Republicans, Primaries etc - the Dems have their own thread after all

[MovieWes]

Coulter will campaign for Clinton if McCain is the Republican nominee.

I'm sorry -- did hell just freeze over? ???

[Akash]

The Obama girls are definitely hotter than the Giuliani girls.

Anyway, more on how McCain sucks but is benefiting from low expectations.

THE NATION
SPINNING THE PLANET
John McCain and Climate Change
David Roberts

Judged against most Republicans, John McCain is a paragon of environmental wisdom. Even some Dems rate him 'good enough' on climate change. It's time for everyone--media included--to stop grading McCain on a curve.

Though recession and war are probably higher on the public's immediate priority list, there is no challenge of greater historical consequence facing the next US president than the climate crisis. It is vitally important that the next chief executive enter the Oval Office committed to decisive and sustained action. He or she will need a firm grasp of the developing science, the political obstacles, the economic trade-offs, and the technological opportunities.

Does John McCain have that kind of deep understanding and commitment? If elected, will he be the climate champion we so desperately need?

Conventional wisdom says yes. The media touts McCain's stance on climate as evidence of his straight talkin' maverickosity. Conservative stalwarts assail McCain for his heresy (Romney attacked McCain's climate bill in Michigan and Florida). The public hails him for reaching across the aisle. Even Democrats and greens seem inclined to give him a grade of Good Enough on climate.

This is a classic case of what our president calls the soft bigotry of low expectations. Judged against his fellow Republicans, McCain is a paragon of atmospheric wisdom. Judged against the climate and energy legislation afoot in Congress, he falls short. Judged against the two leading Democratic presidential candidates, he is a pale shadow. Judged against the imperatives of climate science -- that is to say, judged against brute physical reality -- he isn't even in the ballpark.

It's time to stop grading McCain on a curve.

McCain's green bona fides, as far as I can tell, boil down to three things:

* He voted against drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and has sponsored or cosponsored the occasional, modest environmental protection bill (protecting whales; awarding tax credits for energy efficiency; boosting fuel efficiency). (Note, however, that his lifetime rating from LCV is a measly 29%.)
* In 2003, he and Sen. Joe Lieberman introduced the first-ever climate bill to the Senate: the Climate Stewardship Act, which would establish a carbon cap-and-trade system to reduce US emissions. It was introduced and voted down in 2003 and again in 2005.
* He acknowledges, without hedging, that anthropogenic climate change is real, and speaks eloquently about the need to address it. He has frequently criticized the Bush administration for inaction.

These aren't chopped liver. All were acts of courage undertaken in a time of Republican majority, when they offered little political reward (other than the undying love of cable news talkshow hosts). The second, in particular, was a beacon of hope for greens in a time when there were very few.

Nonetheless, we must assess these acts in light of what has come after, and the political environment we find ourselves in today.

Cap-and-trade

Relative to what's offered by other Senate cap-and-trade bills (and the plans of his Democratic rivals), the McCain-Lieberman Climate Stewardship Act -- even in its 2007 incarnation -- is weak. Unlike other such bills, McCain's specifically sets aside massive and unnecessary subsidies for the nuclear industry. Its emissions targets are exceeded even by the lowest-common-denominator bill now heading to the Senate floor, the Lieberman-Warner America's Climate Security Act.

This is to say nothing of the Sanders-Boxer bill, the strongest extant climate legislation, which now boasts both Clinton and Obama as co-sponsors and includes even more aggressive targets. Beyond that, we have the plans offered by the leading Democratic campaigns, which offer bold targets, 100% auctioning of pollution permits (a crucial feature I'll return to in a subsequent post), and detailed plans for how to allocate the auction revenue to boost the green economy.

McCain has never updated his position on cap-and-trade legislation, despite the steady advance in public opinion and climate science since he introduced his bill in 2003. He has not discussed, much less matched, the ambitious targets of his Dem rivals. He has not signed onto the Sanders legislation, or even Lieberman's new bill. He has not said whether he'll vote for it, and has hinted (sub rqd) that he'll vote Nay unless big buckets of nuclear pork are added.

In short, McCain's take on cap-and-trade legislation is now anachronistic, lagging well behind what's current, what's possible, and what's needed.

Beyond cap-and-trade

As anyone familiar with the issue -- e.g., Goldman Sachs -- will tell you, a mandatory, declining cap on carbon is only the first step toward effective climate policy. It is necessary but not sufficient. That's why Democrats in Congress are pushing a number of supplemental bills, attempting to raise vehicle fuel-economy standards, remove tax breaks from fossil fuel industries, change utility regulation to encourage efficiency, boost basic research funding, extend production tax credits for renewable industries, and establish a Renewable Portfolio Standard to boost the amount of renewable energy in the U.S. mix.

Voting against these measures would boost McCain's cred with the conservative base, but damage his green credibility. Voting for them would do the reverse. So what has Mr. Straight Talk done?

