GOP Convention in Four and a Half Quotes

Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN - 1,100 miles outside the Beltway

For those who missed it, a few selections from the 2008 Republican National Convention - the most watched political convention ever.

Mike Huckabee's speech to the RNC:

Let me make something clear tonight: I'm not a Republican because I grew up rich. I'm a Republican because I didn't want to spend the rest of my life poor, waiting for the government to rescue me.

Rudy Giuliani's keynote address:

"Change" is not a destination ... just as "hope" is not a strategy.

Sarah Palin's introduction:

Crowd cheers continuously for three minutes, is interrupted by the governor, and starts cheering again.

...

I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment.

And I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.

But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion - I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this great country.

John McCain's Acceptance Speech:

If you find faults with our country, make it a better one. If you're disappointed with the mistakes of government, join its ranks and work to correct them. Enlist in our Armed Forces. Become a teacher. Enter the ministry. Run for public office. Feed a hungry child. Teach an illiterate adult to read. Comfort the afflicted. Defend the rights of the oppressed. Our country will be the better, and you will be the happier. Because nothing brings greater happiness in life than to serve a cause greater than yourself.

Yet Another Plurality

Florida 2000:

George W. Bush won the primary with 73.8 percent; John McCain came in second with 19.9 percent.

Florida 2008:

McCain wins Florida, CNN projects

With 55 percent of Republican precincts reporting, McCain held a 36-32 percent lead over Romney. Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani trailed with 15 percent of the vote, followed closely by former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee who held 13 percent.

Winner-take-all does not work with this many candidates.

In related news, the AP reports:

Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent who nearly won the vice presidency as a Democrat in 2000, says there's no way he'll be Republican Sen. John McCain's running mate should McCain become the party's presidential nominee.

This should never have been seriously considered. The Senate does not need to be driven further to the left.

Needed: A Problem-Solver

David Frum writes for National Review:

How can we hold the line on government while addressing America’s genuine health-care needs? How can we sustain the competitiveness of the American economy against a Democratic Congress quivering to impose new taxes and new regulations? How can we win a war on terror that the congressional majority seems already to have written off as lost?

Rudy Giuliani is the answer to these challenges.

No living elected official has solved more public problems with more outstanding success than Rudy Giuliani. If there is one person Americans associate with competence in government, it is Rudy. As the primary race has warmed up, some have tried to diminish the mayor’s accomplishments. But in fact, the closer you look, the more amazing they become.

Yes, the crime rate for the whole country declined in the 1990s. But New York, with a little less than 3 percent of the nation’s population, accounted for 15 percent of the nation’s decline in homicides. Much of the improvement in former high-crime zones like Chicago, Washington, and Miami occurred precisely because New York’s success inspired other mayors to follow where Giuliani had led.

It is not just crime. Giuliani restored civility to New York’s public spaces, reformed welfare, broke the grip of organized crime on trash collection and food wholesaling, restored academic standards in the city university system, chased the sex industry off the streets, held the line on taxes, and set in motion one of the greatest property booms in city history.

In 1963, President Kennedy challenged those who suggested that Communism could out-compete freedom: “Let them come to Berlin.” Today, Republicans can challenge those who assert that liberals can out-manage conservatives: “Let them come to New York.”

Giuliani achieved his success by combining a fierce commitment to core values with an impressive flexibility in his methods. He listened to advice, tried experiments, built on what worked, discarded what did not work. He showed that a leader can be strong without being rigid.

...

Most Republicans agree with most of these positive assessments of Giuliani. Yet many continue to hold back, for reasons like those forcefully articulated by Hadley Arkes in an influential recent article: “The nomination and election of Rudy Giuliani would mark the end of the Republican party as the pro-life party in our politics.”

This is exactly wrong. Yes, there are Republicans who want to chase pro-lifers and other social conservatives out of the party. But Giuliani has emphatically taken a very different view. He has extended welcome to pro-life conservatives in almost every way a candidate for president can. He has promised to appoint federal judges who take the Scalia-Thomas-Roberts-Alito view of the Constitution. He has pledged that as president he would do his utmost to persuade Americans to turn away from abortion and toward adoption. He has declared his personal revulsion at abortion. He has stated over and over that pro-life conservatives will have his respect and attention.

Giuliani may not speak about life issues with the fervor and eloquence of a George W. Bush. But for all practical purposes, what he would actually do would look very similar to what George W. Bush actually has done. Maybe even better: Remember, Giuliani will be taking advice on judges from Theodore Olson — whereas Bush’s first choice for the Alito seat was Harriet Miers.

...

This is a wartime election. It is an election that will decide between a free, competitive health system and a government monopoly. It will decide whether taxes rise, whether the swing seat on the Supreme Court goes to a liberal or a conservative, whether illegal aliens get enforcement or amnesty. This is not an election that conservatives can afford to lose. But it is an election we will lose if we refuse to face realities.

