Rasmussen Alabama General Election

• John McCain 51% (60%)
• Barack Obama 36% (32%)

 

Favorable / Unfavorable (Net)

• John McCain 67% / 29% (+38%)
• Barack Obama 40% / 57% (-17%)

Survey of 500 likely voters was conducted June 26. The margin of error is +/- 4 percentage points. Results from the poll conducted May 27 are in parentheses.

McCain now leads 52% to 34% among men in Alabama and 50% to 39% among women. McCain is backed by 80% of Alabama Republicans while Obama gets support from just 67% of Democrats. When it comes to unaffiliated voters, McCain leads 51% to 28%.

While just over a quarter of voters in Alabama (27%) think McCain is too old to be president, well over half (57%) think Obama is too inexperienced for the job.

In Alabama, 72% are in favor of drilling in offshore oil wells, while 18% think it should not be allowed. Sixty-two percent (62%) believe it is likely that gas prices would come down if this practice were implemented.

Half of Alabama voters (50%) think it is more important to win the War in Iraq while 44% believe getting the troops home is the more important goal.

Forty-one percent (41%) of Alabama voters say that President Bush is doing a good or excellent job. Forty-one percent (41%) say he is doing a poor job.

Rasmussen Florida General Election

• John McCain 48% (47%)
• Barack Obama 41% (39%)

 

Favorable / Unfavorable (Net)

• John McCain 57% / 38% (+19%)
• Barack Obama 44% / 53% (-9%)

Survey of 500 likely voters was conducted June 26. The margin of error is +/- 4.5 percentage points. Results from the poll conducted June 18 are in parentheses.

40% of Florida voters have a Very Unfavorable opinion of Obama in the June 26 survey. That’s up from 29% eight days earlier before the debate over offshore drilling escalated.

McCain leads by seventeen points among men but trails by two among women. Obama has a huge lead among voters under 30 while McCain leads among those 30 and older. McCain is supported by 85% of Republicans while Obama earns the vote from 71% of Democrats. Unaffiliated voters are fairly evenly divided.

Nearly two weeks ago, McCain startled the political world by calling for offshore oil drilling, a position that was assumed to be unpopular in the key state of Florida. Since that time, both McCain and Obama have actively addressed the issue. The Democrat has made it clear that he opposes offshore drilling and doesn’t believe it will bring down the price of gas and oil.

Fifty-nine percent (59%) of Florida voters favor offshore drilling while 32% are opposed. Eighty-three percent (83%) of Republicans favor offshore drilling and unaffiliated voters favor it by a 54% to 34% margin. Democrats are more evenly divided—38% favor drilling while 50% are opposed.

Fifty-five percent (55%) of Florida voters say it’s likely that offshore drilling will reduce the price of gas and oil while 39% disagree.

If the rumors about the short shortlist are true, and if McCain really has winnowed his choices for running mate down to Mitt Romney, Rob Portman, and John Thune, I’ll be more than happy to endorse Portman for Vice President of the United States. To be fair, I like the also-rans a lot better than the shortlist. Pawlenty is interesting. Crist, interesting. Ridge, Lieberman, Palin, Cantor, and even Huckabee are all more interesting than those who have reportedly made the finals. They’re interesting because of their quirks, because of who they piss off and why, and because each is unique for lots of different reasons.

But McCain has probably decided he wants a safe choice — someone who won’t rock the boat, as it were. Hence Romney, who has probably never tried to piss a single person off in his life but seems to do a very good job at generating emotion on this blog, as well as Portman and Thune, even tempered and mild mannered in typical Midwestern fashion.

