’t thing either will be able to cross those bridges. And as we enter deeper into an era of greater and greater fragmentation, I see no reason why two political-machine dinosaurs should be any more durable than anything else.
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See ya Fred, a truley pathetic effort. He made Phil Gram back in ‘96 look like Machiavelli.
I doubt either party has much of a future either, but then I doubt American Democracy has a long life ahead of it. As short in life as they are violent in death as someone else said. 12 to 16 years from now I predict we’ll be a nice insane Fascist state.
What the hell is wrong with you?
“I hate you and the party, but you’ll get my vote anyway.”
I think it is time to end the two parties and the only way that will happen is with an independent.
I myself was a Republican all my life. I emphasize was!
I will not vote for any of the Republican candidates. They are all worthless. I will not vote for any Democrat. They are all worthless.
I have been forced into becoming an independent because my party turned its back on me and I will not just vote for their schmuck because they tell me to.
There is only one chance I will even vote this year… and this is only if Lou Dobbs enters the race. There’s a website calling for Lou Dobbs to enter the fray, but I doubt he will.
4 years of Dobbs I believe would get this country back on the path and looking out for the American people once again. Cut spending, renegotiating these bogus trade deals that aren’t fair (China in particular), force an enforcement of immigration laws and stand up to the earmark bs currently going on.
I mean we can stand around and bitch about the two parties that continually screw us or we can get behind an independent. There really is no other choice.
You really sound like a wishy-washy “take it in the ass” kind of guy on this one Bill, but I still love you anyway ;)
Yep, the primaries have been a sad commentary that is telling us that the American people are apparently more worried about what the government can do FOR them than it is a population worried about what the government is gonna do TO them.
I suspect that the price of ammo will soar over the next few months due to an increased demand as will the price of big bore rifles and hand guns. There are some of us who have read history and recognize the threat to out liberty.
I’m with you on this one, although it looks like you’ll accept a couple of combinations that I’ll pass on… the next 4 years are going to be difficult for liberty oriented folks.
I think it’s the pits though that Google Ads put a Mike Huckabee ad at the bottom of your post. Context selected ads make for some unfortunate coincidences, especially with political posts.
BillH, that’s one of the reasons I removed all the ads from my site: Google kept puking up this honking big McCain ad, and I just couldn’t gut looking at it every day. They weren’t making me all that much anyway, so I dumped ‘em for my own peace of mind. Cutting off my nose to spite my face, maybe, but hey, it keeps my blood pressure at relatively reasonable levels. ;)
As for the rest: Europe Lite, here we come.
And then there’s this: “…with the willing help of a party that has forgotten the principles it once stood for.” Forgotten? They’ve all but specifically renounced them. To hell with ‘em. I, like Bill, will wait until I’m given something to vote FOR rather than against. As an old girlfriend of mine used to say, you get what you settle for. I’m done with “settling” for the lesser of two evils.
A petulant, childish response to an imperfect world? Perhaps. But you don’t elect conservatives by voting for liberals, no matter which party they represent or how that party tries to obscure the truth about what its candidate really stands for. Dubya’s inept reign ought to be object lesson enough of that.
If this country is ever to be turned aside from the nanny-state/socialist path it’s on and put back on something resembling a Constitutional footing– and I seriously doubt that it will — it’s going to require statesmen, bona fide leaders, to point the way. But all we have available to us now are mere politicians.
These are sad, trying times indeed for anyone concerned about meanly losing the “last, best hope of earth.”
And so it will be fitting that liberal-fascist, freedom-hating dumbasses like you will have been most responsible for creating that nice, insane Fascist state, won’t it?
I’m strongly tempted to vote for Hillary Bitch Clinton or Barack Madrassa Obama.
- It’ll be a slap in the face to the Republican party leaders. Maybe they’ll learn from it, maybe not, but it won’t do any harm.
- The 1994 congressional turnover was a reaction to BJ Bubba’s 1992 plurality.
- Giving the Donks the Presidency and both congressional houses for two years will greatly aid in destroying the Democrat party.
Yes, there’ll be some element of cutting off our noses to spite our faces, but in the long run it’ll probably help.
The only catch for me is, I’m registered to vote in NY. The state’ll almost inevitably go with the Donk candidate regardless, so my vote will be meaningless.
Not necessarily. It would increase a popular majority for the Dems, which is, after all, the only thing the MSM pays any attention to, anyway. That electoral college stuff is far too complicated to peddle to the proletariat.
And the bigger the popular majority, the more likely the New Democratic Masters are to overreach.
If Rudy is the GOP nominee, I think he might well take NY city and therefore NY state. In which case, he would probably win the election. Tough for the Dems to make up for loss of that many electoral votes.
That’s “rationally ignorant proletariat” to you, bub. Gotta give them all the respect they deserve.
Good point, and worth working toward.
Maybe, but it’s not especially something to look forward to. And I don’t really expect it; the Stupid Party has probably out-stupided themselves again. (With help from the MSM’s near refusal to mention Thompson’s name.)
To those who predict imminent fascism, Tom Wolfe said this (paraphrasing Jean-François Revel) in an essay published over 30 years ago: “the dark night of fascism is always descending in the United States and yet lands only in Europe”.
Even .22WMR costs almost twice what it did a year or so ago, and one of the employees at the range/store I frequent says there’ll be another general increase in March.
Wait a minute. You can’t give up on Fred that easily. Remember, this is not your father’s election year. Six states have spoken/mumbled, only three in actual elections, and we have multiple winners and only a handful of delegates chosen. McCain “won” SC with a lousy 33% of the vote? Who’s calling that a mandate?
Twenty-four states are up in February, just after Florida, and of the Romney/Giuliani/Huckabee/McCain/Thompson group, there’s a win in there for each - but nothing like a majority or consensus for anybody. The delegate totals will be split, and it will be on to the remaining states of Indiana, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Texas.
It’s apparent that with so many candidates splitting the delegates , the convention will be brokered. The delegates are pledged for the first ballot, and then it’s a free-for-all. Fred has as good a chance as any of coming out on top as the best compromise candidate, maybe better, since he’s made far fewer enemies than McCain, for instance.
This election year is going to be a long ride. There’s no sense in jumping off the bus while it’s backing out of the station.
Lorenzo, I agree. If we are to instigate change we should at least have enough stamina to last one primary season.
I agree as well Lorenzo. I supported Fred when a run was but a glimmer in the (public) eye. I see no reason to abandon him now. Will it work out? I dunno, but I certainly can’t get behind any of the others and two of them I can’t even imagine voting for at all.
The primaries have barely begun. I just sent my first bux to Fred. It is not over and I will tolerate no sackcloth and ashes yet.
The convention is when I’ll decide whether I cast a vote for Fred, or a protest vote for Paul.