comMITTed to Romney!

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/news/2008/nov/26/hardaway-lessons-gop-learn/

By Robert Hardaway
Published November 26, 2008 at 12:01 a.m

It should have been a slam-dunk for the Republicans in the 2008 presidential election. After all, the Democrats had inexplicably chosen as their nominee the least-qualified candidate in American history. Indeed, the only other candidate in American history to go directly from the Senate to the White House with neither gubernatorial nor military executive experience was Warren G. Harding, by consensus the worst president in American history. Moreover, Obama’s voting record in the Senate has also been rated as the most hard-left voting record in American history.

To lose to such a candidate required more than simple ineptitude. It required an almost pathological determination to lose.

And yet, it may yet prove of value to the Republican Party if it can learn the following lessons from its defeat:

First, if you are going to go against an obviously unqualified candidate, choose a candidate with substantial executive experience. Only a handful of candidates in American history have ever succeeded to the office of the presidency without at least some gubernatorial executive experience. The Republicans had their chance to choose Mitt Romney, who not only had experience as a governor, but also experience as a business leader and organizer of the Olympics. Romney also “walked the walk” on universal health care in Massachusetts, unlike Democrats who have traditionally only talked the talk.

Second, don’t reject a candidate because of his religion. Polls of Republicans expressed greater reservations over a Mormon candidate than an Islamic one.

Third, don’t choose a man in his 70s to go up against a candidate of youth, vigor, and charisma, especially when your own candidate also has no executive experience.

Fourth, don’t assume that independent voters will vote for the candidate who best upholds such traditional values as fiscal responsibility, strong national security, protection of our borders, and limited government. We should know by now that swing voters vote on the basis of personality and television persona. Thus, Obama’s impending victory no more reflects the electorate’s turn to the hard left, than Reagan’s 49-state electoral victory in 1980 reflected a turn to the right.

Fifth, don’t insult the intelligence of the voters with simplistic characterizations of the opponent’s positions. Those only fuel counterattacks by a sympathetic media eager to show that 30-second ads do not completely set forth the complexities of the opponent’s agenda. Rather, Republican ads need only have shown, without commentary, actual videos of Obama refusing to put his hand over his heart during the playing of the national anthem, his statement that he had visited “57 states” and the town hall video in which he talked about the need for asthma suffers to get “breathalyzers” — followed by the simple question: “Ready to lead? You decide.”

Sixth, ask voters whether the old American adage still holds true—namely that one’s character is evaluated in large part by the company he keeps. And leave it at that. No need to name names.

Seventh, don’t let your party be outspent by such business tycoons as George Soros.

Eighth, and perhaps hardest of all, set aside social issues and concentrate on fiscal responsibility, national security, border protection, and fairness to the teeming millions of those seeking legal immigration. You don’t have to give up your principles on social issues, but, absent a Reagan-quality communicator as your nominee, you’re not going to win on them.

Ninth, decide whether public displays of support for such issues are worth losing an election.
And finally—at number ten— get some members of your party to audition for “Saturday Night Live.” There should be ample material (see No. 5 above).

Robert Hardaway is a professor of law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law.
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Several months ago when I posted here that I was going to write-in Mitt Romney’s name on my Missouri ballot, I was thinking ahead to the day when I would see a headline very similar to the one that THEHILL.COM just used for their article.

I did everything in my power to prevent John McCain from becoming the Republican Party’s nominee. I did so primarily because of his wrong headed support of a policy that will further add to this county’s unbelievable debt and financial problems, and that is the coming amnesty for the illegal immigrants who have flouted our laws and who have hired criminal smugglers to get them into this country. Now, if Dingy Harry Reid, Obama and John “Landslide” McCain get their way, these folks will be rewarded for their criminal activity by becoming US citizens, just in time to start collecting unemployment benefits. Is it any wonder that this country is in the pathetic shape it’s in? How could it be any different? We have violated every principle of economics, we have wasted money on every useless, feckless and pointless government program devised by the human mind and now, to add the icing to the bankruptcy cake, we will make another push for a general amnesty for illegal aliens.

