We’re just waiting now for either Romney or Huckabee to bow out, right? The snark factor is going to get huge from here till November. Hilary and Barack are sniping at each other, Romney and McCain are getting downright nasty.
I have no idea who our next president will be. A few months ago I was confident enough to say it would be a Democrat, that the country has had enough of Bush Republicans. McCain is a Bush Republican, so if he actually snags the nomination, I thought that would be a guarantee of a Democrat getting the nod.
But if they don’t stop this idiotic bickering…
People claim not to like negative campaigns, but damn it when things are civilized people just don’t seem to care. Attacks ads are tasteless, usually always false, but they get people riled and out the door to the polls. It makes no sense. But it does, in a twisted way. Train wrecks draw more spectators than a field of flowers.
I’m wondering when Hilary and Barack will figure out that if they make a deal now to run as a team, they would be unbeatable. Flip a coin to see who’s on top—er, well, you know what I mean—and play it right, and I think the Dems would have a 16 year lock on the White House. That might not necessarily be a good thing, but as a strategy it could work for them.
I do not believe such a strategy would work for McCain and Romney—or Huckabee. They seem to be appealing to different arms of the party. A three armed party? Well, you knew they had some problems, right?
I think it likely that the Republican Party is going to go down in flames. I talked about the problems I see with the core voting points for a large and vocal constituency of them, and McCain is becoming a lightening rod for dissension—is he a true Red State boy or not?
There was a time I respected John McCain. Back in 2000 I thought he should be the one. Again in 2004. Bush—Karl Rove, actually—beat him up so badly that I thought he would either withdraw forever or come back like an avenging Samurai. I did not expect him to start taking on all the execrable traits of the man who had abused him. I think he wants to be president so badly, nothing else matters anymore. And that’s sad.
Romney and Huckabee have problems of philosophy for me. Does religion matter? Privately, no. If you’re going to base public policy on it, though, we have an issue, and since neither of them seems to have a strong grasp of science and one of them publicly denies evolution (on which so much modern biological and environmental science now depends, which does kind of sort of make it a policy problem), I have a difficult time seeing how they’ll be particularly keen on some policy issues that are going to matter more and more.
I find I can disagree honestly with Huckabee. He is not loathesome, I just won’t vote for him.
On the other side, it is now the Hilary and Barack Show, and this is sadly difficult. I respect them both. I like Obama. I had no real problems with the last Clinton administration and see no reason why a new one would be worse. I would like to see the gender barrier broken. I would also like to see the race barrier broken.
I would like to see them stop sniping at each other and team up.
Do I think that will happen? What do you think?
