Slim pickings at best

A post today at Delmarva Dealings reminded me of something I meant to write about over the weekend. While I did a long series of posts on picking my favorite GOP Presidential candidate, the sad fact was that none of them were remotely close to perfect. Certainly all of the candidates had their high points, but there was also at least one strike against them. There’s at least one thing I don’t care for with each.

• John McCain did well on the Long War but is completely wrong when it comes to immigration.
• I strongly disagreed with Sam Brownback‘s energy stance and he flip-flopped on the immigration bill vote, voting aye before switching at the last minute to a no vote.
• Fred Thompson has a lot of promise, but has yet to publicize his positions on a number of issues. I’ve also read where he’s not great on the campaign stump.
• For the most part, I love Ron Paul‘s ideas about shrinking the size and scope of government but cannot abide his stance on the Long War.
• The same went for Tom Tancredo, although he’s almost too hardline on immigration and has advocated for a pullout date in Iraq.
• Mitt Romney also seemed to me as fairly weak on a number of issues, and I’m certainly not sold on his health insurance idea that was passed in Massachusetts. But in his favor is the amount of money and organization he already has and his having a large core of experience in the private sector.

And then you have the three who topped my field – but I still see issues with them as well.

• Mike Huckabee, as noted in the YouTube video cited on Delmarva Dealings, does have a disturbing tendency to be a big-government “conservative” in the mold of President Bush.
• Rudy Giuliani topped my field in supporting “victory” in the Long War and said the right things to me regarding the role of government. But would social conservatives vote for Rudy with his known liberalism on social issues like gay marriage and abortion? They may feel like they have no choices in ’08 and sit out.
• And my endorsee, Duncan Hunter, was very strong on a number of issues. He topped all 10 (at the time) candidates on eminent domain, trade and job creation, and the Long War (tied with Rudy) plus was a close second on education. And he had a number of intangible issues I liked his stand on. But he polls practically zero. If he’s not elected President, I think he’d be an outstanding choice for Secretary of Defense with his grasp of those issues.

It seems to me, based on the limited exposure we have to the GOP race here in Maryland, that the best organization by far is Mitt Romney’s, but Rudy Giuliani also has some powerful allies in the hierarchy of the Maryland GOP. Again, it makes me ask the question whether the base of the GOP is that excited about a Giuliani-Romney race. We know that John McCain had the early momentum but lost it on the immigration fight and his campaign has fallen to second-tier status because of it.

Quite unfortunately, the folks on the right side of the GOP have a number of choices splitting their admiration. While Fred Thompson is becoming less and less of the great unknown, we still have Newt Gingrich sitting on the sideline debating whether to enter and shake things up. So our options aren’t really clear-cut yet.

In some ways our Congressional race has evolved the same way as there’s now two choices to appeal to conservative voters (not to mention the two Democrats who seem to be running toward the right-center on many issues). It’s starting to look like a 1992 Presidential election scenario, where Bill Clinton won with 43% of the vote because Ross Perot siphoned off 19% and denied George H.W. Bush a second term. Wayne Gilchrest may make it through the Republican primary with similar numbers.

I guess what me and a lot of GOP voters are starving for is leadership in the mold of Reagan. There’s no one out there who’s really taking it to the Democrats – instead a lot of the GOP candidates are doing the Democrats’ work for them by infighting and exposing what they consider hypocrisy on some issues. It’s especially true with the frontrunners Romney and Giuliani being attacked by the more socially conservative candidates. We’re all waiting for someone to call out the Democrats on a regular basis – saying in effect to hell with working with them, they are going to work with me and if they don’t I’ll use my bully pulpit to get them out of Congress.

That’s the sort of leadership I’m thirsting for – the uncompromising, unflinching kind. I do see hints of it in Duncan Hunter but not in the frontrunners. But as usual I see myself having to pick a compromise candidate and voting more against a Democrat than for a Republican. It’s happened 3 elections in a row and there’s nothing I see at the moment to promise me the string won’t continue to four.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer. View all posts by Michael