Pajamas Media

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While working for the MGM of advertising, DDB in its heyday, I learned that when you advertise a bad product heavily, it dies in the marketplace that much faster.

Huckabee is a brilliantly-skilled politician, but he’s a slimeball liar who many see as a Uriah Heep. And his record as governor is anything but conservative and after the Michigan primary when analysis revealed that as many evangelicals voted for Romney as Huckabee, that was the beginning of the end for Huckabee. He may still do well today, but perhaps not as well as expected.

Early on in this campaign, the Log Cabin Republicans did a before-after commercial on Mitt Romney who had not been a Reagan or Contract with America supporter. That ended Romney for me. Later, I took another look but he couldn’t close the sale. He did impress me during the Fox forum with his talent as a businessman which is why I would support him for VP with the task of taming the out of control federal bureaucracy, a task I think he would relish.

On the other hand, the more I’ve seen of Fred Thompson and the more I’ve read of his positions, the more enthusiastic I’ve become about his chances.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “I can’t hear what you’re saying, because what you are is shouting at me.” One bewildered man posted that his wife who absolutely loathes politics and politicians had watched Fred Thompson and said: “I like him.” It’s called “ethos” and it’s what Thompson has and Romney hasn’t.

Wake up President Thompson with a foreign crisis at 3am and half asleep he’d give you the right answer. Romney would get the lawyers together.

As to John McCain who I supported in 2000, the more I’ve heard and learned about him the more I’ve grown to despise the man.

In this week’s online NEWSWEEK Perot talks of McCain’s role in shutting down the search for POW/MIAs.

Perot doesn’t mention that this was so as to “normalize relations” with communist Vietnam. Once done, McCain and “his best friend in the Senate” , John FORBES Kerry got a billion dollar exclusive port deal for C. Stewart FORBES, Kerry’s cousin.

McCain shut down discussion of his record with a great line during the You Tube CNN debate. The “sheriff” opposed Senator Clinton’s earmark of a million dollars for a Woodstock museum, “which may have been a great cultural and pharmeceutical event but I was tied up at the time.” The Republican crowd got to its feet and cheered. There was no criticism of McCain for weeks. But then, McCain turned this into a commercial and it was too much for many who started blogging about McCain-Feingold, McCain-Kennedy, McCain-Lieberman, and then Vietnam Veterans against John McCain was mentioned and the dam burst. Keating 5. McCain’s angry disdain for the Swift Boat Veterans.

Was all this revelation too late? I don’t think so. Look what Gloria Steinem’s oped in the New York Times on election day saying that though Obama is terrific, it’s Hillary’s turn accomplished. Fourteen points moved in one day.

It may happen again today.

Fred Thompson needs to keep on talking about the Constitution, the Founding Fathers, what how it is relavant today, and what the roll of government is. It’s definitely a contrary campaign strategy to focus on the forest rather than a couple of its trees. It may resonate. It certainly does with me.

It’s a shame that Fred Thompson has to make up for the high school curriculum so many Americans never received or for him to remind college grads who were taught to suppress, deny, or rationalize away our founding principles and values. But in doing so, Fred Thompson, he comes across as the only sober and deliberate grown-up in the race. All others all seem to be in a reactive mode.

I do hope Fred does well in SC.

I am surprised by the apparent—and disturbing strength of Mike Huckabee’s campaign. By all rights, this strange individual should be lucky to earn fourth place. John McCain is not my favorite candidate, but I will support him if he gets the nomination. Will South Carolina resolve anything? I get the impression that the results might be so diluted that we will be compelled to wait until Super Tuesday to finally clarify the matter.

I have to say I am totally mystified by a McCain victory in such a conservative state as South Carolina. This is the same McCain that co sponsored McCain-Feingold, isn’t it? And the same McCain that sponsored McCain-Kennedy? And the same McCain that is so insanely pro illegal/ pro amnesty??

I know what passes for debate in most of the media is carefully structured to avoid any meaningful discussion of the above issues, but I thought South Carolina republican voters were more aware than to vote for what amounts to an old school Democrat. Are our choices really so bad that compassionate conservative stealth Liberals like McCain and Huckabee look preferable?

I will not vote for another pseudo Liberal like Bush, who believes wearing his personal ethics on his presidential sleeve is just fine. Better to let a REAL Lib have the job so the American people can get a good dose of such “compassion”. Maybe then they will, if you will excuse the expression, get religion.

After the huge conservative effort to defeat Amnesty what are South Carolinians thinking with handing McCain a win?

John McCain called us biggots for opposing his Amnesty Bill. Lets deport the illegals to Columbia SC

Mc Cain will have to win it without my vote and probably millions of others. I will not vote for him in the Texas primary or the general election.
He has been a thorn in the side of Conservatives and he will reap his reward ; defeat.

“Mc Cain will have to win it without my vote and probably millions of others.”

You need to grow up and start acting like an adult. Western Civilization is under threat from the Islamic nihilists. This must be our number one concern. John McCain is not my favorite candidate. Nonetheless, he would make a superb commander-in-chief. The Democrats are dishonest pacifists. They cannot be trusted with national defense issues.

When I look at McCain’s past record, I’m not convinced that he is the Commander in Chief material that he pretends to be. He’s got this ‘trust me, I know more about this than anyone else because I was a Vietnam POW’ working for him. I don’t buy it.

He stood in the way of a funding bill on Iraq and Afghanistan until his amendment on torture was attached and stated something along the lines that until the President signed the bill with the amendment the “world” would continue to believe America does commit torture. Well, who in their right mind really believes that would change anyone’s opinion. That was more about McCain’s ego and his attempt to subvert the authority of the President as CiC. He regards waterboarding as torture even though it is included in our own training. To me, if it is something we do to our own in order to prepare them for the possibility of falling into enemy hands, then it is not torture.