If this is the shortlist, then in my opinion, Portman makes the most sense. He’s from Ohio, a battleground state that both candidates need to win. The fact that he’s from Ohio means that he will carry himself like a guy from Ohio, and guys from Ohio tend to be very similar to guys from Michigan and guys from Pennsylvania, meaning that Portman should be able to connect to folks in the Pittsburgh and Detroit suburbs just as easily as he connects to those in his own Ohio congressional district. As Matthew Miller and others have demonstrated before, John Edwards may not have helped Kerry win North Carolina in 2004, but the fact that he was culturally a North Carolinian seemed to net Kerry a few points in North Carolina and adjacent southern states. I don’t know about any of you, but I’ll take a veep who can net McCain a few thousand votes in Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

Portman’s also a down-the-line conservative, but his focus is on economics. This will help McCain for a number of reasons. First, economic conservatives are suspicious of McCain, and they’ll have a friend in Portman. Secondly, Independents fear that McCain doesn’t have the know-how to turn around the economy, and Portman brings that expertise to the ticket. Third, Portman’s congressional record and stint at OMB would reinforce McCain’s image as a deficit hawk. Bill Clinton showed in 1992 that a bad economy doesn’t mean folks want more government spending. Clinton won that year by promising to cut spending and close the deficit, arguing that what was needed was not more spending but a stronger economy that would produce jobs for Americans (isn’t it sad that the last fiscal conservative in the White House was a Democrat?). Perhaps McCain/Portman could articulate an economic message that would be distinctly conservative but would appeal to the majority of Americans.

Finally, neither of the other two candidates on the shortlist bring nearly as much to the ticket as Portman. John Thune is a well-respected fellow and by all accounts a decent human being. But putting him on the ticket is pretty much an admission that every other potential veep will hurt the ticket, and that he’s only there because McCain can’t run alone. Romney’s pros and cons have been debated before and will be debated again. Let’s just say that I don’t think Romney will ultimately help in Michigan, and while I do think he may marginally help in the west among LDS populations, and due to his pocketbook, I still remain wary of mixing maverick Brand McCain with generic Republican Brand Romney.

I could very well be wrong about Romney. And McCain could end up picking someone that’s not even on this list. But if this is the shortlist, McCain could do a lot worse than Rob Portman.

Well, good.

The legislative pay increase issue that had consumed Bobby Jindal’s governorship these last few weeks, overshadowing his historic tax cuts and school choice initiatives and leading to not inconsiderable conservative criticism is about to be defused. Jindal has vetoed the controversial measure doubling legislative pay.

And Jindal’s tax cuts were important. But what I want to see from Jindal — and from Palin, Pawlenty, Crist, etc. — is the ability to use economic conservatism in new and inventive ways to lift working class and underclass Americans into the middle class, and to make the middle class’ life easier, while they’re at it, by creating a growth society that lifts all boats. When the fundamentals of the economy are strong, and the middle class is vibrant, budgets can be balanced and entitlements can be streamlined to the sound of thunderous applause. The fact that a Democratic president was the last guy at the national level to “get” this speaks volumes about why the Republican Party has fallen and where it needs to go. Let’s just say I’ll be paying very close attention to Jindal and the others over the course of the next few years.

Gallup Daily General Election Tracking Poll

• Barack Obama 47%
• John McCain 42%

Survey of 2,644 registered voters was conducted June 25-26 and 28, 2008. The margin of error is ±2 percentage points.

Will it be “The Big One”? J-Mart reports (per The Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol and The New Yorker writer George Packer) that Obama is poised to flip-flop on Iraq:

The next, and perhaps most significant, Obama move to the middle could be on the issue which initially sparked his campaign: Iraq.

Observers from the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol to George Packer, the New Yorker writer and author of “The Assassins Gate” can already see it coming:

Said Kristol yesterday on Fox News Sunday:

The next big flip for Obama, and this will make Brit even more astonished, will be on Iraq. He’s going to go to Iraq, meet with General Petraeus, decide the surge is working and walk back from his immediate unconditioned withdrawal.   And suddenly, it’s going to be, “Well, we’re going to be very careful, gradual.” “Honorable withdrawal,” Obama said the other day — an honorable conclusion to the Iraq war.

