Laura Ingraham on Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee
February 1, 2008
It’s a slow day at work today, so I’ve been tuned into The Laura Ingraham Show. She sounds desperate in terms of Mitt Romney’s candidacy, continually pointing out that he’s lived his life in the “best” way (i.e., living conservative values in family and business). She is pleading with her listeners to make a statement and rescue “conservatism” by voting for Romney. She’s even directly addressing Mike Huckabee, asking him to drop out of the race and endorse Romney so that we can have “forward-thinking” conservatism (as opposed to McCain’s backward and unpredictable conservatism).
By the way, did anyone catch the way John McCain hurdled Huckabee in Georgia? Wow.
Although I won’t be offering an endorsement, I think Romeny is the least worst of the four. Huckabee isn’t a big surprise. For the most part people vote for who they think they can help win. I personally mark the time of death as his poor showing in Michigan. One could also mark it as failing to win South Carolina.
Added: My precision ranking would be Romney, Obama, Clinton, McCain. The middle two I could exchange depending on the weather. Clinton offers more professional competence. Obama is more instinctively pro-union and anti-free trade. They are all bad candidates though.
Now that Giuliani is out, I think Romney is by far the worst of the Republicans. Has there evern been a more self-serving and duplicitous candidate? I think the Republicans will go with McCain-Huckabee, which would be quite formidible, and (for somebody who is *ahem* not very respectful of Republicans) not a bad ticket at all. I used to like McCain a lot, but his war cheerleading leaves me cold.
This puts pressure on the Democrats. For so long, the feeling was that the Republicans would pick an unelectable clown like Giuliani. Romney, or Thompson. That didn’t happen, and they got their act together. I still think the Democrat can win, but picking Clinton will not help. This is the ultimate argument for choosing Obama, and I hope the Super Tuesday electorate realize that. Seeing the despicable behavior of the former president in South Carolina made it quite clear that having the Clintons back in charge would not be healthy for this country, despite all the nostalgia for the high growth falling-poverty years of the 1990s.
Ingraham.
Corrected. Thank you.
“Has there ever been a more self-serving and duplicitous candidate?”
Yes. His wife is currently the front-runner for the Democratic nomination.
I actually don’t think Romney has been a particularly duplicitous or self-serving candidate. The most duplicitous and self-serving candidates are often the ones who have reputations for being authentic and principled.
Tony, please! I have steeled myself to vote for McCain in the Fall, but encomiums from you for him make it all the more difficult. This will be truly an election where I will be voting against rather than voting for. I will be voting for Romney in the primary in Illinois, although he is now a walking dead candidate. I suspect the same for Obama based upon some polling I have seen from the Super Tuesday states. We shall see. It will be a supreme irony if both parties end up with candidates who much of the base of each distrust.
‘It will be a supreme irony if both parties end up with candidates who much of the base of each distrust.’
No kidding. Kinda reminds me of 1968.
And Ann Coulter says she’d support Clinton over McCain. Among other things, she’s miffed at McCain for his fight against torture, as she calls it.
“Has there ever been a more self-serving and duplicitous candidate?”
“Yes. His wife is currently the front-runner for the Democrat nomination.”
EXACTLY.
But Romney’s still a phony.
I’m not a great fan of Bill Clinton (though every year of Bush makes him rise higher in my estimation), but, come on: nobody is as obviously duplicitous as Romney, the man who mocks and denigrades the very positions he held and the very policies he himself enacted.
Duplicity implies that he maintains more than one position on a given issue. A better description of Romney would be “strong convictions loosely held.” This also tends to be the position of most of the better leaders. One would expect a modest but successful agenda under Romney’s leadership. Since he has an interest in re-election, I would expect he would execute the pro-life agenda similar to President Bush.
P.,
Since it’s a slow day at work for you, perhaps you should tend to your correspondence, especially to those for whom it is never a slow day. If letters are to be effective, it’s helpful for one to know at the very least the proper address. ;)
I am completely confused by M.Z. Forrest’s rankings. What possible metric or criterion yields the preference-order of Romney, Clinton / Obama, McCain? I suppose if “will-o-the-wisp-ed-ness / crass calculation / naked ambition” is the ranking principle, it would come out about that way. But, what else? Seriously. No one who prefers Romney overall could possibly, sensibly, then prefer Clinton to McCain. Or, what am I missing? Where, for example, is the evidence of Clinton’s “professional competence”? If one cares about the “pro-life agenda”, as M.Z. Forest says, then in what possible world is it the case that Romney, let alone Obama (“I voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act”), beats out McCain?
I would have thought McCain — a not-orthodox Republican on economic issues, who is not unrealistically exclusionary when it comes to immigration, who staked a great deal on opposing torture, and who (unlike Romney) was voting to protect unborn children before he decided to run for President — would be the runaway candidate-of-choice on this blog. Strange world.
McCain is often contrarian for being contrarian’s sake. He is unpredictable on the policy side and alternates between relishing disdain and relishing adoration. Despite what is said, he is not all that secure in his views.
Romney is a competent manager. He is ultimately a pragmatist. For all the bluster, Clinton is actually fairly close to a moderate overall. As for Clinton and Obama on abortion, they would probably set us back a few years overall. McCain would set us back in the foreign policy arena a generation. He has shown himself incapable of running an organization. Keep in mind, his resurgence came only after he was forced to surrender his staff.
I thought McCain was unattractively snide, scornful and even, at points, sneering in the most recent confrontation of candidates.
He was also flat out untruthful on several matters.
He wouldn’t have won South Carolina if Thompson hadn’t been his obviously intentional stalking horse.
Yet, he isn’t called on so much duplicity and chicanery.
Kyle:
Can you give a source citation for this comment of yours:
“And Ann Coulter says she’d support Clinton over McCain. Among other things, she’s miffed at McCain for his fight against torture, as she calls it.”
Talk about being damned with unwanted praise!
Kyle:
I found the cite: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/02/01/ann-coulter-ill-campaig_n_84435.html
It’s all about power. Ingraham, Limbaugh, Hannity, Dobson, Robertson and that crowd are watching their power slip away and whining accordingly. You will see them warm up to McCain quickly once Romney slouches off to the political graveyard. If these buffoons ever had any real power in the first place we would not have had 8 years of Bill Clinton and the treacherous McCain would not be on the verge of locking up the nomination now. It’s all cyclical, after 8 years of B/C the pendulum is swinging back. They can wail and stamp their Gucci loafers all they want but it won’t change a thing. Personally, I’m loving it.