We must avoid the mistake we made in 1996, when we picked a candidate because he made us feel comfortable — with little regard to how the majority of Americans would feel about him. When Americans look at our array of candidates on the stage, they see only one president up there. That’s the president we should offer them.

Read it all here.

Romney, McCain Argue for Giuliani Nomination

From the AP:

Mitt Romney and John McCain are in an increasingly bitter and personal struggle to control the campaign conversation before Florida's primary on Tuesday - and the Republican presidential nomination itself may go to the one who succeeds.

Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and venture capitalist, casts himself as a business-savvy economic turnaround artist amid recession anxiety, while McCain, the Arizona senator and former Vietnam veteran, portrays himself as a courageous wartime commander in chief in a dangerous world.

"He has an enormous disadvantage when it comes to the topics of changing Washington or fixing our economy," Romney said Sunday, arguing that he is far stronger than McCain on both issues.

Countered McCain: "Even if the economy is the, quote, No. 1 issue, the real issue will remain America's security" - and, unlike him, Romney is deficient in that area.

...

Rudy Giuliani... is hoping to benefit in Florida from the Romney and McCain squabbling by staying above the fray. "What we should be talking about is not negative criticisms of each other," he scolded Sunday. He has been arguing that he offers a perfect combination - strength on the economy and on security - and says: "If you choose me, you have both."

Both Romney and McCain have been spending much of the campaign making arguments that ultimately support Giuliani. It's kind of fun to watch.

Winning By Losing

South Carolina, 2008:

McCain - 143,224 - 33%
Huckabee - 128,908 - 30%
Others - 158,787 - 37%

The story? McCain Wins.

South Carolina, 2000:

George W. Bush - 301,050 - 53%
John McCain - 237,888 - 42%
Others - 26,766 - 5%

The story? McCain Loses.

The difference? A decrease of 9 points and about 100,000 votes to go from losing to winning.

The Candidates on Taxes

Robert Novak writes:

Rudy Giuliani gets the highest rating from Americans for Tax Reform (ATR) of all Republican candidates, with a perfect score on his tax-cut intentions.

Sen. John McCain gets the worst marks of GOP candidates by refusing to take a no-tax-increase pledge, advocating a 15 percent estate tax rather than total repeal and failing to advocate an alternative system of taxation, new capital gains tax cuts and a cut in the corporate rate. Mitt Romney also fails on the alternative system and capital gains cuts, as well as not advocating total repeal of the alternative minimum tax (AMT). Mike Huckabee falls short on the AMT and capital gains and corporate rates.

A footnote: The three leading Democratic candidates -- Sen. Hillary Clinton, Sen. Barack Obama and John Edwards -- all get a goose egg from the ATR by failing on all its issues.

The Executives

David Broder writes:

It was fascinating to watch the three top contenders for the Democratic nomination discuss their concept of the presidency during Tuesday night's MSNBC debate in Las Vegas. But it was also stunning to realize that the three current and former senators who have survived the shakeout process -- Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards -- have not a day of chief executive experience behind them.

By contrast, the Republican field is loaded with people who are accustomed to being in charge of large organizations. Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee were governors of their home states of Massachusetts and Arkansas, Rudy Giuliani served as the mayor of New York City, and John McCain, as he likes to remind audiences, commanded the largest squadron in the Navy air wing.

In the past, voters have preferred to entrust the White House to those with executive credentials. John Kennedy was the last sitting senator to be elevated into the presidency. Since then, the former governors of Georgia, California, Arkansas and Texas have dominated the list of successful candidates.

...

[Romney] began to regain his footing after Iowa, when he subordinated his ideological claim to being the conservative champion in favor of portraying himself as a tough-minded executive who could reform both laggard private businesses and swollen, ineffective government bureaucracies.

He drew a useful contrast to "broken" Washington, the home base of Senator McCain and two of his three Democratic colleagues -- Obama and Clinton. Edwards is a former senator.

Huckabee had made a similar case for himself, citing his decade of leadership in Arkansas. And Giuliani had asserted a record of accomplishment in rescuing New York from fiscal crisis and reducing the city's crime and welfare rates.

All of this places an unusually heavy burden on the three Senate Democrats to show they can do more than talk a good game of leadership -- and actually lead.

This is especially notable since the Democrats have driven their one executive candidate from the race. We are electing a President, not a Prime Minister.

Read the full article here.

Mitt Romney's Bizarre Hospital

Mitt Romney said something odd at one of the recent Republican presidential debates (at St. Anselm College, NH). I wondered if I had imagined it, but there's a transcript.

Challenged by Fred Thompson on his health insurance mandates in Massachusetts, Mitt Romney had this to say:

Yes, we said, look, if people can afford to buy it, either buy the insurance or pay your own way; don't be free-riders and pass on the cost to your health care to everybody else...