Congratulations Sen. McCain, you have not disappointed me. You have done PRECISELY what I expected you to do. BTW, for those of you who observed on these pages the deafening silence during McCain’s anemic campaign regarding the illegal immigration issue, this move toward amnesty will, of course, not shock any of you. We all knew exactly why this was not being debated. The answer is that there was nothing to debate. Both Obama and McCain were totally on board this train, we all knew it, and that is why I would have written in Romney’s name if my state allowed it.

The fix was in. I saw it coming and as I wrote here months ago, it really didn’t matter who got elected, we were going to have another amnesty bill shoved down our throats, regardless.

Now, once again, it is up to the voters to turn the screws down on the thumbs of their Congressional delegations and let them know that you are in favor of the rule of law and that you will demand that they enforce our border laws and that you will eject them from office if they fail to follow your directives. We must keep in mind that these people work for us and that we will fire their lame posteriors if they don’t meet our expectations.

~~John Cronin~~

http://briefingroom.thehill.com/2008/11/25/reid-obamamccain-agreement-on-immigration/

President-elect Barack Obama and his former general election rival, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz), have come to an agreement on immigration, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid told the Detroit Free Press in a recent interview.
Reid said the two standard-bearers have agreed to move forward on immigration legislation during Obama’s White House tenure.

“On immigration, there’s been an agreement between Obama and McCain to move forward on that,” Reidsaid when how Congress would handle immigration and healthcare with expanded Democratic majorities and Obama in the White House.

Early on in their general election campaign, both McCain and Obama pledged to enact sweeping immigration reforms. McCain attempted to pass a massive immigration bill during the last Congress, forging alliances with such heavyweights as Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and President Bush. McCain proposed granting a pathway to citizenship for illegal resident aliens and ramping up security efforts along the U.S./Mexico border. The effort failed.

When asked if immigration reform would cause “as much of a fight” in Congress the next time it comes up, Reid cited McCain as a key GOP ally who could enable Democrats to enact reforms.
“We’ve got McCain and we’ve got a few others. I don’t expect much of a fight at all,” Reid said.
The Detroit Free Press posted Reid’s interview to its website Sunday.

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Our old friend and erstwhile presidential primary candidate, Mike Huckabee, gets spanked hard in an article by John Brummett. Mr. Brummett holds Pastor Mike in the same low esteem as most of our readers and commenters. It’s always reassuring to hear a spade called a spade.

~~John Cronin~~

http://www.lvrj.com/opinion/34953414.html

By: JOHN BRUMMETT

People wonder why Mike Huckabee would come out with a book that violates Ronald Reagan’s 11th Commandment, which is not to criticize another Republican, and trashes the wholly deserving Mitt Romney.

Is it that Huckabee wants to get Romney out of the way so that he can emerge pre-emptively as the GOP alternative to Sarah Palin in 2012?

That assumes Huckabee wants to be president. He doesn’t, at least not as much as he wants to make money. He thinks the best way for him to make money is to exploit media, celebrity and the popular culture.

He cranks out chatty, pedestrian books at a rate of nearly one a year. Once there was a horrible school shooting in the state where he was governor. In a few months he was in bookstores with a cash-cow hard-cover titled “Kids Who Kill.”

But now this newest chatty, pedestrian book, “Do the Right Thing,” which also was the title of a Spike Lee movie, offers the Huckster’s best profit opportunity yet. That’s because he’s now known nationwide for having run surprisingly well this year for the Republican presidential nomination.
He shot up to second place and got out of it precisely what he had wanted all along. That was a talk show on Fox and a Paul Harvey-like gig with ABC Radio.

Political books can make money. But they tend to fall flat if they fail to arouse the gossip-addicted modern media. You need to make headlines. You need to get blogged about. You need to get on the talk shows. You do that with something personal and titillating, such as getting tacky about Romney.

As it happens, Huckabee couldn’t stand Romney anyway. The former Arkansas governor is a firefighter’s kid from Hope, Ark., a Baptist preacher and former pastor who worked his way through college and has never had anything other than what he could extract from the taxpayers or parishioners and wrangle from his communications skills. He carries a chip on his shoulder, reveling in his outsiderism, his being an underdog.

Wholly conversely, Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, comes across as what he is, a slick rich businessman from the privileged class.

It’s true that as a presidential candidate Romney made himself out to be the social and economic conservative he had not remotely been as governor. It is true that he was a hedge fund guy who threw his own millions at an unctuously pandering campaign while Huckabee was financing his on a shoestring and performing much better on simple talent.

