I’m certainly less surprised at the current state of the race than, say, many Giuliani supporters, who’d told me in the spring that Mr. Giuliani was the candidate of inevitability, and that if I didn’t hop on the bus, along with all the other social conservatives, then they’d leave me and all the other social conservatives out in the outer darkness to wail and gnash our teeth. And I told ‘em, well, if that’s the case, then so be it.
***Well, I was right there in the trenches with you.
And I’m also less surprised than many Hunter backers, who had been telling me that once the actual voters got to the polls, Mr. Hunter would do well. He hasn’t.
***He has, where he campaigned. We’ll just let the chips fall where they may.
Mr. Thompson may not be as good a candidate as we would like. He is, however, easily surpassed in the category of lousy candidates by Mr. Hunter.
***I’m disappointed in you because I gave plenty of factual support for my view and all you offered was, just your view.
Whether I think that’s good, bad, fair, unfair, or whatever, isn’t relevant. The only point is that it’s true.
***OK, I understand where you’re coming from. But when both of us were in the socon trenches shooting at tootyfruityrudybots, is this where you wanted to be, defending an undemocratic process that favors your candidate who happened to originally sponsor the legislation (CFR)that spawned this outrage?
Mr. Hunter may have won something on the order of 8% of the vote (hardly a result about which to brag, anyway), but hardly anyone in the United States knows about it. Even if he’d one THIRTEEN percent of the vote, it wouldn’t have mattered. It didn’t keep him in the debates, it won’t get him third place in New Hampshire, it won’t raise $5 million for him.
***This is pretty much the same argument as last paragraph, an extension of it, so I’ll just answer with the same answer: when both of us were in the socon trenches shooting at tootyfruityrudybots, is this where you wanted to be, defending an undemocratic process that favors your candidate who happened to originally sponsor the legislation (CFR)that spawned this outrage?
Practically, its only meaning is that he’ll have at least one friend at the convention.
***Everyone thinks their candidate is the best, and yet only one guy wins. Many have been surprised by various things in this race, like Tanc endorsing Romney, Obama beating Hildebeast in Iowa, Huckabee beating Romney in Iowa, George Bush not running for a third term, etc. At the end of this process, only one of these guys moves forward. The chances are that it won’t be Hunter and it won’t be Thompson. If Thompson fulfills the Intrade contract and drops out, who do you think he’ll support? How will that make you feel if he supports McCain, his friend from the senate? Is that what you were fighting in the trenches for?
“***You sound like a Navy guy.” Not sure what you mean by that. I’ll take it as a compliment, although I was never in military service.
***Basically, the Navy guys I’ve run across like that cliche, “he’s a manager,not a leader”, and they also tend to discuss things in anecdotal terms and will look at a generalist argument (most males who are hair dressers are homosexual, here is the such&such numeric breakdown) and they’ll discuss one anecdotal case of a guy who was very heterosexual hairdresser and in their mind that addresses the argument.
“And I disagree vehemently with your assessment. I heard Bob Dole was a leader, not a manager, and that he was nicknamed ‘Babe’ after the pig who wanted to be a sheepdog.”
Actually, Mr. Hunter sorta reminds me of Mr. Dole....—snip—
***here, you’re going into the anecdotal stuff again, like a navy guy.
Mr. Thompson, in this way, has been the most Reagan-like. He’s the only one who’s been willing to lay out real specifics, especially in areas, like entitlements, that most politicians run from.
***Nope. Hunter has him beat on specifics. At least for the issues that are on my radar.
“These are all interesting stories, but they don’t sway me.”
I wasn’t trying to sway you so much as trying to identify the source of folks’ unwillingness to follow Mr. Hunter.
***You were going into your anecdotal Navy Guy mode. It only really addresses an argument when the other guy is giving you a piece of data in the same format.
I’ll need to separate this post again into another section, for the same previous reason.
“***He has, where he campaigned. We’ll just let the chips fall where they may.”
“***I’m disappointed in you because I gave plenty of factual support for my view and all you offered was, just your view.”
No, sorry, considering that Wyoming wasn’t even heavily contested, an EIGHT PERCENT result is pretty lousy.
“***OK, I understand where you’re coming from. But when both of us were in the socon trenches shooting at tootyfruityrudybots, is this where you wanted to be, defending an undemocratic process that favors your candidate who happened to originally sponsor the legislation (CFR)that spawned this outrage?”
Defending an undemocratic process? LOL! I’m not defending ANY process! I think the whole thing is royally screwed up! I think that candidates announcing two years before the election is screwed up! I think having the Iowa caucuses right after Christmas is screwed up! And New Hampshire five days later?? Heck, I don’t even think either Iowa or New Hampshire should be allowed anywhere NEAR the front of the line for their contests!
And let’s not even talk about “campaign finance reform” (which doesn’t seem to me to be the cause of two-year presidential election cycles, by the way).
But however much I’d enjoy complaining about how the system is set up, it is what it is.
And our candidates must exist, run, campaign, and WIN within it.
“***Everyone thinks their candidate is the best, and yet only one guy wins. Many have been surprised by various things in this race, like Tanc endorsing Romney, Obama beating Hildebeast in Iowa, Huckabee beating Romney in Iowa, George Bush not running for a third term, etc. At the end of this process, only one of these guys moves forward. The chances are that it won’t be Hunter and it won’t be Thompson.”
I agree. But at this point, I wouldn’t give any of the candidates as much as even odds. A realistic assessment of Mr. Thompson’s chances may tell us that he’s not as likely to get the nomination as Mr. Romney or Mr. Huckabee, but neither of them are even at 50% in my view. And I think it’s an order of magnitude or two more likely that Mr. Thompson will get the nomination than Mr. Hunter.
“How will that make you feel if he supports McCain, his friend from the senate? Is that what you were fighting in the trenches for?”
If he drops out, I’m not really sure that I care about whom he endorses. It won’t mean that much to me.
If Mr. Thompson drops out, I’M certainly not going to vote for Mr. McCain in the Maryland primary.
But I won’t vote for Mr. Hunter, either. Probably write myself in. The field is brutally unattractive this year, sans Mr. Thompson.
“***Basically, the Navy guys...”
Ah, okay. Gotcha. Not sure how that’s entirely applicable.
“***here, you’re going into the anecdotal stuff again, like a navy guy.”
I’ll take that as a compliment.
“***Nope. Hunter has him beat on specifics. At least for the issues that are on my radar.”
Well, perhaps different issues are important to us.
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