Posted on 02/07/2008 11:09:08 AM PST by icwhatudo
The Dewey Loman American Legion Post 109 is the place to be tonight for Maryland Republicans.
That’s where presidential candidate Sen. John McCain and ex-presidential candidate Mitt Romney are both scheduled to speak this evening in Halethorpe Maryland.
Romney was previously scheduled to attend the event, while McCain announced his surprise appearance this morning.
And just minutes ago, McCain’s campaign put out word that the Arizona senator would be picking up “a major endorsement” at this evening’s Baltimore County Republican Lincoln Day Dinner.
Minutes later, former Massachusetts Gov. Romney announced he would be ending his bid for the White House.
One source with knowledge of tonight’s event tells PolitickerMD.com that former Gov. Bob Ehrlich will not be the one introducing McCain before the presidential candidate delivers brief remarks; however, Ehrlich aides say he will be announcing his endorsement this evening.
But does an Ehrlich endorsement qualify for a national teaser endorsement at this stage of McCain's campaign? We think not.
There are implications that Romney, who has been locked in a bitter fight with McCain, would make the quick endorsement with the hope of unifying their party.
According to an advance text of his speech to the 2008 CPAC conference obtained by Time’s Mark Halperin, Romney said, “I disagree with Senator McCain on a number of issues, as you know.”
“But I agree with him on doing whatever it takes to be successful in Iraq, on finding and executing Osama bin Laden, and on eliminating Al Qaeda and terror. If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win.”
My you are sharp %>.
Tell me when he gets indicted on that... oh wait. He never did.
bump
There is a lot more at stake here than whether one likes McCain or not. The chances are nearly 100% that at least one and maybe more Supreme court justices will be appointed during the next term. Do you want Hillary or Obama selecting them or do you want the man that compromised enough to get Alito and Roberts confirmed??????????
But I hate, yes hate, McCain more!!!
A left wing liberal will endorse another left wing liberal.
Viva Los Estados Unidos América Latinos! Viva Juan Macareno! Deje la invasión continuar
That’s better.
maybe he can help fill that order by becoming veep. 1 term pres,be the presumptive nominee in 2012. 4 yrs is a small price to pay(for mitt)for the chance to become CIC for 8 years.
Yea, that's right. Why he must be just as clean as those unindicted Clintons.
You do what you have to do, and I’ll do what I have to.
***I am soooooooooooooooo confused??***
You are not confused. You are disappointed that the slate of GOP candidates fell short, fell apart or fell over each other.
There were too many, too few, too little and too late.
For all the bashing, smashing and trashing - a half a dozen good men of conscience stood up, stepped forward and regrettably, pulled back. They each showed more courage than typing crap on the internet.
Sweet dreams A-H. You will come to the right decision. Your own opinion does not require an explanation - only conscience.
Wow! That will be stunningly hypocritical. But not surprising.
Send your money to conservative candidates only. Dont support the presidential campaign financially.
But I am a strong conservative who, while I won’t help McCain, do not in the end want him to lose.
I will vote for McCain over Clinton/Obama.
And so should any conservative.
We have a war to win, we have judges to nominate, and Clinton and Obama are extreme leftwing pro-abort multiculturalists.
As for the leadership, it is not just Rush, but there are conservatives in Congress, in local and state positions, and in the party. We need to support *them* as well, praising them whenever we can and building them up so that in 2012 we will have a strong *conservative* field of candidates.
YES, this is very important.
Here is an article written by a FReeper about this very issue.
No, it isn’t a sellout - just being pragmatic. To most Republicans, and yes, even conservatives, it is better to have McCain as president even though he’s a seriously flawed man. The primary reason is he will continue to prosecute the war on terror and won’t let the enemies of our freedom win by prematurely withdrawing from Iraq. Hilary or Obama has repeatedly vowed that they will immediately withdraw the troops as soon as they become president.
Good grief, this is all so boring. This place is rapidly becoming the Daily Kos.
The “media” didn’t make all those candidates so lackluster in the eyes of GOP voters. The “media” didn’t make Giuliani stupidly sit on the sidelines too long. The “media” didn’t make Fred Thompson so stultifyingly dull. The “media’ didn’t make the pundits of right-wing radio fail to endorse anyone.
The noisy groupthinking cabal here also should take a good hard look around and make a head count—then do some math.
No.
While I have no idea if he will or will not endorse, he will obviously support McCain as our nominee, because in the end the idea of “sending messages” is both unappealing and largely useless, since you are not “sending a message” to some person who will listen, but to an entire electorate who has no idea you are doing it.
I’m reminded of a Star Trek-TNG episode, where Data is on a planet trying to convince the inhabitants to leave before they are destroyed by the Cheliac cooperative.
They are talking about how they will stand and fight, even if they might lose, because their fight will “send a message”.
Data notes that nobody will ever hear their message, and they will have died in vain.
I’m not opposed in theory to the idea that at some point you have to send a message. I might have even bought it if we had picked Giuliani as our candidate.
But there’s nobody to send a message to. Only 40-60 million republican voters, the vast majority of whom don’t follow anything closely enough to know that there are messages, and who will not interpret a McCain loss as a signal to pick a conservative next time.
Conservatives need to get the message, not the moderates. We need to find our candidate early, and get behind him 100%.
I will note that while Huckabee was theoretically in the race, as were Hunter and Tancredo, and for a time Gilmore and Brownback, NONE of those candidates had ANY traction whatsoever. It’s not even that the 5 of them were splitting the 60% of the republican party that was conservative — they were collectively pulling 5%.
Romney was the ONLY conservative in the race that had ANY traction, and even he was doing poorly for the longest time, but he was there spending his own money and working his butt off and pushing conservative principles and platforms.
But that’s OK, conservatives didn’t want him either. My point is that as of last January, there was not a SINGLE candidate that the conservatives had any interest in “rallying around”. It was like we were just expecting that by complaining about Giuliani and McCain, they would dissappear and magically some conservative would ride to our rescue.
In the end, rather than support any of the conservatives IN the race, a lot of conservatives talked some OTHER guy into dragging himself into the race. But once he was here, the conservatives wouldn’t rally around him either. Remember that when he entered, HUckabee and Romney were still both below 10%, so it’s not like we had already committed to some conservative.
But the more Fred ran, the less the general conservative population was willing to jump to him. Eventually, they grew bored, decided he wasn’t the guy after all, and went looking again. Some finally started realising that time was running out (it was already too late), and they decided they better grab one of the existing candidates. Romney jumped in the polls, Huckabee jumped in the polls, McCain jumped in the polls.
Like it or not, at some point a good number of CONSERVATIVES decided they would back McCain. You can call them names, but they are conservatives and we need them. We didn’t give them another candidate WE would support, so they had no choice but to pick.
In the end, as reality set in Romney started looking better to a lot of conservatives, because he had the solid conservative platform (his problem was trust, not platform).
But it was too late. It wasn’t the conservative activists who failed, since they mostly jumped to Thompson, it was the conservative candidates and the general conservative population, each deciding that they were tired of “settling” and wanting to have a real say.
Just as the “conservatives” here are talking about setting out from the Republican party, the SoCons were talking about settting out from the conservatives because the conservatives weren’t giving them their due.
Meanwhile, the strong national defense conservatives jumped to McCain, and never really saw Huckabee or Romney as the best choice to run our military. So they weren’t hard sells for McCain.
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