So Huckabee gleefully wrote a few things in this new book about what a phony Romney was, thereby attending both to his financial interests and his petty instincts.

Among other things, Huckabee whines in this book that Romney never called to congratulate him the night he won the Iowa Republican presidential caucuses.

I had not known that losing candidates were obliged to do that in a presidential primary. On Super Tuesday last, for example, did Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton call each other a dozen times each, whenever a state would get called for one or the other? Or did they wait for all the states to come in so that they could phone each other only once for a general congratulations?

This is an altogether unseemly sideshow. You have a historic president-elect who is trying to build a Lincolnesque administration to tackle a seemingly impossible job leading a country beset by a bad economy, two wars and general fear and agitation. And you have this pulpit refugee and Fox talking head trying to settle a score over a perceived slight from a man who spent millions from his personal fortune so he could get outdone by the pulpit refugee and Fox talking head.

No wonder people are saying the Republicans are flirting with irrelevance.

John Brummett, an award-winning columnist for the Arkansas News Bureau in Little Rock, is author of “High Wire,” a book about Bill Clinton’s first year as president. His e-mail address is jbrummett@ arkansasnews.com.

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Pollster Doug Shoen is quoted in the excerpt below warning the Democrats not to attempt to govern as if the Republican Party has vanished from the face of the earth. Bill Clinton & Co. tried it throughout 1993 and promptly got their little hands slapped by the voters in the 1994 mid-terms.

It is up to activists like the participants on this site to keep holding the feet of your respective Congressional delegations to the fire in order to limit the damage of the incoming administration. If they stray too far from the moderate path, it is up to us and many others across the nation to restore some balance to Congress in 2010.

~~John Cronin~~

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122609968752809797.html

Barack Obama obviously has thought carefully about mistakes made by previous Democratic presidential winners who wrongly believed a Congress controlled by their own party would help make them a success.

Pollster Doug Schoen, who helped Bill Clinton win re-election in 1996 over overwhelming odds after the 1994 Democratic debacle, recently warned in a Journal op-ed: “If the Democrats govern as if there is no Republican Party, they are likely headed to the kind of reaction that Bill Clinton faced when he made the same misjudgment after the 1992 election victory.” Mr. Schoen cites specifically a meeting in Little Rock after the election with Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell and House Speaker Tom Foley, when Mr. Clinton agreed to defer to Congress on key elements of his legislative agenda. The subsequent lurch to the left did incalculable damage to his presidency.

That may be one reason why Mr. Obama has chosen Rahm Emanuel, a respected member of the Congressional leadership, to become his new White House Chief of Staff. Mr. Emanuel has a reputation as a tough partisan, but he has also exhibited impatience with left-wing members of his party who have overly ambitious ideological agendas. A likely first assignment for Mr. Emanuel will be reminding House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that, after only two years of Democratic control, Congress already has a lower approval rating than even President Bush’s.

To the extent Mr. Obama becomes a successful president, it will be because he remains his own man and trusts the brilliant political instincts that have gotten him this far, this fast.

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The Republican party is in the Jacuzzi this morning, trying to soak out the pain and stiffness from the bruising defeat it just suffered. The American people have rightly rebuked us for forgetting what the Republican Party used to stand for. We foolishly abandoned fiscal conservatism, oversaw a dramatic escalation in the size and scope of the federal government, chalked up record deficits and insisted on nominating a guy who, for the most part, couldn’t be distinguished from the run of the mill Democrat when it came to most of his policies.

For me, there where no surprises on election night. I said to friends and to commenters on this site that I expected a fairly close popular vote, but a big electoral defeat, and that is what happened. In the waning days off the campaign, when crowds called out to McCain to get tough with Obama, to fight harder for the principles that were important to them, you just knew this ticket was in big trouble. There was more passion, more fire in the belly of the people in the crowds than there was within the nominee.

As we look at the smoking ruins of what’s left of Congressional Republicans, it is apparent to me that we must bulldoze the landscape clean, so that we can start the rebuilding process. That has already started. The work of purging the Party of the people responsible for the loss began on Election night as the voters rejected McCain. I sincerely hope any future leadership role for him in this party has also been rejected by the rank and file as well. Hopefully, we have learned some hard lessons. As Rush Limbaugh said several days ago, when will Republicans ever learn that conservative Republicans never lose and moderate Republicans never win? These past attempts by Republicans to ingratiate themselves to the MSM and to left-center voters never works at the national level.

