The state of politics...

Well, I may have burned everyone out on politics with my ridiculously long post back before super duper Tuesday, but here's one more -

Obviously the political scene has changed quite a bit since then - now, instead of people talking of a brokered convention on the Republican side, they're discussing a brokered convention between Hillary and Obama (and even that possibility is fading fast as people seem to leap from the sinking ship of Hillary's campaign for a admittedly fantastic and charismatic speaker, even if he never gets around to saying anything specific...)

With Mitt Romney's endorsement, John McCain is guaranteed to be the Republican nominee, and I'm having to just get used to that idea. I will certainly vote for him, but that doesn't mean I have to enjoy casting that vote!

So here's my last comments on McCain and Romney before I throw my support behind McCain out of necessity.

For those of you who haven't heard Romney's speech at CPAC (the one in which he announced the suspension of his campaign), I highly recommend finding a transcript and reading it in its entirety. It is one of the best speeches I have ever heard a politician give, and there wasn't a word or phrase in there that I disagreed with. That speech showed a fantastic understanding of the economy (both national and global), national security, and basic conservative principles such as the right to life, and limited government. It was hard to hear him step out of the race after giving a speech like that. I think he did do, however, the right thing in stepping out - too bad Huckabee won't follow his example.

(Quick note on Huckabee - by staying in, he's really hurting himself. It's fairly clear he can't win, even though he's doing quite well, but instead of dropping out when he's "on top" of the game, winning states no one expects him to, he's staying in until there's no doubt in anyone's mind that he can't win. Big mistake. He should drop out now so people can dream and speculate about what might have been...)

Now - my final concerns about McCain: McCain's entire campaign is based on national security (the war on terror), and he admits that the economy is "not his strong point". So here is my question - what is the difference between his stance and President Bush's stance? Bush has focused all of his presidency on the war on terror, while the economy has suffered (while not nearly as much as people say, it has seen harder times). So if the world really dislikes President Bush as much as they say, why will they vote to put someone with the exact same major policies in the office right after he leaves? This is part of the reason I'm really quite surprised at how easy this win was for McCain. But I'm very worried that it is only a matter of time (in fact, I heard it mentioned in an Obama speech already) until democrats turn around and start pointing this out to the world - do we really want four more years of "Bush Doctrine"?

Too bad it's too late to get a nominee with a solid grasp on both national security and the economy.

Final parting words - notice in Romney's CPAC speech how close this race was before you look at delegates:

Popular vote for Romney: 4 million
Popular vote for McCain: 4.7 million
States won by Romney: 11
States won by McCain: 13

The issue is of course which states McCain won - winner take all states with huge delegate counts. The flip side is that McCain tended to win states that Republicans have no chance of winning in a general election this November. States like California, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Washington and other New England states. Not one of those states went to Republicans in the last general election.

Can McCain pull it together and start appealing to grassroots conservatives that didn't vote for him first time around? I sure hope so. I feel like I need to start a savings account to start prepaying my taxes and the increase ridiculously over the next 5 years.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/us/politics/08romney-transcript.html