He has gone AWOL:

* On June 21, 2007, the Senate voted on the Baucus amendment to the energy bill, which would have removed some oil company subsidies in order to fund renewable energy. The amendment failed to pass. Where was McCain? He didn't vote.
* On the same day, the Senate held a cloture vote to overcome the standard Republican veto threat and pass the energy bill. The vote succeeded. Where was McCain? He didn't vote.
* On Dec. 7, the Senate held another cloture vote to overcome the standard Republican veto threat on the energy bill, which had become substantially bolder after being aligned with the House version. The vote failed. Where was McCain? He didn't vote.
* On Dec. 13, 2007, the Senate held another cloture vote to overcome the standard Republican veto threat and pass the energy bill, which had the Renewable Portfolio Standard stripped out of it but retained a measure that would shift oil company subsidies to renewables. The vote failed -- by one vote, 59-40. Where was McCain? He didn't vote -- the only Senator not to do so.
* On Feb. 6, 2008, the Senate held another cloture vote to overcome the standard Republican veto threat and pass a stimulus bill containing a number of green energy incentives. The cloture motion failed, by one vote. Where was McCain? He didn't vote -- again, the only Senator not to do so.

You get the idea. The Democrats in Congress have been struggling to change US energy policy, to raise standards and shift some federal expenditures from fossil to renewable energy. In several cases, McCain could have made the difference between success and failure. In some cases -- as with regard to, e.g., the stimulus bill -- McCain's campaign has claimed that he would have voted against it anyway, so the result wouldn't have changed. In this way, McCain gets to signal to political insiders on the right that he's with them, without putting himself on record where the public can see it. That's a funny sort of straight talk.

[Steph2]

My favorite is still the Obama girl music video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKsoXHYICqU

And Damien, just for you, there's the Obama girl vs/ Guiliani girl music video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekSxxlj6rGE

[Damien]

I'm sure a lot of you have seen the Will.I.Am Barack Obama music video (pleasant if dull)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yq0tMYPDJQ&feature=related


But check out this brilliant McCain video: John.He.Is


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gwqEneBKUs



Edited By Damien on 1202849914

[criddic3]

A lot of that is regional, tak15. There are all kinds of reasons people, and even states, vote for a certain person. Yes, hardcore conservative members of the party have problems with McCain, even not-so-hard-right members do, but not the whole party. The fact that most of the party likes at least one thing about him and admires him for his service to his country will help him overcome some of that. He will need a lot of help from independents in November.

[taki15]

Well, the Republicans really ''love'' McCain and they didn't miss the chance to show it, even now that he is the presumptive nominee.

Huckabee trounced him at Kansas, defeated him at Louisiana and made him sweat at Washington state.
Regarding the last contest, I think TPM puts it best: when 74% of caucus-goers shows up to vote against their all-but-certain nominee, then there is something going seriously wrong with that person.

[Greg]

“He is going to have to bend, and as we know, that doesn’t come easily to the senator,” said Lee Edwards. . .

I felt bad for finding that line amusing.

[OscarGuy]

Let's face it, McCain's going to be the nominee. I don't see Huckabee posing a threat at this point. Even with Romney's delegates, it's not even approaching McCain's tally.

[Akash]

Sigh. President McCain. Better get used to it.

Part of me almost hopes Hillary gets the nomination -- just because McCain would probably have an easier time beating her than Obama.

America deserves that.



Edited By Akash on 1202405908

[Damien]

It was just announced that Romney is dropping out. Damn, he would have been so beatable in November.

[Akash]

NEW YORK TIMES
February 7, 2008
Pressure on McCain to Reconcile With Conservatives
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Senator John McCain of Arizona might have expected his appearance on Thursday at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington to be a gracious makeup session with his former critics on the right. He hoped to arrive as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

But Mike Huckabee’s surprise success across the South this week has put an end to any thought of an easy reconciliation. Campaigning well to Mr. McCain’s right on social issues and to his left on economics, Mr. Huckabee at once thwarted conservative efforts to back Mitt Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, and deprived Mr. McCain of his chance to lock up the nomination, prolonging the standoff between the senator and his foes.

With just 9 of the day’s 21 nominating contests and less than half the total vote going to Mr. McCain, the results from the contests on Tuesday put new pressure on him to shore up his right flank at a time when he had hoped to begin preparing to take on the Democrats for more moderate voters.

“He is going to have to bend, and as we know, that doesn’t come easily to the senator,” said Lee Edwards, a Heritage Foundation historian who studies the conservative movement. “But does he want to win?”

Some Christian conservatives, for example, say they have been urging Mr. McCain to drop his previous support for embryonic stem cell research, noting that new discoveries about the potential of adult stem cells gives him an easy out.

“There are some major policy hurdles that he needs to overcome,” said Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, arguing that Mr. McCain still has not “closed the sale” with social conservatives.

But though still resistant to Mr. McCain, the leaders of the conservative movement are hardly ready to embrace Mr. Huckabee. A Southern Baptist minister before becoming governor of Arkansas, he won his home state, as well as Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and West Virginia, mainly by appealing to a subset of evangelical voters.

“It is kind of a Southern Baptist effect,” said James L. Guth, a political scientist at Furman University who studies religion and politics.

