Two of my favorite local center-right bloggers – Jeff Kouba and Jay Reding – write posts I’d like to have written myself.<\/p>\n
Reding<\/a>:<\/p>\n Obama, to his credit, does signal a break from the Clintonite school of politics which have corrupted American politics for years now. The \u201ccampaign war room\u201d and the politics of personal destruction that marked the Clinton years hardly helped America\u2019s politics. Getting rid of that would be a step in the right direction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And Obama as “The New Carter”…\u00a0<\/p>\n The problem with Obama is that he\u2019s winning on some vague notion of \u201cchange\u201d\u2014while doing little to describe what direction he\u2019d take the country. Obama would be a formidable challenge for the GOP, but ultimately he doesn\u2019t have the executive experience needed to be a successful President. He also votes like a doctrinaire liberal, which undercuts his ability to reach across party lines. He would do better than Edwards, but in the end his appeal is largely skin deep.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Place your bets…:<\/p>\n The worst case scenario is an Edwards\/Huckabee match, in which case I\u2019ll say to hell with it and end up voting for Ron Paul just out of spite for such big government paternalists. Ideally, I\u2019d like to see an Obama\/Thompson contest\u2014Obama\u2019s idealism is a nice contrast to the general pessimism of the Democratic Party, and Fred Thompson has the strongest grasp of policy. An Obama\/McCain race would also be interesting for much the same reason.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I’ll differ from Jay here:\u00a0 the worst <\/em>case is an Obama\/Hucker match; the media has carefully groomed Huckabee as America’s Second Choice against any <\/em>Democrat, and the’ll call that marker in in spades.\u00a0 And I’m nowhere near ready to count Rudy out of this.\u00a0 But I agree; Thompson’s surge makes me want to hope “he’s just been pacing <\/em>himself for the past six month”.\u00a0<\/p>\n And then there’s McCain; as I noted a few weeks ago, he’s so <\/em>close to being acceptable.\u00a0<\/p>\n Cut Speech Rationing loose, JMac, and you could get yourself a supporter.\u00a0 Have your people call my people.<\/p>\n