In spite of all the negative feelings we are working our way through, the rebuilding process that has already started is giving cause for a much more optimistic view of the future.

An article in Friday’s WSJ provides a stunning quote from none other than the ubiguitous Nancy Pelosi. “Speaker Nancy Pelosi called for a two-stage effort to boost the shaky U.S. economy: a $60 billion-to $100 billion stimulus package this month, followed early next year by a companion measure that would include a “permanent tax cut.” You may be rubbing your eyes and squinting at that last sentence to try to make sure you saw it right the first time. Nancy Pelosi actually said those words. She said “permanent tax cut.” That is why I said in the title to this post that we won the debate. Isn’t it amazing how a sea change is political thinking came come about in such an off hand way? One of the most doctrinaire Democrats in the country now agrees with Ronald Reagan and Mitt Romney that the best way to boost the economy is with “permanent tax cuts.”

Ms. Pelosi also said, in the long term, a capital gains tax cut, as pushed by Congressional Republicans, should be considered as part of a “tax simplification” bill.

Ronald Reagan in Heaven and Mitt Romney in Massachusetts must be grinning a little this morning!

~~John Cronin~~

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On page A8 of this morning’s WSJ is a story that I have been anticipating since Gov. Romney’s speech at the CPAC convention this past February when he announced his withdrawal from the primary race.

Here are a few excerpts from the article.

~~John Cronin~~

Wall Street Journal Print Edition Nov.3, 2008

Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has worked aggressively in recent months on behalf of Sen. John McCain and dozens of his party’s congressional candidates, in an effort that could help boost his own political future.

Mr. Romney has been among the most active foot soldiers. Come Tuesday, he will have hit nine states in the final five days of the election on behalf of the Republican presidential nominee. Since April, Mr. Romney has campaigned for candidates in 28 House races, five Senate races and a pair of gubernatorial ones. He has contributed more than $400,000 through his political-action committee, including help for about 80 Republican candidates, said Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom.

Mr. Romney’s PAC has contributed to a number of ballot initiatives, Mr. Ferhnstrom said. The committee, called Free and Strong America, spent $10,000 to support the anti-gay marriage initiative in California and $5,000 in Massachusetts to fight a movement to decriminalize small amounts of marijuana.

State parties have also benefited. After Sen. McCain unofficially withdrew his campaign from Michigan, Mr. Romney contributed $50,000 to the state party. He made similar contributions in Iowa and Georgia.

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Always good to hear from the Chairman of the Board, in my case, that would be Gov. Romney. He has labored diligently in the “Republican vineyard,” to use an expression I heard from a veteran politician years ago and now, come what may Nov. 4, he is the new leader of the Republican Party.

Now its on to 2012 and let’s win then!

~~John Cronin~~

John,

Right now, I’m on a plane somewhere over Nevada en route to New Mexico. We’re in the midst of an exciting five-day, eight state tour to rally support for the McCain-Palin ticket. This trip will take us across the interior west, through the heartland states of Missouri and Indiana, then on to the battlegrounds of Ohio and Pennsylvania, before ending in New Hampshire with an Election Day rally in the blue-collar city of Manchester.

With your support, we’ve targeted dozens of races and poured our resources into them, starting at the top of the ticket with John McCain and Sarah Palin but also dozens of important congressional and state races. We’ve held fundraisers, sent out direct mail, stumped in the districts, held news conferences and basically pulled out all the stops.

But, in the end, it comes down to you. Your vote will make a real difference. The liberal turnout machine, with special interests and big labor providing the grease, is expected to put thousands of people on the ground to get out their vote. Conservatives need to fight back with a super-size turnout of our own. This is where you come in. Take a moment to go to our website,

FreeStrongAmerica.com, and review our list of endorsed candidates. Then, on November 4th, please vote for those who appear on the ballot in the area where you live.

I don’t have to tell you how critical this election is for the future of America. We can either follow the course of Europe, with higher and higher taxes and more and more government in our lives, or we can reaffirm our nation’s founding principles of individual liberty and freedom.

