Hillary and Obama and McCain, oh my!

Every election year, Democrats can count on winning the majority of votes from certain key demographic groups: criminals, defense attorneys, dead people, illegal immigrants and people who aren’t smart enough to figure out how to correctly fill out a ballot. Hillary or Obama will dominate all those categories this year.

Meanwhile, John McCain is all but assured to win the votes of at least one group: people who mistakenly registered as Republicans. So at least he’s got that going for him, which is nice.

For conservatives, the decision will require more thought.

Today was a big day at CPAC. Mitt Romney dropped out of the race, while McCain tried to make the case that he really is a conservative. In a better world, McCain would have dropped out of the race while Romney tried to convince us that he really is a conservative.

Bill Bennett and some guy that I’ve never heard of before made the best case I’ve seen yet for why we should support McCain over the eventual Democrat nominee.

Meanwhile, Ann Coulter made the case for sitting this one out:

If Hillary is elected president, we’ll have a four-year disaster, with Republicans ferociously opposing her, followed by Republicans zooming back into power, as we did in 1980 and 1994, and 2000. (I also predict more Oval Office incidents with female interns.)If McCain is elected president, we’ll have a four-year disaster, with the Republicans in Congress co-opted by “our” president, followed by 30 years of Democratic rule.There’s your choice, America.

I’m actually starting to salivate at the thought of four years ripping apart Hillary’s “ideas.” The problem with this plan of action is what to do if Obama wins. Obama has major momentum, the media and the left is absolutely crazy for him, and no amount of destructive ideas (and believe me, he has plenty) would prevent him from winning a second term if he manages to win a first, in my opinion. So the Coulter Plan is only viable if Hillary wins the Dem nomination.

For his part, McCain took a step towards reconciling with conservative voters. This was a highly unusual move for the ornery, prideful senator from Arizona. Here are some highlights of his speech today:

I know I have a responsibility.. to unite the party and prepare for the great contest in November… I am acutely aware that I cannot succeed in that endeavor, nor can our party prevail over the challenge we will face from either Senator Clinton or Senator Obama, without the support of dedicated conservatives, whose convictions, creativity and energy have been indispensible to the success our party has had over the last quarter century. Many of you have disagreed strongly with some positions I have taken in recent years. I understand that. I might not agree with it, but I respect it for the principled position it is. And it is my sincere hope that even if you believe I have occasionally erred in my reasoning as a fellow conservative, you will still allow that I have, in many ways important to all of us, maintained the record of a conservative. Further, I hope you will grant that I have defended many positions we share just as ardently as I have made my case for positions that have provoked your opposition. 

Surprisingly contrite and accurate all around. Keep it coming.

I am proud to be a conservative, and I make that claim because I share with you that most basic of conservative principles: that liberty is a right conferred by our Creator, not by governments, and that the proper object of justice and the rule of law in our country is not to aggregate power to the state but to protect the liberty and property of its citizens.

Okay, so we know he at least has a copy of the Reagan playbook. Now tell us why you keep losing it at the worst possible times.

While I have long worked to help grow a public majority of support for Republican candidates and principles, I have also always believed, like you, in the wisdom of Ronald Reagan, who warned in an address to this conference in 1975, that “a political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency or simply to swell its numbers.”

Way to turn those words inside out. Rush Limbaugh quoted this the other day in an attack on McCain for too often trying to be all things to all people. At least we know McCain is listening to Rush now. Maybe he’ll learn something.

I attended my first CPAC conference as the invited guest of Ronald Reagan, not long after I had returned from overseas, when I heard him deliver his “shining city upon a hill” speech. I was still a naval officer then, but his words inspired and helped form my own political views, just as Ronald Reagan’s defense of America’s cause in Vietnam and his evident concern for American prisoners of war in that conflict inspired and were a great comfort to those of us who, in my friend Jerry Denton’s words, had the honor of serving “our country under difficult circumstances.” I am proud, very proud, to have come to public office as a foot soldier in the Reagan Revolution. And if a few of my positions have raised your concern that I have forgotten my political heritage, I want to assure you that I have not, and I am as proud of that association today as I was then. My record in public office taken as a whole is the record of a mainstream conservative. I believe today, as I believed twenty-five years ago, in small government; fiscal discipline; low taxes; a strong defense, judges who enforce, and not make, our laws; the social values that are the true source of our strength; and, generally, the steadfast defense of our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, which I have defended my entire career as God-given to the born and unborn.

A few people have asked me why the focus on Reagan. This speech should clear that up for anyone. Ronald Reagan’s ideas are so powerful that no Republican can hope to become President without convincing us that he is a rightly heir to the Reagan legacy. The words “mainstream conservative” concern me, because for anything to be mainstream it must be watered down, less effective than it would be if it were just “correct.” But hey, it seems to be working so far.