And Packer in this week’s New Yorker:

Obama, whatever the idealistic yearnings of his admirers, has turned out to be a cold-eyed, shrewd politician. The same pragmatism that prompted him last month to forgo public financing of his campaign will surely lead him, if he becomes President, to recalibrate his stance on Iraq. He doubtless realizes that his original plan, if implemented now, could revive the badly wounded Al Qaeda in Iraq, reënergize the Sunni insurgency, embolden Moqtada al-Sadr to recoup his militia’s recent losses to the Iraqi Army, and return the central government to a state of collapse. The question is whether Obama will publicly change course before November. So far, he has offered nothing more concrete than this: “We must be as careful getting out of Iraq as we were careless getting in.”

A different kind of politician indeed…

According to a CNS investigative report, there are fewer women employed by Sen. Barack Obama than are by Sen. John McCain, and the women who are employed by the Illinois Senator make less money than their male counterparts:

While Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has vowed to make pay equity for women a top priority if elected president, an analysis of his Senate staff shows that women are outnumbered and out-paid by men.

That is in contrast to Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s Senate office, where women, for the most part, out-rank and are paid more than men.

“Mr. McCain is an honorable man, we respect his service. But when you look at our records and our plans on issues that matter to working women, the choice could not be clearer,” Obama told the audience in New Mexico, a voter-swing state. “It starts with equal pay. Sixty-two percent of working women in America earn half or more than of their family’s income. But women still earn 77 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2008. You’d think that Washington would be united it its determination to fight for equal pay.”

On average, women working in Obama’s Senate office were paid at least $6,000 below the average man working for the Illinois senator. That’s according to data calculated from the Report of the Secretary of the Senate, which covered the six-month period ending Sept. 30, 2007. Of the five people in Obama’s Senate office who were paid $100,000 or more on an annual basis, only one — Obama’s administrative manager — was a woman.

The average pay for the 33 men on Obama’s staff (who earned more than $23,000, the lowest annual salary paid for non-intern employees) was $59,207. The average pay for the 31 women on Obama’s staff who earned more than $23,000 per year was $48,729.91. (The average pay for all 36 male employees on Obama’s staff was $55,962; and the average pay for all 31 female employees was $48,729. The report indicated that Obama had only one paid intern during the period, who was a male.)

McCain, an Arizona senator, employed a total of 69 people during the reporting period ending in the fall of 2007, but 23 of them were interns. Of his non-intern employees, 30 were women and 16 were men. After excluding interns, the average pay for the 30 women on McCain’s staff was $59,104.51. The 16 non-intern males in McCain’s office, by comparison, were paid an average of $56,628.83.

The Obama campaign did not respond to written questions submitted on the matter Thursday by Cybercast News Service.

As a side note- how many news outlets do you think will pick up on this story? And if the opposite were true, how many MSM outlets do you think would run this story about Sen. McCain?

I stand fast in my belief (shared, apparently, with Andrew Sullivan) that the decision has already been made to offer the #2 spot to Tim Pawlenty.

Predictions aside, The New York Observer’s Steve Kornacki writes that the Minnesota Governor may be a little too “white bread” to change the electoral dynamics of the 2008 election:

Just yesterday, in what amounted to an informal audition for McCain’s No. 2 slot, Pawlenty gave a flat performance on ABC’s This Week, where he was paired against Democratic Representative Rahm Emanuel in a dueling-surrogates segment. Pawlenty was faithful to the McCain’s campaign’s message of the week – that Barack Obama, unlike McCain, has never risked the ire of his own party in pursuing his political principles – but there was nothing distinct or memorable about his presentation. His arguments, his tone, his cadence and even his attempts at humor (“The Obama and Hillary Clinton rally shouldn’t have been in Unity, New Hampshire – it should have been in “Political Expediency, New Hampshire!”) were utterly formulaic.

Most voters will probably think about McCain’s vice-presidential candidate only three times: when McCain announces his choice, when the V.P. candidate addresses the Republican convention, and during the V.P. debate in the fall.

So what value would Pawlenty add to the ticket? His first opportunity for publicity – when McCain announces the pick – would be a wasted venture because no one (outside of Minnesota) knows Pawlenty and there’s nothing dramatic in his background (he’s spent his life in Minnesota politics). He’ll come across as another late-middle-aged politician with talking points.