If liberals capture the White House and increase their majorities in the House and Senate, it would be a real setback for the issues we care about - the appointment of conservative judges, getting ourselves off foreign oil, the protection of life, the importance of lower taxes and the need to rid the federal budget of wasteful spending and pork.

Finally, I’d ask you to also consider making a contribution to the Free and Strong America PAC. With your ongoing support, we can continue to advocate for candidates and ideas that will strengthen our economy, our military and our families.

Thank you for all you have done.

Mitt Romney
Honorary Chairman

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I had to drive up to McCain’s St. Louis office to pick up my Poll Watcher credentials this morning and in doing so, I also got the chance to meet Hizzoner, Rudy Guiliani. Rudy was there with Mo. Sen. Christopher “Kit” Bond and they came out the back of the building to the loading dock, you know, where all the really important speeches are delivered.

There was a small but very enthusiastic and vocal crowd of Republican activists present and the group erupted when America’s Mayor and Kit Bond came through the doors. Both men talked about the importance of the election and the national security stakes involved. Both men talked about the coming middle class tax increase, but Rudy was particularly funny the way he presented it. First he held his right hand as high as it would go and started out at the first figure the Obama campaign gave us, $250,000, then he lowered his hand as he said $200,000, lowered it again at $150,000 and so on. Neither Obama, Biden and now New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson can agree on a figure, so I’m just going to take a wild guess and say, for now, I’ll go with the lowest figure of $120,000. ( subject to revision without prior notice )

We were chanting USA, USA at times throughout the speeches and shouting out some things we wanted a McCain administration to pursue. I asked Rudy to accept the Attorney General slot, if offered. He just grinned and thanked me for coming out. That’s whats so cool about these small gatherings. You get, even if for all of five seconds, to tell the Party’s leadership what you want. This crowd wanted several things: No military budget cuts, no “tax refunds” for people who don’t pay taxes, ( BTW, I called out at that point and said, “That’s not a tax cut, that’s WELFARE” and the crowd starting chanting, WELFARE, WELFARE, WELFARE and Kit and Rudy were beaming back at us and giving us the “thumbs up sign” ) and finally, no “spreading the wealth around.”

It was fun and well worth the trip. Now I have to get my packet of materials out and start studying.

~~John Cronin~~

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Due to a vast public outcry for an update on my political activities this past week, I’d like to catch everybody up to date on the state of the McCain/Palin campaign in St. Louis County, Mo.

The local office asked for volunteers to help with a huge mailer they were putting out, statewide, this week and into next week.

The mailer asks questions about Barack Obama’s judgment when it comes to his political cronies. I know all of you know the usual cast of characters. Whether these types of mailers are too little, too late, only the next nine days will tell, and judging from the scope of the allegations of voter fraud, maybe a lot longer than 9 days.

We went directly to the plant that did the printing and Monday evening, we were working with pieces so “hot off the presses” that traces of ink were coming off on our hands. So, now I can refer to myself as an “ink-stained wretch” and it is literally true!

We alternated between helping run the machine that put the “wafers” on the fold out flyers and affixing the “wafers” to the flyers by hand. We were especially useful when the machines would break down and we were all busy at work at three long tables, putting on the wafers while a couple of guys familiar with the machines would repair them. That was a story in itself. Talk about self-sufficiency. One man was a retired Engineer and the other some kind of a mechanic and between the two of them, they would get the machines up and running in about a half hour.

Some retired people were working 12 hours a day. One of the campaign workers would check on one of the older women, asking her how she felt, urging her to go home and rest if she was feeling worn out. But the older woman was having none of it. She said she was fine, that everyone had been so nice to her and that she was doing it for the country and that the country was more important than her. I feel fortunate to have heard that first hand. You just can’t get a feel for the country any other way. It’s good to know those folks are still out there.

Several of the volunteers were World War II vets, one was a Korean War vet and one much younger guy was active Air Force, stationed at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois.

Part of what made it so meaningful was the conversations that were going on as we worked. Rock-ribbed Republicans all. WSJ readers, Fox News viewers and most were computer savvy and knew all the websites we talk about here.