Dr. Guth noted that Mr. Huckabee appeared to excel mainly in the counties with the highest concentrations of Southern Baptists, many familiar with his career from church publications. Mr. Huckabee fared less well in counties with more diverse groups of evangelicals. Exit polls showed that he received only about a third of the vote of born-again Christians across the country — roughly on par with Mr. McCain and Mr. Romney.

Mr. Huckabee campaigned with a populist message increasingly at odds with the fiscal conservative wing of his party.

When President Bush agreed with House Democrats on a stimulus package centered on big tax rebates, for example, Mr. Huckabee raised the hackles of supporters of free trade by arguing that the plan in effect subsidized the Chinese manufacturers of imported consumer goods. And he argued that the money would be better spent building roads, bridges and other infrastructure projects at home, irking proponents of limited government. Such ideas about economic growth “were widely believed in Russia in the 1950s,” said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

Mr. Huckabee confounded many conservative leaders by succeeding without much support from the most visible evangelical political leaders, many of whom share their secular allies’ views on economics, and over the noisy opposition of conservative commentators and talk radio hosts. And he did it after many national pundits had written off his campaign, while he was spending a small fraction of what his rivals poured into the race.

The Web site of Christianity Today, the leading evangelical journal, declared Wednesday that the election results “exposed divides between evangelical voters and their spokesmen.” It noted that Mr. McCain had won a third of born-again Christian voters who ignored criticism of Mr. McCain by influential leaders like James C. Dobson, while Mr. Huckabee had dominated evangelical voting in several Southern states “despite little official support from conservative leaders.”

Meanwhile, conservatives have begun to debate whether and how Mr. McCain can energize his party’s core, beginning Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference. In his broadcast on Wednesday, the talk show host Rush Limbaugh sighed in exasperation at the idea that Mr. McCain’s “reach out” would mollify the right.

“He’s not getting the conservative base in this party voting for him,” Mr. Limbaugh said. “He’s going to need that if he has any chance of winning. They may want to wipe the conservative element out of the party, but they want it back every four years for the election.”

“There is a greater desire on the part of members of our party,” Mr. Limbaugh added, “to destroy certain elements of our party, than there is a unified party desire to defeat Democrats.”

The editors of National Review wrote on the magazine’s Web site on Wednesday that “aside from his opposition to pork-barrel spending, there is no domestic conservative cause that McCain has taken up.” They added: “McCain can win over most conservatives, but their support is not his by right.”

Another column on National Review’s Web site specifically warned him not to “spend the bulk of the speech burnishing his conservative credentials,” noting that “he has tried doing that, and a lot of conservatives are still left cold.” Instead, the column argued that conservatives would want to hear “that he will fight for conservative ideas.”

Others caution that any hint of concession could appear to be pandering and jeopardize the reputation for independence that is at the heart of Mr. McCain’s appeal.

“Throwing people bones is not really the John McCain style,” said Jim Dyke, a veteran Republican consultant who had worked for the Giuliani campaign. “That is not why people like him.”

Mr. McCain, for his part, has already begun stepping up his efforts to remind his party’s faithful that he truly belongs among them. “I am a Republican,” he said in his victory speech on Tuesday night, repeating the phrase six times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/us/politics/07conservative.html?hp

[Greg]

The first call on Super Tuesday: Mike Huckabee wins the Repbulican West Virginia convention.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23006750/

[OscarGuy]

She's got boobs.

[Greg]

So I would not mind voting for him, especially against Hillary Clinton.

I know I'm going to regret this; but, criddic, what is it exactly you don't like about Hillary Clinton?



Edited By Greg on 1201988292

[criddic3]

I liked McCain a long time ago, but his actions and votes in the Bush Years have been atrocious. I wouldn't want him in the Oval office.

His actions under the Bush regime have branded him a suit, nothing more or less. That's not why I fear John McCain. A vote for John McCain is a vote for the man's vice president. Huckabee. Romney. Giuliani. It may be ageist to say this but the man does not look well and he does not look like he has four or eight years left in him.

I will edit my post to ask additionally, at this point can Romney run with McCain?

No. McCain may be pragmatic, but not that much. He will not choose Romney as his running mate. I think it likely that he'll go with Giuliani. They are friends and they share similar social positions. It would also be the strongest ticket the Republicans can possibly come up with to win the election. Huckabee isn't going to get it. My very conservative relatives find him off-putting despite his religious beliefs. They find Romney untrustworthy. Thompson would look older than McCain during the campaign, which would be a drag on the ticket. Unless he chooses someone completely out of left field, like Lindsay Graham or something, I see a McCain/Giuliani ticket. That would make me very happy, since I was going to vote for Giuliani to begin with.

Footnote: I didn't like McCain during the 2000 election, but although I disagree with him on some issues, he has become stronger in the areas that count for me. So I would not mind voting for him, especially against Hillary Clinton. On the Dem side I like Obama personally, but disagree with him on too many issues to vote for him.



Edited By criddic3 on 1201986607