He says the day he becomes President he will shut down Gitmo. But he fails to explain where we are going to incarcerate those there now and where will we incarcerate those in the future? This war is far from over. I’m opposed to closing Gitmo. I’m opposed to bringing those terrorists onto US soil. I believe that most Americans are opposed to that too.

Now McCain is riding the wave off the surge that he was right about there needing to be more boots on the ground and he is the only one who challenged Rummy. Well, this ’surge’ isn’t just about boots on the ground it is a COIN strategy which btw McCain seems to be very careful to ignore as he is taking credit about being the only one who was ‘right’ from the beginning. And that is something that I’m not convinced about in the first place. I feel it is just as likely that we could have gone in with 300,000 troops who would have eventually been drawn down and all those IRG would have melted back into the population and across the border into Syria just the same and waited us out. The insurgency would have still been in play and we would have been hard pressed to bring back troops who had been redeployed home. Thus, cutting into an availability of fresh troops. And I do believe that when it came to the Sunnis who teamed up with AQ, they needed to find out for themselves that the Americans weren’t the bad guys. And I don’t think having more boots on the ground in the early stages would have stopped AQ from entering Iraq and taking a stand against the US military. The case can just as easily be made that by going the route we did, in the long run, we nipped the potential for a full blown civil war in the bud.

So I’m not so convinced that McCain is the right person to be CiC if on January 21, 2009 we find that Musharraf is assassinated and Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is in the hands of the Taliban wing of the Pakistani ISI.

And let’s remember that McCain was being considered by John Kerry as not only a VP but also his Sec. of Defense.

It seems to me there is this perception about McCain that is based on his past military history but just doesn’t hold with reality.

Idiots, Hypocrites, Fools. My GODS!!! AN American Senator worked with other senators to come to some compromise on sensitive political issues!!! HOW DARE HE! How could any good politician go to Washington and compromise with the other politicians in Washington, based on practical, rather than ideological reasons?!?!?!

This utter contempt shown here for McCain might be seen as contempt for America. You see, this nation wasn’t founded on ONE RIGHT PARTY. It was founded on the idea that there would be many problems and lots of potential solutions. The government’s job was to come up with solutions that would work for most people, not demand solutions that fit their demographic.

Quite possibly the worst thing to come out of the Regan revolution was the sudden loss of sanity that was once a proud crown on the head of Conservatives. In his legacy, dogmatic demands have replaced compromise and half the nation firmly believe that the other half of the nation are a bunch of anti-american bastards, who should either be shot by an American firing squad or shot by an International Firing Squad, depending on the location of their head (up their ass or … up their ass).

These days, we have people focused on talking points and they appear more than happy to blather words they find on the Internet or hear from random talking heads in their television. Look at poor “Texas Girl” in the previous comment. Her military commentary appears on par with a high school graduate who had never read anything on the topic. Her “What If” scenario surrounding Iraq would be viable if it was based in reality rather than the sand which her head is firmly stuck. She has no idea about what’s going on, except apparently that McCain is so incompetent, people from across the aisle considered him for VP or SecDef. Damning evidence there!!

If the small, nay, NO minded thinking that seems so prevalent in these comments is any indication of the general GOP view, then I fear we’ll be slaves to the Liberals for the foreseeable future. If its a indication of the general view of Americans… we’ll be slaves to whomever cares to be our master. “A house divided cannot stand”, or at least some guy said that once… maybe he didn’t know what he was talking about.

Wake up. Politics aren’t about getting your way. Politics are about running the country through compromise. YOU NEED TO BE ABLE TO WORK WITH YOUR POLITICAL OPPONENTS. No matter what Hannity says, no matter what Rush says, no matter what Karl Rove says… your political opponents are not your enemies. You can compromise with your fellow Americans now, or you can try to compromise with Shira law later.

Figure it out, schmucks.

Ratatosk, Squirrel of Discord

Look at poor “Texas Girl” in the previous comment. Her military commentary appears on par with a high school graduate who had never read anything on the topic. Her “What If” scenario surrounding Iraq would be viable if it was based in reality rather than the sand which her head is firmly stuck. She has no idea about what’s going on, except apparently that McCain is so incompetent, people from across the aisle considered him for VP or SecDef. Damning evidence there!!

Ratatosk, Squirrel of Discord

LOL.. I see I struck a nerve, what is the rule about when someone in a debate resolves themselves to name calling, I don’t seem to be able to recall the exact rule, it must be my high school education or maybe the sand.

But I see you had no problem is completely understanding my point. I didn’t call McCain incompetent, I said the perception that he was strong on national defense is not supported by his past history and is being masked by his Vietnam War POW status. The fact that he was considered by Kerry for VP or Sec of Def means that he was in line with Kerry’s policy on national defense, which was a return to the era of chasing terrorists around the world with arrest warrants and extradition papers. And remind me again what is Kerry’s voting record on military spending?

AFA my “what if” scenario on Iraq, well, I think you’ve got that backwards Mr. Squirrel. It isn’t a “what if”, it’s the truth based on reality, the current reality. Those that continue to claim that it was necessary to hit the ground with more boots during the invasion are the ones that tout the “what if” scenario.

I simply do not accept any Senator from any party who thinks they can take all the credit for the accomplishments achieved, and continues to succeed, wholly by Gen. Petreaus and all our fine men and women serving in the military; to me, politicans feeding off the blood of our soldiers is distasteful.

I am grown up and won’t vote for McCain.

I simply do not accept any Senator from any party who thinks they can take all the credit for the accomplishments achieved, and continues to succeed, wholly by Gen. Petreaus and all our fine men and women serving in the military; to me, politicans feeding off the blood of our soldiers is distasteful.

I am grown up and won’t vote for McCain.