One thing that struck me, and this was not the first time this has happened, is how we Romney supporters have almost a celebrity status within the party. When they asked me if I had been active in any other candidate’s campaigns and I told them I was a Romney supporter, the other conversations went silent and everyone within earshot listened intently as I told them about our trip to Des Moines to work for Romney there, the opportunity I had to speak on Gov. Romney’s behalf at a fire station in Birmingham, Iowa, the media circus, being on MSNBC, CNN and being interviewed by a Japanese television film crew during the Super Bowl Party when Mitt was in St. Louis. Again, from first hand information, I can tell you that Mitt Romney is highly respected within the halls of Republican power, it’s just that enough misdirected folks out at the fringes of the party were conned into voting for Huckabee, that caused the situation in which we now find ourselves.

Speaking of misdirected, one guy from the campaign that I sat next to had worked for Huckabee during the primary season. He confirmed that the Home School movement had been a big source of volunteer help for them. He said one of the reasons that Huckabee was so gaffe prone, was that he did not have a speech writer. He agreed with me that Huckabee’s remark about not being an expert in foreign affairs, but that he had stayed at a Holiday Inn Express the night before, was extremely embarrassing to them.

There were not any RINO’S present at the printing plant. You know the folks I am speaking of. Long on hot air and opinions, but hard to find when the heavy lifting needs to be done. We very much enjoyed each others company, but no one was upbeat about McCain/Palin’s prospects on Nov. 4. We also talked about the need to roll back Obama & Co. during the mid-terms in 2010. These folks will put their money and their shoe leather to work to elect a Republican Congress. Those of us at this website have got our fingers on the country’s pulse. I had never met any of these people and they are saying THE SAME things we are. The party is more unified than the press would have you believe. We just need to learn our lesson from the awful primary we went through this spring and work to run Huckabee out of the party as a reward for the way he screwed the election up. You know, it just occurred to me as I am typing this, Mike Huckabee is probably as much responsible for Obama likely becoming the next President, as any other one person that I can think of. Thanks, Mike, good call.

After working at the plant from 5pm to 8 pm, Mon-Fri, I went up to the McCain H.Q. Saturday at 2 pm to get trained to become a Poll Watcher. We will stand behind the Judges and the Supervisors and make sure everyone is presenting some form of proper I.D. We are not allowed to speak to any of the voters and if we see something not kosher, we first go to a Judge and then to a Supervisor. If we still think something improper is going on, our next action will be to call a lawyer, who will show up at the polling station and they will take it from there.

The law student who gave the instructions was asked about voter fraud in the upcoming general election. He mentioned a church that we were all familiar with and asked, does that Church look like a residence to any of you? When we said no, he responded with: “Well, I can tell you that there are 13 voters registered at that address.” He even went as far as to ask any of us who are willing and able, to follow the vans to the Board of Elections to make sure the ballot boxes are delivered safely. Sadly, that is where we are at in this country. I am beginning to feel like I live in a Banana Republic. With that in mind, I would like all of you to keep your eyes and ears open on election day and to be sure to report ( discretely ) anything suspicious to a Poll Watcher.

I am going to vote tomorrow at the Board of Elections so that I won’t have to worry about it on Election Day. I will be at my post at 6 am and will remain stalwart and observant until the polls close. I will cast my vote for McCain/Palin, not because I am going back on my word, but because I called the Board about a week ago and was informed that Missouri does not allow write in votes in the General Election. Hopefully, I will get my chance to cast, not a write in vote, but a vote for Mitt Romney as the winner of the Republican primaries and as the nominee of the Republican Party in November of 2012!!

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http://www.reuters.com/article/reutersEdge/idUSTRE49P1RT20081026

By Ed Stoddard

DALLAS (Reuters) - If Republican John McCain loses the November 4 election as most polls predict, his party may be in for a rough period of soul searching.

Analysts and some party activists say losing the White House will highlight the pitfalls of relying too heavily on a narrow foundation of conservative Christians whose support has nonetheless become crucial to Republican electoral success.

But some social conservatives say a victory for Democrat Barack Obama, whom they regard as an “ultra-liberal,” will energize them for the 2010 congressional “mid-term” races and the 2012 White House battle.

The election is still over a week away and a lot can happen between now and then. McCain has staged huge comebacks before.

But almost every major poll has Obama with a commanding national lead as his campaign benefits from an unfolding financial crisis that has shaken America and knocked conservative red-meat issues like abortion and gay marriage off the political stage.

“An Obama victory will galvanize social conservatives for 2010 and 2012 and they will look for a standard bearer they can rally around,” said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, the public policy arm of America’s largest evangelical group.

