Posted on 01/10/2008 1:53:15 PM PST by JRochelle
If it hasn't been written already, it will be before next Tuesday: Michigan is, in the famous words of Rich Bond, "the Beirut of Republican politics."
In a state riven by factions and ancient hatreds, Gary Glenn stands out.
He runs Michigan's American Family Association, but recently he's focused his efforts on taking down Mitt Romney.
Given the events of the past few weeks, that now translates into supporting Huck.
Romney's camp shares this email, passed along by a supporter, in which Glenn explains at considerable length how to maximize the church's for Huck and to do so without crossing legal boundaries.
It makes one key element of the Huck strategy fairly clear.
And note which churches to hit and which to avoid.
You fail to understand that Romney is a radical, social liberal. There is no way that I want to pass up a chance to put an end to his hopes.
McCain is as you’ve described him, generally unreliable except on Defense and probably life (because he wants to be re-elected in 2012.
But, the point is NOT to support him either. The point is to knock him down in SCarolina. It would be nice to have Huckabee defeat him in Michigan.
I’m in South Carolina, I’m more conservative than most people I know, I’m military, and I would never support Huckabee because he’s a liberal. I could give a rip that he’s christian. I’m just tired of him using that as a reason that we shoudl support him.
Fred Thompson called him out last night on raising a half billion in taxes and providing in-state tuition to illegals in Arkansas. After dancing around an answer, his excuse was basically “Reagan did it too” and his job was to give hope to “the children”. Give me a break. This guy is a fraud.
First, McCain is trying to buy votes with his phony claim of credit for the surge - Bush should get that credit, McCain is just a back-seat driver who was both right and wrong on GWOT items, eg wrong on closing GITMO, wrong on waerboarding’ just as he is wrong on the Bush tax cuts and wrong on climate change regulations. Like Senator Santorum says, McCain gets his worldview out of the New York Times. He’s been in DC for 28 years, spent years sucking up to the liberal media, and is a complete creature of the DC establishment.
The issue
“His deal, however, did lead to the nominations of Alito and Roberts and a host of other conservative judges.” It most definitely DID NOT. Roberts and Alito got confirmed on their own merits and because they were so impressive, the Democrats couldnt muster the votes it would take to stop them. If you go back and check the record you will find that Democrats still voted no and were still willing to filibuster Alito ... except those Senators up for re-election were not willing to go to the mat and so they lacked the votes to press the filibuster on these candidates. The gang of 14 had nothing to do with it.
Frist was ready to raise the stakes and make the Democrats lose completely and McCain and the other RINOs cut the legs from under them, at a cost to several good conservative nominees who got thrown under the bus in the process.
You punish Romney for the crime of being an incredibly successful business man, who also has managed to get a lot of supporters behind him. Nobody is trying to buy the Presidency. They are all trying to win votes in their own different way.
Nonsense. That is a perception of yours based on ZERO factual evidence.
There is no way that I want to pass up a chance to put an end to his hopes.
If people like you succeed, we're going to get a McCain-Huckabee ticket. Is that what you really want?
Nope, if I succeed, I’ll get a Thompson/Hunter ticket.
Thompson's repuation as a "proven conservative" is way overblown. Objectively, he's no more conservative than Romney.
The only reason he's perceived as more conservative is because of the image he's been able to create. His southern drawl, no-nonsense manner of speaking, his hard-as-nails look, all add to this image. Being an actor helps too.
Another thing helping him is that the media seem much more reluctant to point out Thompson's flip-flops than they are Romney's. His image also makes people more willing to forgive his past liberal positions than they are Romney's.
When you finish your journey down that river in Egypt, let me know.
You are absolutely wrong about the Gang of 14.
I was a supporter of Dr. Frist and still am. His nuclear option would have made it possible to get everything we wanted, if he could have gotten the votes to ram it through the Senate. Every commentator at the time said that Frist could NOT get the Rino headcount he needed to make it happen.
Therefore, the ONLY way to get the confirmations was through the Rino deal known as the Gang of 14. The Rinos threatened to support the Nuke IF the democrats didn’t stop filibustering qualified nominees.
Now, I’m certain of this. I’d be a Frist supporter today if he’d stayed in. I really liked the man. (Incidentally, Frist is the reason that General Petraeus is succeeding in Iraq.)
You make no sense.
I want a Thompson/Hunter ticket. Thompson has to pick someone for VP. Hunter could help in CA.
“You fail to understand that Romney is a radical, social liberal.”