Nor would Pawlenty be likely to excel in his convention speech or in the fall debate, the other two occasions when he’d be in position to sway mass opinion. As his appearance on ABC on Sunday showed, and as just about all of his appearances elsewhere have shown this year, he is a competent speaker and debater, fully capable of delivering exactly the kind of performance that voters would expect from someone who strikes them as a generic politician. Lloyd Bentsen, the Democrats’ ’88 V.P. pick, used his debate with Dan Quayle to transform himself from a generic-seeming politician into a player in his own right. There’s been little to suggest that we can suggest any such transformation from Pawlenty, who struggled to stand out on Sunday against Rahm Emanuel.

SurveyUSA Massachusetts General Election

• Barack Obama 53%
• John McCain 40%

Survey of 607 likely voters was conducted June 25-27. The margin of error is +/- 4.1 percentage points.

I have been one of the most strident proponents of the “Veeps have very little impact” school of thought-and I do believe that this line of thinking is correct for the most part. However, that does not mean that the Veep selection has no impact and that we should refrain from looking back to learn from the choices that worked out for the best. Simply because there are no “gamechangers” in the field does not mean that Sen. McCain cannot gain a great deal if he chooses wisely. For my part, I believe there are two selections that have the potential of helping McCain across the electoral finish line come November: Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.

Selecting Gov. Romney as the Veep would accomplish several important things. First of all, Sen, McCain would gain a multitude of enthusiastic volunteers that would be of great help in closing the enthusiasm gap with the Democrats. Secondly, as Mike Allen’s article mentions, Gov. Romney has the potential to raise the kind of money that can level the playing field with Obama. Mitt has also been vetted, is more than ready for primetime, and has the resume, charisma, and gravitas that will enable voters to imagine him being able to step in as President from the get go. Mitt’s Michigan roots are a benefit as well.

McCain has stated that it is important to him to look back at the Vice Presidential picks that have worked out for the best to guide him in his selection. I would suggest that President Reagan’s selection of George H.W. Bush in 1980 is perhaps the best model in which to base his selection. President Reagan’s selection of Bush served to unify the Republican Party’s Conservative and Moderate Wings and was a signal to Bush’s primary supporters that they would have a place in a Ronald Reagan led Republican Party. It would be quite hypocritical for the Rush Limbaugh’s, Laura Ingraham’s, National Reviews, etc…, of the Conservative punditocracy, who enthusiastically supported Romney during the later stages of the primary fight, to withhold their support from the ticket when McCain has made this concession.

Mike Huckabee brings important benefits to the table as well. Huck’s Army is made up of many of the foot soldiers that brought us victory in 2000 & 2004. Want these folks back in the game, answering phones, knocking on doors, etc…? Then select Mike Huckabee.

Huckabee would also completely defuse Obama’s Evangelical/Religious voter outreach, and as we have have seen from the SurveyUSA polls, Huck appears to appeal to a certain segment of Democrats who are reluctant to pull the lever for Obama.

So the bottom line is this… There are really only two candidates that can bring significant benefits to McCain come November: Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee; and (demogogues aside) there are few voters who would be open to voting for McCain that would be turned off by either of their selections (especially if Obama ends up choosing a conventional liberal such as Joe Biden).

So the tiebreaker for me is this: why go with the candidate who campaigned on blowing up the Reagan Coalition and touted the end of the three-legged stool of Conservatism when you can choose one the most eloquent advocates of the American Conservative Movement and all of its underlying principles?

If it is truly down to Romney, Portman, or Thune, choose Mitt Romney. It’s a smart choice.

Here’s the latest from Matt’s Electoral Map Update… as usual, all the public polls over the past month have been averaged together to get the results shown on the map.

This map leads to a landslide victory for Obama, 344-194 over McCain.

Some other sites’ projections:

• 270towin.com - Obama 344, McCain 194; 98.2% chance of Obama victory in November
• fivethirtyeight.com - Obama 313.5, McCain 224.5
• electoral-vote.com - Obama 317, McCain 194, Tied 27
• RealClearPolitics - Obama 304, McCain 234
• The Hedgehog Report (davidwissing.com) - Obama 317, McCain 221
• Election Projection - Obama 338, McCain 200
• Intrade - 65.1% chance of Obama victory in November

Say it ain’t so, Mac, say it ain’t so.

