Picking a Candidate

I was torn for quite a while about which candidate to support for the GOP nomination. More so then in any other year, I wished that I could take pieces of several of them and stitch them into a Frankenstein Candidate. Ok, all you liberals can insert your own Cheney joke here:

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I am a small “L” libertarian so I did like an awful lot of what Ron Paul had to say. But he was the one GOP candidate that might make me vote for Hillary. No I don’t mean that as an Anne Coulter style hyperbole. It’s just that Paul says he will pull all our troops out of Iraq virtually immediately and I think that would be disastrous. I think Hillary would be more responsible. If you believe time traveling SciFi novels, Clinton will be "the most uncompromising wartime president in the history of the United States." Now I wouldn’t go that far, but I don’t think she would want to be accused of losing Iraq. My other major issue with Ron Paul is part of the reason he would never win. He refuses to compromise. He supports free trade, but votes against free trade bills because they are not free enough. If you want to accomplish anything you really can’t allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.

I really like Mike Huckabee. He seems like a really decent guy with a great sense of humor. But I can’t vote for him for two reasons. First, he may be socially conservative, but he is not an economic conservative. He really has a populist economic message, not a conservative one. Reason 2 is that I think he is too religious to win in a general election. Even as an agnostic, I have no problem with his being religious because I don’t think he would try to impose his faith on the country. But I think a large part of the political center would be put off by his being a Minister. Add some of the positions he has taken or supported (quarantining aids patients, the duty of a wife to submit to her husband) and I think he would lose big if he was the nominee. But if he wins I will vote for him in the general election.

Chuck Norris may be supporting Mike Huckabee, but it was Fred Thompson that had a facts website, though they haven’t been updating it since he quit the race. He quit just as I had made up my mind to vote for him.

That brought me to Rudy. He was the only candidate I had met, and the only candidate for whom I had ever made dinner. He came into the pizza place I was working in just before being elected mayor. He told me my pizza was “great.” Of course he would hardly have told a registered voter it was crap, would he? But I digress. I think Rudy truly transformed NYC. Forget how he was on and after 9/11, he took a broken and deteriorating city and restored its status as the greatest city in the world. I am pro-life, but Rudy promised to appoint Alito-Roberts type judges so that wasn’t a big issue. He also seemed to do the best job in the debates of explaining why free market policies and lower taxes were best. So I decided to vote for Rudy just before he dropped out.

So that leaves McCain or Romney.

National Review endorsed Romney as the most conservative candidate that could win in the general election. I am not so sure about that. I am not completely convinced his pro-life conversion was genuine and not calculated. He struck me as too slick, too “John Edwardian.” But what convinced me not to vote for him was something my mother said. Not just what she said, but how she said it. She said she could never vote for a Mormon, and did it with real vitriol in her voice. Now I have never known my mother to be bigoted. She is a religious Catholic, but not an Opus Dei type. I have read that many Protestants have problems with Mormons, but I hadn’t heard it was an issue for Catholics. Again, I have no problem with his faith. Every Mormon I have met has been a genuinely nice person (or they faked nice really well), but I worry that anti-Mormon bigotry will hurt him in November.

I have tremendous respect for John McCain. No one can question his honor or his resolve after surviving 5 years of torture in a Vietnam POW camp, even though the North Vietnamese offered to release him. The offer came because his father was a prominent admiral. McCain refused to accept special treatment and would not accept release while other POWs remained guests at the Hanoi Hilton. I have tremendous respect for John McCain. But I don’t like him.

McCain can be surly. He has a nasty temper, and if reports are to be believed he tends to hold a grudge. He took principled positions contrary to mainstream conservatism, but also seemed to take great delight in jamming his finger in the eyes of his critics. Now that mutual animosity is his greatest weakness. My biggest issue is over campaign finance reform. I will explain in detail why I opposed McCain-Feingold another time, but suffice it to say I think such restrictions violate the 1st Amendment. I also have issues with him over the Bush tax cuts and immigration. So do many other conservatives. That begs the question, can McCain unite The GOP base?

Ultimately I think he can. I really don’t think the Anne Coulters of the country will vote for Hillary, certainly not in sufficient numbers to make a difference. Ultimately, McCain is a conservative, even if not as conservative as I would like. I think McCain’s appeal to the center and independents makes him the strongest general election candidate. I think he would beat Hillary comfortably. Obama on the other hand would be tougher. He has JFK charisma and McCain is 72. Hillary will ensure a united GOP base, but Obama is not detested in the same way by the Right. Time will tell who the Dems pick, but it seems the GOP has decided. Now they need to remember Reagan’s 11th Commandment and unite around McCain.

I voted for John McCain this week. I will vote for him again in November.