There was a tussle this past week between Barack and Hillary that began during the YouTube debate: Barack said he would extend diplomatic conversation to horrible dictators, and Hill said he was naive for saying so. Or for saying so without caveats of the sort she would insert, or something blah blah blah.
Who cares? (except for the fact that Barack's right - talking to people is not in its own right some kind of reward. That's Thing #432 that has been very very dumb about the Bush Administration.)
Instead, what I wanted to discuss under the header "Obama v. Clinton" is this interesting fact. Their primary fight is the 2008 presidential race.
Because none of the Republicans is going to win. Period. Boom. There you go.
Are you amazed? Wooough.
Observe:
- Giuliani is getting whacked by the NYFD, and has skeletons in his closet like that he ended his thirty-fourth marriage in a press conference (okay, that skeleton is in his foyer). His employees and campaign operatives keep getting busted for cocaine, involvement in prostitution rings, and bedding Judith Regan (of O.J. Simpson's If I Did It fame) in a penthouse overlooking the WTC site. Much, much worse than any of that: Rudy's pro-choice. Worse than that: his 9-11 soft-shoe is gettin' old. He ignored the problem with the firemen's radios for years, and he insisted on putting his command center in WTC7 rather than Brooklyn. Watch the firemen's video.
- I don't know how much the Mormonism thing hurts the Mittster with the evangelical lunatics, but it doesn't help. Could Romney win? I dunno. The phrases "Boston brahmin" and "Massachusetts liberal" come to mind. Oh, and "flip-flopper". It would be a truly amusing irony if this guy were the '08 Republican nominee. Is it me, or do you think he looks a little French?
- John McCain is so dead in the water that there's no need enumerating the sixteen reasons why that's so. But his breathtakingly Bushlike (read: ignominious) position on Iraq actually matters much less in terms of the Republican base, than his lack of corn-pone nativism (ie, his support of "comprehensive" immigration reform). And - wistfully reminiscent of Giuliani - he's got campaign officials out there doing stuff like getting busted for attempting to pay money to administer fellatio. If only I were making that up....
- Fred Thompson is - and I hate to break this to the world, but here goes - a non-starter. He hasn't had to do a day's real campaigning, so all the dissatisfied Republicans of the world have been free to pretend he's whoever they wish he were. (Remember a couple months ago, when Barack Obama was John F. Kennedy warmed over? Barack has held his own since then, but there's no doubt that he's lost some glow by having to actually go out and talk to people). Recent stories also point up Thompson's drooping financials and the fact that, sans staff, his quasi-campaign is being badly managed by his Republican-operative-cum-trophy-wife Jeri (not to be confused with the Jeri-named trophy wife of that other Republican crash-and-burn from Illinois). Add to that the fact that his experience is limited to one senatorial term, some time spent carrying water for Nixon during Watergate, and a decade or two of lobbying (including for a pro-choice concern, Thompson's non-denial denial of it notwithstanding).
- Who else is running, again? Ron Paul?
So the Republicans will lose the 2008 presidential race (I can't wait to check back on 11/5/08 and see how well the prediction holds). A well-publicized poll of week before last tells us that Republican primary voters now favor - ahead of all the candidates currently running, plus Thompson - nobody. Ergo my claim: the Democratic primary, anointing as it will either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, is the 2008 presidential election.
(Hint: it's going to be Hillary. [... with Obama as VP?])
Oh, there are always reasons an upset could occur. Suppose there were a massive terrorist attack: that's a wild card. Would it help Republicans, as the folks who have claimed for decades to be the ones who will keep us safe? Or would it finally prove that this claim has been utter nonsense all along?
And what if - per his appearance on today's "Fox News Sunday" - NEWT GINGRICH jumps into the race? Golly, one can only imagine Hillary Clinton holed up beneath a down comforter, quaking in fear.
Dear me. Newt Gingrich is supposed to save the Republicans from their primary field. I rest my case.
2 comments:
Some of us are old enough to remember George Romney as governor of Michigan. GR was an old-school Good Government Repub: a leading figure in the state Constitutional Convention, he started the ball rolling on streamlining Michigan government, and ran everything clean. He gave the state his Lt. Gov. and successor, William Milliken, who ran the state cleanly for 18 more years.
Mitt ain't George.
Hey, we might have "Star Trek" to thank for our next V.P. (Read up on the Republican shenanigans that made Obama a shoo-in for Senator.)
Oddly enough, my brother from Indiana recently sent me a Newt Gingrich clip. He thought everything the Newt was saying was just great (even though he was agreeing with the clip's title rather than what Newt was actually saying).
OK, I'll get into details. The title was "things that work." The Newt was claiming that if Fedex and UPS can track a moving package, why can't we track the illegal immigrants in our country?
My brother (and the Newt's) subtext was that big government can't handle anything. Private enterprise is SOOOO much better.
I explained to my brother that we can't track immigrants because many businesses in the US (and their lobbyists) don't want us to. That we all want cheap vegetables, which are only available (domestically) via sub-minimum wages for field workers. ...and that it's not that government can't track illegals, it's that too many people don't want them tracked.
He seemed to think we could live with those on the bottom actually being paid minimum wage. Oddly, he didn't argue for abolishing minimum wage as an answer. And he would probably vote for Newt Gingrich, given the chance.
p.s. never mind that if we actually paid these people minimum wage, the middle men (to please their shareholders) would use it as an excuse to raise prices far beyond the amount that would be accounted for by the wage increase.
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