It looks like the Republican primaries are going to be a lot of fun to watch. To this point, the MSM has been trying to sort the candidates into predictable ideological cubby holes, with varying degrees of success. This week, though, the whole race is pretty much up in the air and anyone who thinks they can predict a single primary outcome at this point is either lying or possesses incredible psychic powers. Seriously. Trying to make sense about which candidate stands where on what issue is like trying to catch drunken turbo-charged flies with chopsticks. Blindfolded.
The debates – all three thousand of them thus far – are helping not at all. There are few issues so simple that you can get a definitive answer in thirty seconds (Note to Senator Clinton: Giving licenses to illegal immigrants is one of those issues. Stop waffling and grow a pair!). On the other hand, no important issue requires much more than 4-5 minutes either, so I’d expect that as the pretenders drop out and start sucking up for future Cabinet roles and Ambassadorships, you’ll get a much better idea where the candidates stand on the important stuff.
Below the jump, I’ll give you my summary of the rest of the electoral jumble. Don’t expect any real conclusions, though. I’m as clueless as the rest of you folks.
Giuliani’s the strong defense guy (did you know he’s America’s Mayor? Huh? Didja, Didja??) but the liberal social issue guy. And he has EXPERIENCE!! Just ask him. He’s done everything from put a halt to rampant New York City crime to personally interrogating violent criminals. If Chuck Norris ever decides to self-ascend to Godhood, Rudy Giuliani will take his place. To make him nearly perfect to the MSM, he’s The Guy The Religious Right Hates Because He’s been Divorced And Favors Abortion. That makes the MSM positively radiant with glee because if there’s one thing they hate more than an Evangelical Christian is…well…okay, there’s nothing the MSM hates more than an Evangelical Christian. Which is why there’s been a certain amount of stunned silence over yesterday’s news that Pat Robertson, one of the very leaders of the “American Taliban” himself, has endorsed America’s Mayor.
Mitt Romney is firmly on the right on both national defense and the social issues, but has a few niggling issues before they’re coronated as “True Conservatives”. Romney is a Mormon, which seems to be code for “some strange alien religion which makes Christians shriek and point like Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers” and he has really nice hair. Romney’s hair is perhaps the nicest hair in the whole race outside of the Silky Pony himself, John Edwards. The media would love to give him a nice forearm shiver, but they can’t seem to land a serious shot on him. The last attempt was to expose his flip-floppery on abortion when he was running for governor against The Human Brandy Snifter, Ted Kennedy. That all pretty much went away when Bob Jones III and Paul Weyrich, two more of the “American Taliban” Secret World-Domination Council, endorsed him.
Thompson, more than anyone else, would seem to have a chokehold on the title of Next Ronald Reagan, except that he is displaying what I’d call a feline disinterest in the whole Running for President enterprise. The MSM would love to muss him up a little bit, but so far the worst they’ve managed to do is to insult his wife and scold him for smoking a cigar while destroying Michael Moore in a couple sentences. Thompson is playing the role of grumpy old coot really well, prickling when anyone actually suggests that he show just a little bit of vigor in his campaign, as he did with Laura Ingraham on her radio show not long ago. At this point, I’m not entirely sure if Thompson really wants to be President. Richard Land, Affiliate Member of the “American Taliban” sure seems to like him, though, which confuses the “Where’s the Religious Right Gonna Go?” question even more than it had been before.
John McCain is the beloved maverick who seems to have hurt the MSM deeply by unabashedly rooting for America to beat the Islamists in Iraq and elsewhere. His unexpected jilting seems to have stunned the MSM into relative silence. One of the things the MSM has loved the most about McCain is that he’s never been the darling of the social conservatives, except that now he has the endorsement of Sam Brownback (who is as social-con as it gets, as candidates go). McCain would nearly be the ideal candidate except for a couple tiny things. First, he’s a valiant defender of free speech, unless that speech happens to criticize a sitting member of Congress, especially those named John McCain. Second, he’s not been terribly keen on defending our soldiers against the most outrageous slander committed by Ted Kennedy, Dick Durbin, and other Congressional Democrats.
Mike Huckabee is the Theocrat in Training. He’d be pretty reviled except that 1) people really seem to like him wherever he speaks, and 2) he wants to ban smoking and do all the nanny-state “control your life” stuff that makes most liberals smile and shiver happily. If the left could get past the fact that he’s an ordained minister, they’d probably vote for him in droves. I suspect that they secretly fear that the second after he is inaugurated, he’ll rip off his mask, like a Scooby-Doo villain, and reveal that he’s really Jerry Falwell, who had faked his death and concocted an elaborate scheme to get elected President as the former Governor of Arkansas (State Motto: Please Don’t hate us for the Clintons!).
So that’s pretty much the state of the Republican field to this point. Like I said, it ought to be fun to watch. Just don’t ask me which guy’s going to get my vote, because I have no idea right now.