Surprising many Republican insiders, Mitt Romney is at the top of the vice-presidential prospect list for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). But lack of personal chemistry could derail the pick.

“Romney as favorite” is the hot buzz in Republican circles, and top party advisers said the case is compelling.

Campaign insiders say McCain plans to name his running mate very shortly after Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) does, as part of what one campaign planner called a “bounce-mitigation strategy.”

The Democratic convention is in late August, a week ahead of the Republicans convention. That means McCain can size up the opposing ticket before locking in his own.

One of the chief reasons the Massachusetts governor is looking so attractive is his ability to raise huge amounts of money quickly through his former business partners and from fellow members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the Mormons.

McCain sources tell Politico that they believe Romney could raise $50 million in 60 days. One close Romney adviser said it could even be $60 million. …

But there’s one big problem: Despite the buddy-picture choreography of a McCain-Romney campaign swing, McCain remains far short of enamored of Romney.

And McCain sources say he’ll pick his vice presidential candidate based more on ability to govern than ability to help in the election.

So two other names are in the top tier:

—Rob Portman, a former congressman from Ohio, member of House leadership, U.S. Trade Ambassador and White House budget director.

—Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), who would delight conservatives and is at the top of the list of the party’s prospects for the presidential race in 2012 or 2016. He was described to Politico by a McCain confidant as a possible “compromise” if the senator can’t stomach picking Romney.

There is no better way to make sure that you are part of history in St. Paul this September than becoming a volunteer for Republican National Convention.

The RNC is looking for a total of 10,000 volunteers to help welcome delegates at airports and hotels, assist with transportation logistics, work with security teams, supporting convention operations at the Xcel Energy Center, as well as providing guest services and other hosting activities at CivicFest in the Minneapolis Convention Center.

Hosting the Republican National Convention is a once in a lifetime honor for our beloved Twin Cities. It is incumbent upon all Minnesota Republicans to do whatever we can to help make our convention a success.

Please take a moment to head on over to the Minneapolis/St. Paul 2008 Host Committee’s site and volunteer to help our convention become all it can be.

Show your pride in being a Minnesota Republican and make memories that will last a lifetime.

Rasmussen Georgia General Election

• John McCain 53% (51%)
• Barack Obama 43% (41%)
• Bob Barr 1%

 

Favorable / Unfavorable (Net)

• John McCain 60% / 36% (+24%)
• Barack Obama 47% / 51% (-4%)

Survey of 500 likely voters was conducted June 26. The margin of error is +/- 4 percentage points. Results from the poll conducted June 4 are in parentheses.

Gallup Daily General Election Tracking Poll

• Barack Obama 46%
• John McCain 42%

Survey of 2,644 registered voters was conducted June 25-26 and 28, 2008. The margin of error is ±2 percentage points.

Registered voters’ preferences had been evenly divided in the prior three Gallup Poll Daily tracking releases. Obama has now pushed slightly back ahead after a stronger showing in Saturday’s polling, mirroring the slight advantage he has held for much of June. The polling was the first Gallup had conducted following the “Unity” rally in which Obama and former Democratic nomination rival Hillary Clinton publicly campaigned together.

The presidential race has been close since Gallup began tracking general election preferences in March. The largest lead for either candidate has been just seven percentage points, for Obama after Clinton decided to suspend her campaign.

