ANYBODY’S BALL-GAME: “In the major contests so far– Iowa, New Hampshire and Michigan — three different Republicans have finished first. If former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson scores the win he hopes for in South Carolina on Saturday, he would be the fourth first-place finisher. Likewise, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani could be the fifth winner in the five contests if he proves wise in picking Florida’s Jan. 29 primary as his first big stand.” - Associated Press, 1/17/08
“No discussion about possible presidential nominees gets far without the words “vice president” turning up. Don’t kid yourself that the vice presidency is too trivial a post to contend for.”
- Columnist William Rusher
REWRITE CONSTITUTION, FOR GOD’S SAKE
“I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that’s what we need to do, to amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than try to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.”
- GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee
BAD DAY FOR BIG MAC & HUCK
“(GOP presidential candidate John) McCain continued to show that he is not favored by Republican voters. He won New Hampshire on the strength of independent voters, and those voters simply didn’t turn out for him in Michigan last night. Overall low turnout, bad weather, and broad Democratic distaste for the Republican Party kept the Democratic impact minimal on the GOP primary. This sank McCain. (Mike) Huckabee’s distant third-place finish is not a good sign for him. It confirms the pattern shown in Iowa and New Hampshire: His appeal is limited to evangelical Christians — a demographic insufficient to carry the nomination.”
- Columnist Robert Novak
COULTERGEIST
“Unluckily for (GOP presidential candidate John) McCain, snowstorms in Michigan suppressed the turnout among Democratic ‘Independents’ who planned to screw up the Republican primary by voting for our worst candidate. Democrats are notoriously unreliable voters in bad weather. Instead of putting on galoshes and going to the polls, they sit on their porches waiting for FEMA to rescue them. In contrast to Michigan’s foul weather, New Hampshire was balmy on primary day, allowing McCain’s base — Democrats — to come out and vote for him.”
- Columnist Ann Coulter
THE UNION LABEL
“The U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) on January 15 announced its criminal enforcement data for December 2007. During the month, OLMS obtained eight convictions, eight indictments and court orders of restitution totaling $202,228. The office’s totals for fiscal year 2008 (which began on October 1, 2007) now stand at 22 convictions, 36 indictments and court-ordered restitution of $754,397. The bulk of the cases involved the embezzlement of union funds.”
- Warner Todd Huston, The Union Label, 1/15/08
THE UN-PORKER
“When Jeff Flake was elected to Congress in 2000 from Arizona’s Sixth Congressional District with the hope of ‘effectively advanc[ing] the principles of limited government, economic freedom, and individual responsibility,’ he was a relatively unknown entity outside Arizona. Some may have dismissed the Arizona newbie as just another congressman out of a 435-member body, but that would have been a big mistake.
“Over his seven years in the House, the mild-mannered contrarian has become the bane of porkers everywhere. To the chagrin of his congressional colleagues, the Arizona representative has made a career out of targeting some of Congress’s most outrageous pork projects by introducing amendments to eliminate those projects from congressional spending bills. In 2006, Flake introduced nineteen amendments, putting each member of Congress on record either in favor or in opposition to spending taxpayer dollars on such crucial projects as the National Grape and Wine Initiative, a swimming pool in California, and hydroponic tomato production in Ohio.
“This year, Flake was joined by several colleagues in offering 50 such amendments, taking on, among other things, California’s Mule and Packers Museum, Kansas’s Prison Museum, and a South Carolina aquarium. While these amendments didn’t pass, Rep. Flake scored his first win when he took on fellow Republican Patrick McHenry’s Perfect Christmas Tree project — a venture to subsidize North Carolina artists who make holiday decorations. These amendments also allow taxpayers across the country to see which of their representatives are living up to their promises to fight wasteful spending. Unfortunately, the answer is not many. This year, only 16 congressmen voted for all anti-pork amendments.”
- Pat Toomey of the Club for Growth
Posted on January 17th, 2008 by Chuck Muth
Filed under: National
Regarding the online survey, “Which Prez/Veep ticket would you vote for in a theoretical GOP primary if held today?”, shouldn’t McCain/ Huckabee be on the Democrat ticket?
Amen to putting a “D” with the names Huck & McCain! And Rudy’s not much better, sad to say.
If you restrict it to a combination of the existing candidates, my choice would be Thompson/Hunter (Hunter IS still hanging on by a thread) - if you mean only those still polling double digits, then it would be Thompson/Romney (the Romney part would kind of stick in my craw, but …) Some other names for VP have been speculated upon by Thompson supporters, but I wouldn’t venture any guesses.
Chuck if McCain and Liberman how about Huckabee and Ray Flynn the liberal, pro-life, democrat catholic?
I believe Hunter got zero percent in Michigan and New Hampshire. You gotta have a pulse to get elected/selected!
Then again, when Hunter WAS in charge of the Armed Forces Committee, and he allowed all those humvees to be sent into Iraq without stryker armour protection and did NOTHING to make the Pentagaon armour the humvees, resulting in the death and injury of scores of our fighting men and women. He will not comment on why HE allowed this to happen while HE was in charge of this powerful House committee. Oh he barked a bit and held a meeting, but he never held the producers’ feet to the fire (though he took huge amounts of campaign contributions from them!) to produce the stryker steel for our troops.