Submitted by Alfred J. Lemire, Dec 20, 2007 16:30

Which Republican Presidential candidate is electable? Of that candidate or candidates, who is most likely to advocate and implement policies most beneficial to the United States internally and externally? I can't attempt to answer those questions. However, I do know that John MCain has several drawbacks that put his candidacy into question, most notably a choleric temperament and blind pigheadedness. His position on campaign finance reform put him in the same class as Vladimir Putin and other autocrats eager to crush free political speech, for whatever bad reasons. Sen. McCain, perhaps because of a less than first-rate mind, doesn't appear to have a clue as to how public opinion is shaped. He has yet to concede that his horrible law comes close to bashing National Right to Life and its state adjuncts into nothingness by barring political ads in newspapers shortly before elections. Oh, he's talked about the power of "money" to influence elections, but his terrible McCain-Feingold monstrosity, foolishly signed into law by a second-rate President, had perhaps an unintended consequence of making certain ads impossible. What was especially horrific about that blundering law was its failure to take into account that newspapers and others who don't have to take out ads to get their messages into newspapers are free to propagandize 365 days a year. Are there any scientific reasons for questioning the Chicken Little contentions that humans are to blame, even primarily to blame, for alleged "global warming"? One cannot tell from articles fed the nation by the New York Times News Service and the AP. Did two scientific teams recently disclose they had found means to create pluripotent stem cells without using embryos? Was one of the teams' leaders the very man who first developed stem cells, which ought to give him a tad of scientific credibility? Yes, and the press only barely reported the findings, without any effort to query whether huge state bond issues, resting on the highly debatable notion that embryonic stem cells hold great promise, make any sense at all. When Massachusetts' Supreme Judicial Court, by a 4 to 3 vote, discovered a right to homosexual marriage in the state's constitution, the Telegram & Gazette in Worcester, Mass., never included a report that disclosed what the wording was that led to that judicial discovery, nor did it ever print any portion of the majority or minority rulings--but it did run perhaps a dozen quite long features on how much homosexual marriage was wanted and how great and fine were homosexual couples who got married. Newspaper staffers believe certain things to be true which, as it happens, are too often demonstrably false or not in society's best interest and good luck on getting facts and arguments into the newspapers questioning what journas imagine is good, true, or beautiful. The strictures of McCain-Feingold were just great for newspapers, so, violating all journalistic history and tendencies to propagandize for free speech, newspaper editorial boards swooned over McCain-Feingold. That horror is sufficient reason strenuously to oppose a McCain candidacy. As to the war, he was corrrect: Rumsfeld should have been kicked out of the SecDef's office in 1993. Paul Bremer and Ricardo Sanchez both should have found work somewhere in Texas, perhaps defending our border from people desperate for jobs and income. Democrats, as we know, opposed a surge; they'd have opposed General Grant in the Civil War. Come to think of it, Democrats did oppose him. The party hasn't learned much in nearly 150 years. Sen. McCain was correct on one very important policy, but one can't support someone who privileges newspapers like the New York Times or magazines like TIME. Mike Huckabee? Please. He would be the worst VP in American history, not excluding John Nance Garner. He surely would provide no arguments favoring the less aggrandizing, low-tax government for which many yearn and which is not impossible nor impracticable. The man has a good heart, but not a mind commensurate with it and, as he has demonstrated, may be OK on social issues, but is exchangeable with Teddy Kennedy on most other government policies and programs. Mitt Romney is not the best possible candidate, but he's the best in either major party. (Michael Bloomberg, who shares a religion with Al Gore, with a belief in "global warming," would be worse than anyone now running, not excluding Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul.) Among other factors, one ought to keep in mind that a President has to run a government with millions of people. Real administrative and management abilities are highly desirable, as is a talent for leadership, and Mr. Romney offers the best promise for America in all three areas. Why his name was notably missing from Mr. Blackwell's op-ed, one does not know. But nobody's perfect: I haven't mentioned Rudolf Giuliani. And he's definitely not perfect.

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