And that would be MITT ROMNEY!!!

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Interesting article over at POLITICO.COM, putting some historical perspective on Sarah Palin’s future within the GOP. As in most areas of life, it is sometimes better to wait for just the right moment, than to jump into the deep water before you are ready.

~~John Cronin~~

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1008/14881.html

Many of my down-in-the-mouth Republican friends, contemplating the ongoing implosion of John McCain’s campaign, are consoling themselves with the idea that Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin represents the future of the party. She’s the new rock star in the firmament of the Grand Old Party, they’re convinced — and she certainly will be the presumed favorite for the Republican nomination in 2012.

All I can tell them is, don’t bet the bank on it. (OK, maybe under our economic circumstances that’s not quite the right choice of terminology, but you know what I mean.) During my lifetime (I was born in 1951), only one nonincumbent vice presidential nominee on a losing ticket — Bob Dole, who ran with President Gerald Ford in 1976 — has ever come back to win their party’s nomination, and none has ever been elected president.

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The text below comes from an email sent to me from Townhall Magazine where they talked about an upcoming issue of their magazine. The issue will feature the “Six Keepers of the Reagan Flame.”

If it doesn’t include Romney’s name their stock will plummet in my estimation, but that’s a debate for another day. The reason I posted the text here is because they captured almost to the word the way I feel about this election and the choices we are faced with.

~~John Cronin~~

Dear Friends,

It has been twenty years since Ronald Reagan left office and now there are only eleven days until Americans pick the 44th President of the United States.

Regardless of who prevails on election night, we as conservatives have a lot of work ahead of us. If John McCain wins, conservatives will have to keep the new administration’s feet to fire, making sure the principles that Reagan espoused are not only not forgotten but championed.

If Barack Obama wins, America will face the most dangerous four years of liberalism this nation has faced since Jimmy Carter. Conservative will have to take up the cause of freedom like never before to ensure that America still resembles the nation Ronald Reagan left us once Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi are through with it.

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I am so stunned by this report that I am at a loss for words. From what little I know about the report, I understand that the figures come from the Federal Election Commission website. If this is true, I can’t see any scenario for this ticket other than defeat.

This report would seem to blow up the narrative of the populist soccer Mom, selling Alaska’s state owned airplane on E-Bay at a profit, stopping the campaign bus at a Wal-Mart to buy some cheap diapers, and being a cost cutting budget hawk.

Now we are told that after the election, the clothes will be donated to charity. Since I can’t read minds, there is no way for me to know if that was always the campaign’s intention or if they are in major damage control after having been caught with their hands in the cash register.

The soccer Moms I know don’t shop at Neiman Marcus. They also don’t have access to hard won, donated money that is supposed to be used to win an election. It will be interesting to see what the post Neiman Marcus polls have to say about Sarah’s excellent shopping spree.

~~John Cronin~~

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/webscout/2008/10/what-75062-will.html

What $75,062 will buy you at Neiman Marcus

When we heard that the RNC racked up a $150,000 department store tab for Gov. Sarah Palin, it was hard to immediately put that in perspective. The most either of us has ever spent at one time on clothes or other personal items is under $1,000. But thanks to the beauty of online shopping, we’re now very clear on what you can get for that kind of cash. We just got done going on his and hers online shopping sprees at Neiman Marcus’ website, where we each managed, after an undisclosed number of hours, to spend $75,062*, the precise amount that Palin et al. spent there.

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Interesting read on why McCain fired the heavy artillery at Gov. Romney, but has been firing spit wads at Obama.

I fervently hope this guy doesn’t hand the presidency to Obama on a silver platter.

~~John Cronin~~

http://www.swnewsherald.com/online_content/2008/10/102208ov_zan_mccain.php

By DANIEL T. ZANOZA

No, it wasn’t a mirage. During the Republican presidential debates, Sen. John McCain often went toe to toe with his adversaries…just ask former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney. I think we all can remember, along with Romney, seeing the senior Senator from Arizona grit his teeth and unleash some biting attacks that would have made Don Rickles proud.

Last week, the third and final debate was held between McCain and his Democratic challenger Sen. Barack Obama. I think it’s safe to say the McCain we saw during the Republican primary season never appeared during the debates with Obama and many are puzzled as to why.

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