If somebody is making, let's say $100,000 a year, and doesn't have health insurance, and they show up at the hospital, and they need a $1,000 repair of some kind for something that's gone wrong. And they say, "Look, I'm not insured, I'm not going to pay." Do you think they should pay or not?

Is this a problem in Massachusetts? Do people making $100,000 a year go into hospitals, receive treatment, refuse to pay, and get bailed out by the state? No wonder Massachusetts is in such bad shape. They're going to have problems funding health care if they don't bother to send a bill or pursue non-payers with the wide range of available remedies.

His hypothetical $100k free-rider doesn't pass the laugh test, suggesting, oddly enough, that multi-millionaire Mitt Romney tried to "out-poor" Fred Thompson.

Carpetbaggers Run For President

From the Politico:

The 2008 presidential campaign has already produced the next generation of American politicians. They don't have local accents. That's because they don't have local roots. Nor do they boast legions of home-state friends, teachers and mentors who have spent years waiting for the proud day when their talented native son or daughter would run for president.

...

Among the first-rung candidates, only Democrat John Edwards of North Carolina and Republican Rudy Giuliani of New York are defined in the public mind vividly by where they are from. In both cases, these politicians have personal stories inextricably linked to their home states -- a fact amplified by thick and unmistakable regional accents.

Click here for the details.

Louisiana Governor 50 Points Down in New Orleans

The State of Louisiana - 1100 miles outside the Beltway

The Washington Times reports:

Republican Rep. Bobby Jindal [Monday] declared his candidacy for the Louisiana governorship but vowed to delay campaigning until after the April conclusion of the state's legislative session to avoid politicizing Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts.

...

A poll by the Southern Media and Opinion Research shows Mrs. Blanco's support among voters is 35 percent, compared with 59 percent for Mr. Jindal. Mrs. Blanco defeated Mr. Jindal by four percentage points in 2003.

...

Mr. Jindal, the first to announce a candidacy to challenge Mrs. Blanco, emphasized his interest in contracting the race's length -- a move that runs counter to electoral trends.

"It is my belief that campaigns are too long as they are, and that people grow weary of the barrage of charges and countercharges," Mr. Jindal said. "I want to avoid D.C.-style politics with mudslinging and instead focus on solving the problems that our state faces."

The poll... shows that Mr. Jindal... received overwhelming support in New Orleans -- 72 percent -- while Mrs. Blanco pulled 22 percent support.

Mrs. Blanco's low numbers are attributed to her responses to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Mrs. Blanco initially rejected President Bush's offer to deploy federal troops, after waiting 24 hours to make a decision. Days later, Mrs. Blanco was wired for a television interview and whispered to her press secretary that she wished she had requested troops earlier.

This serves as yet another reminder that New Orleans was doomed by geography and state & local officials, not a President a thousand miles away.

Subsequently, Blanco made news for whining about not being mentioned in the State of the Union Address:

Gov. Kathleen Blanco angrily criticized President Bush on Wednesday for not mentioning 2005's destructive hurricanes in his State of the Union speech, and said Louisiana is being shortchanged in federal recovery funding for political reasons.

"I guess the pains of the hurricane are yesterday's news in Washington," Blanco said.

No, yesterday's news was yesterday. Hurricane Katrina is yesteryear's news.

Click here for more information on Bobby Jindal.

An Election Just Barely Inside the Beltway

On May 2nd, I voted for the first time in la République populaire d'Alexandrie along with 19.7% of registered voters. I'm still not quite sure why. Out of ten votes possible - one for mayor (unopposed), six for city council, and three for school board - I could only bring myself cast one.

Republicans lose in Alexandria, not by as much as in DC, but by enough. Council members are elected at-large with the top six winning seats.

I actually kind of like the at-large voting system. By not having districts or specified seats, the most popular candidates are elected without the scheming that goes into picking which seat to run for. A more proportional system might elect 2 Republicans to the council, but in reality they would be as powerless as Republicans in today's Maryland legislature. Those 2 Republicans can instead be productive members of society.

Back to the election... Interviewed in the local paper, the Alexandria Times, several of Alexandria's "Republican" candidates made such strange statements that they made the virtually blank ballot attactive.

Most were anti-development - opposing housing in an area where housing prices drive people into the distant suburbs and opposing road construction, improvements, and connections despite significant conjestion and amazingly bad design (although "design" may give them too much credit).

Another was upset that the city doesn't regulate lawn mowers. (I don't generally vote for candidates that I laugh at.)

The last time I checked, the one candidate I voted for received the fewest votes of the 11.

Among those elected to school board was one woman, Blanche Maness, who refused to answer any substantive questions in her interview, saying instead that the superindendent should do that for her. This certainly makes her post-election comments stand out:

Blanche Maness, a winner from the West District, said she wants to create a website where community members can post questions and she can respond.

I would expect her responses to be something like "Perhaps a community member can answer this question."

The Washington Post also reported on the election.