Wrong. Reality check: His consistent platform and record since 1994 is one of a fiscal conservative who wants low taxes, pro-welfare reform, tough on illegal immigration, proabstinence education, pro charter schools and proschool choice, etc. Real social libs are never in those camps. Romney is strong on family values because those are the personal values he’s lived by. He was against gay marriage consistently, focrcefully and publically and took a lot of flak in Mass for it (please don’t spew the debunked phony lie that Mitt Romney is responsible for gay marriage; that’s about as true as blaming George W Bush for the Hamdan decision or blaming Reagan for Roe v Wade’s effects.) to say he’s a ‘radical’ on anything is to misstate Romney’s nice-guy real mindset.
At the end of the day you have in Romney someone who, while not a down-the-line social conservative, is a mainstream country club Republican with good family values who ran prochoice in a deep blue state and who’s now come around to prolife position. These are flaws from a conservative veiwpoint, but they are small flaws compared to giving the author of the two worst bills in the last 10 years - McCain-Feingold CFR and McCain-Kennedy amnesty immigration law - a promotion to the White House.
“McCain is as you’ve described him, generally unreliable except on Defense and probably life (because he wants to be re-elected in 2012.”
Because McCain is such a back-stabbing RINO, I dont trust him to be good on *anything*, even judges. And no, I dont think relying on him wanting to get reelected when he’ll be 76 years old is a good call. Read again what Santorum had to say on him, and remember McCain undercut Bush on taxes, torture, and bashed the religious right in the past.
McCain will govern by reading the New York Times each morning and then deciding what to do. Not good!
http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/blog/g/9e163793-59da-4b2c-88ae-be7f8f4ec09d
“Look, John McCain looks at things through the eyes, on these kind of domestic policy issues, looks at it through the eyes of the New York Times editorial board, and accepts that predisposition that if you are not, if you stand for conservative principles, there’s some genetic defect.”
“I was a supporter of Dr. Frist and still am. His nuclear option would have made it possible to get everything we wanted, if he could have gotten the votes to ram it through the Senate. Every commentator at the time said that Frist could NOT get the Rino headcount he needed to make it happen.”
Circular logic! You may be right about the headcount but who was the alpha dog RINO who made that nuclear option headcount impossible to reach? John McCain!
Just put in Mccain and his butt-buddy Lindsay Graham and one more RINO and they would have had 51 votes (memory bit hazy but it was that close).
“Therefore, the ONLY way to get the confirmations was through the Rino deal known as the Gang of 14. “
I understand that and you are right to call it a RINO deal. It was an example and proof that we had a Republican majority but not a conservative majority. The point I’d make is simply - Why didn’t the RINOs act like loyal Republicans and join up with Frist’s strategy? Why did they feel the need to cut a separate centrist deal? Because at the end of the day, they didnt want the Republicans to win. An John McCain made the difference in undercutting Frist.
“Now, I’m certain of this. I’d be a Frist supporter today if he’d stayed in. I really liked the man. (Incidentally, Frist is the reason that General Petraeus is succeeding in Iraq.)”
I’m finding in this depressing CLUSTERHUCK that even some other guys I thought were underpar, like Brownback, look a heck of a lot better than the top guys we have now. Go figure.
Frist got killed on stem-cell, and yet McCain is worse on it. (*) Brownback was killed on immigration, and yet Z visa ringleader McCain is at the top now (although Brownback also was wrong on Iraq too, with the nutty Biden plan to partition Iraq) ... And so it goes, good guys are taken out over small issues, while the glaring problems of the frontrunners McCain and Huckster are ignored ... a Clusterhuck!
(*) Honestly, I and most folks see Romney as a bit like Frist.
“Thompson’s repuation as a “proven conservative” is way overblown. Objectively, he’s no more conservative than Romney.”
Maybe it is, maybe its not, but let’s not pick fights with FredHeads; we conservatives need to stick together on our respectively sinking ships. I for one would love a Romney/Thompson ticket.
Thompson has a 85 ACU rating and got the best reviews from Club for Growth on economic and fiscal issues of the main candidates. My main issue with Thompson is CFR. But as with Romney, I see some flaws that are minor compared to the huge flaws that we have in MCCain and Huckabee. As President, it’s likely that Thompson and Romney would be about the same in how conservatively they govern. Both will be good on fiscal, economic, defense, military and will appoint the right kinds of judges. And both will be tough enough on illegal immigration to address that problem the right way.
It seems you have difficulty grasping metaphors.
Let me spell it out for you in brutally literal terms, then. If you think a Thompson/Hunter ticket is even a remote possibility, then you're in serious denial.
Neither Thompson nor Hunter is a viable candidate. Period. No one with single-digit poll numbers and election futures prices this late in the game stands a snowball's chance in hell of winning the nomination.