Most of the rest of his speech concerned certain issues that have annoyed mainstream conservatives. He did make a strong finish, however:

Often elections in this country are fought within the margins of small differences. This one will not be. We are arguing about hugely consequential things. Whomever the Democrats nominate, they would govern this country in a way that will, in my opinion, take this country backward to the days when government felt empowered to take from us our freedom to decide for ourselves the course and quality of our lives; to substitute the muddled judgment of large and expanding federal bureaucracies for the common sense and values of the American people; to the timidity and wishful thinking of a time when we averted our eyes from terrible threats to our security that were so plainly gathering strength abroad. It is shameful and dangerous that Senate Democrats are blocking an extension of surveillance powers that enable our intelligence and law enforcement to defend our country against radical Islamic extremists. This election is going to be about big things, not small things. And I intend to fight as hard as I can to ensure that our principles prevail over theirs.

Senator Clinton and Senator Obama want to increase the size of the federal government.

I intend to reduce it. I will not sign a bill with earmarks in it, any earmarks in it. I will fight for the line item veto, and I will not permit any expansion whatsoever of the entitlement programs that are bankrupting us. On the contrary, I intend to reform those programs so that government is no longer in that habit of making promises to Americans it does not have the means to keep.

Senator Clinton and Senator Obama will raise your taxes.

I intend to cut them. I will start by making the Bush tax cuts permanent. I will cut corporate tax rates from 35 to 25% to keep industries and jobs in this country. I will end the Alternate Minimum Tax. And I won’t let a Democratic Congress raise your taxes and choke the growth of our economy.

They will offer a big government solution to health care insurance coverage.

I intend to address the problem with free market solutions and with respect for the freedom of individuals to make important choices for themselves.

Great stuff there. McCain has always been solid on taxes and spending. I will get into his war position in part one of my analysis of Reagan’s “A Time for Choosing” speech. We have a few months to decide if this sort of lukewarm conservatism is acceptable, if we’re willing to allow McCain to move the party to left in order to avoid a worse fate, or if we can afford to take a four-year step back in order to bring about a better solution in the future.
 

Black Tuesday Aftermath : The Fight For the Republican Party

When Connie Chung asked Bobby Knight how he dealt with stress, the recently-retired coaching legend famously replied, “I think that if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it.”

Hillary (or Obama, same thing) versus McCain now looks inevitable, but there will be no relaxing or enjoying going on here. Not when we’re talking about my country. I will continue to confront the disastrous ideas of American liberalism, whether they come from Clinton, Obama, McCain or anyone else. No way will I stand by as the American taxpayer is asked to bend over for increased government largesse or redistributive policies designed to take from those who achieve and give to those who do little to add to America’s prosperity. 

It looks like we’ve lost the battle; now it’s time for war, a war of ideas. Over the next four years, we must do everything possible to make sure that the good people of this country never again face the “choice” between a liberal Democrat and a liberal Republican.

I wish I could just wash my hands of the whole process and sit this election out. Unfortunately, I decided a few years back that I would do everything in my power to make sure Hillary Clinton never becomes President. Since Hillary won her Senate seat, I’ve had this recurring nightmare that she would become President and her husband would become head of the United Nations, cementing the Clinton’s secret plan of world domination.

But John McCain? The same John McCain who will speak before CPAC (the conservative political action committee) tomorrow and attempt to show them that he really is a conservative? You’ve served in Congress for 25 years, McCain. If you were one of us, we would know it by now. 

Jed Babbin wrote a decent article today. In it he writes:

One source told me last night that McCain is planning an all-out push at CPAC.  At 3 pm tomorrow, McCain is scheduled to address the crowd expected to number over 6,000 activists… McCain has prepared a video featuring President Ronald Reagan to make the introduction. If McCain uses this video, it is very likely to backfire badly.  This is the group before which Ronald Reagan said in 1975 that, “A political party cannot be all things to all people. It must represent certain fundamental beliefs which must not be compromised to political expediency or simply to swell its numbers.”   

Very few of the 2008 CPAC crowd will see McCain as the successor to Reagan and Reagan’s principles.  McCain has sacrificed conservatives’ fundamental beliefs throughout his Senate career.  If McCain uses this introduction, the boos will be very loud.

Meanwhile, Fred Barnes wants conservatives to “grow up.” I respect Barnes, but the only thing McCain and the great Goldwater have in common is their home state of Arizona. Barnes writes:

McCain, probably alone among Republicans, can win this fall, but not without the full-blown support of conservatives. If he continues to reach out to them while running as a conservative, they need to heed Barry Goldwater’s advice in 1960. “Let’s grow up, conservatives,” he said. “If we want to take this party back, and I think we can, let’s get to work.”

That is weak, Barnes. John McCain has spent most of his career preventing conservatives from taking the party back. You know this to be true, yet you tell those of us who stand for principles before party to grow up. I say “grow a pair, Fred.”

I will probably decide to plug my nose and check John McCain’s name this fall, even though a very large part of me agreed with Rush Limbaugh yesterday when he asked, “If you think that the election of Obama, Hillary, or McCain is going to result in very bad things happening to the country, who would you rather get the blame for it?” I’m sure I’ll be breaking that decision down more as the election gets closer, but the important thing is what else we will do to make sure things are different four years from now.