If you choose to deny that reality, then I can't help you. Let me know when you get out of denial and move on to bargaining.
I agree. Unfortunately, it's usually the Fredheads who pick fights with us. They blast Romney for some of the same things Fred has done. They dump all over our guy for once being pro-choice, despite the fact that Fred also was once pro-choice? Should we just ignore such blatant hypocrisy?
I for one would love a Romney/Thompson ticket.
Me too. I like Fred. He's my second choice, despite his flaws which, IMHO, are about the same as Romney's. Plus I think he'd make a great vice president. After all, in his career he's mostly played supporting roles :).
What puts Romney over the top for me is his proven record of leadership.
I agree. Romney has the most and the best executive leadership experience of any of the candidates. He blows the rest of the field away on that.
Governor Romney: "I will be a pro-life President. I will appoint and fight for justices who follow the law and the Constitution, who understand judicial restraint and who won't legislate from the bench. But being a pro-life president also means promoting policies that reflect our respect for the sanctity of life. I will oppose taxpayer funding of abortion, oppose partial birth abortion, oppose abortion in military clinics, oppose funding abortion in international aid programs, and I will work to ban embryonic cloning. I will work to increase adoptions by making the adoption tax credit permanent and raising awareness about embryonic adoption, or snowflake babies." (Governor Mitt Romney, "Address to the Family Research Council's Values Voter Summit," Washington, D.C., October 19, 2007)
Governor Romney was presented with legislation concerning life issues on several occasions from the 85% majority Democrat Legislature in Massachusetts. In every instance he took the pro-life position by vetoing bills or lobbying for the pro-life approach, including the following actions:
He vetoed the bill providing state funding for human embryonic stem cell research (Theo Emery, "Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney Vetoes Stem Cell Bill," The Associated Press, 5/27/2005) He vetoed a bill that provided for the "morning after pill" without a prescription because it is an abortifacient and would have been available to minors without parental notification and consent (Governor Mitt Romney, Op-Ed, "Why I Vetoed Contraception Bill," The Boston Globe, 7/26/2005)
He pledged to veto any bill that would expand access to RU-486, the abortion pill (Hugh Hewitt, "Interview with Governor Romney," The Hugh Hewitt Show, 7/27/2005)
He vetoed legislation which would have redefined Massachusetts longstanding definition of the beginning of human life from fertilization to implantation (Governor Mitt Romney, Letter To The Massachusetts State Senate And House Of Representatives, 5/12/2005)
He supported parental notification laws and opposed efforts to weaken parental involvement (John McElhenny, "O'Brien And Romney Spar In Last Debate Before Election," The Associated Press, 10/29/2002)
He fought to promote abstinence education in public school classrooms with a program offered by faith-based Boston group Healthy Futures to middle school students. Gov. Romney's administration was the first in Massachusetts to use federal abstinence education funds for classroom programs. (Office of Gov. Mitt Romney, "Romney Announces Award of Abstinence Education Contract," Press Release, 4/20/2006)
Governor Romney: "Times of decision are moments of great clarity. Before I was Governor, the life issue was just that, an issue. But when responsibility for life or ending life was placed in my hands, I made the right decision. I chose life." (Governor Mitt Romney, Remarks At The National Right To Life Convention Forum, Kansas City, MO, 6/15/2007)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Furthermore, John Monaghan, traditional Catholic and founder of Domino's Pizza, and Ave Maria University endorsed Romney too. Is he no longer pro-life or a good Catholic? Like myself and other Catholics on this board along with Jack Wilke founder of National Right to life who also endorsed Romney, Monaghan understands Romney will be a pro-life president. None of us would support him if we didn't.
What do ya think Salvation? Romney's going to get into the oval office and laugh himself silly about how he fooled us all and pass pro-abortion legislation? He is going to want and need our support throughout the first term and he's going to need our help electing him to a second term. THAT'S the political reality.
Nope, but thanks for asking.
In that case Giuliani, Thompson, McCain, Romney, Paul, and Hunter are all in denial.
None of them has more than a fraction of one percent of the number of delegates required to win the nomination.
For your benefit, and perhaps others, let me remind you that less than 2% of delegates have been decided, and that we have had only 3 of 50 primaries as of this date.
Let me remind you that the “polls” shift dramatically in primaries, because of the near impossibility of predicting who will be a “likely voter.”
The math says that this is an open primary.
**Can’t we do better than Romney and the Huckster?
God help us!**
Amen!
Your hat is on right today! I’ve gotten some mean feedback because I am not backing Romney. Go figure??
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.