Earlier today, DaveG penned a piece suggesting that Bobby Jindal was veering off into Huckabee territory (fiscal liberalism, with a dash of religious mania), and now the only true three-legged stool conservative ready to lead the GOP into the future is Sarah Palin. While I respect his analysis, I can’t help but disagree. First of all, Jindal has not signed into law the legislative pay increase. At worst he’ll let it become law without his signature. And it’s looking increasingly like, if only to save his reputation, he’ll veto the bill if the legislature doesn’t back away. But, I think it’s probably instructive to consider whether or not supporting this legislative pay increase is a big government idea. But, before I get into the meat of the argument, let me just state that I find the idea that legislators can vote for pay increases that take effect before their terms ends extremely unsavory. Moving on. First of all, it is emphatically a conservative principle that pay should adjust with the market, with performance, etc. Pay for Louisiana’s legislators is set to increase by 133% from 16k to roughly 38k. Now 16k is an awfully low salary, even for part-time employee, and it was set 28 years ago. The average job pays more then double what it paid 28 years ago, with inflation at roughly 3-4% a year. In this context, a 133% increase does not seem so outlandish. But, there are some who’d contend that Government ought to somehow different from the private sector. Legislators and other government officials are, so the line goes, expected to serve the public out of the sheer goodness of their hearts. Oddly enough, this is thought to be a conservative principle in some circles, but there’s something profoundly unusual about a conservatism that demands that certain individuals sacrifice, in the service of the public good, their material prosperity. I suspect this is an example of fiscal conservatism run amok, i.e “I’m so dedicated to fiscal conservatism, I’m willing to adopt collectivism”.

Now, to be sure, their other compensations, beyond the merely financial, that go along with government service. Power and influence are rather serious compensations. Some level of fame perhaps. These have to be factored into the equation. No one’s suggesting that Government officials should be paid exactly what they could be making elsewhere in the private sector. But, they should be adequately compensated for their services, and these legislators haven’t been. I’d be content with either a veto of the bill, and a renegotiated bill with a slightly smaller increase, which will only go into effect after the next state election. I’d also be relatively content if Jindal simply let the bill pass into law. Neither course strikes me as particularly “liberal”.

Now let me address DaveG’s next contention, that Jindal’s support for a law that gives localities the option to introduce supplementary material questioning evolution. Let’s assume that DaveG is quite right, and that Intelligent Design (or Creationism) is unscientific and almost certainly false. I’m not particularly interested in contesting either proposition. Even with this strong framing of the issue, I find myself relatively unimpressed with the complaints from conservative ID opponents. Currently, large portions of our nation’s schools are teaching that Herbert Hoover was a staunch fiscal conservative, who worsened the depression because he failed to intervene, and we were only truly removed from the muck when FDR chartered a bold New Deal. You often hear the term “laisezz-faire” bandied about in reference to Hoover. This is line chanted in high school’s across the country. I even heard a history teacher say, recently, “Hoover supported the Laisezz-faire economic policies sort of like McCain, while Obama supports the FDR approach”.

As history, this is atrocious. Egregious. Not only wasn’t Hoover a staunch fiscal conservative, but he was vocally opposed to laisezz-faire economics. Hoover intervened a ton to try to stave off the Great Depression, especially towards the tail end of his presidency and FDR secretly modeled much of the New Deal on Hoover’s policies (though, he admittedly took them farther). Nor does the history often pick up that we were still in a Depression, nearly 9 years after FDR was elected, when World War II began. We’re also often taught that Nazism and Communism were diametrically opposed and that Hitler bitterly opposed socialism. Again, as history, this is ghastly. Hitler was opposed to Communism because it was, in theory, a thoroughly international project, while Hitler’s was explicitly nationalistic, and because it eventually predicted a withering away of the state (again, something Hitler wasn’t likely to favor). It is the height of dishonesty to teach that Hitler’s distaste for Communism was largely rooted in an opposition to the economic socialism. It is a fiction perpetuated, I suspect, to avoid placing all of the 20th century’s bad actors on the political left. Why aren’t the conservative ID opponents up in arms about such institutionalized lies being taught in public schools?

Ultimately, I think there are two reasons for the disconnect. First, religion is seen as something unique in American life. It has a pivotal place in our history, which makes people understandably wary when it seems to, even in the most tangential ways, enter the political arena. But, I think this wariness often goes too far. For instance, it is inexcusable that a child can leave high school without reading about St. Paul. As a sheer historical figure, his importance is unprecedented. But, while the high school student might be found memorizing the eight-fold path, they’re unlikely to be given more then a passing reference to Paul. Americans treat religion (especially Christianity) with a hypersensitivity that has not always reflected well on us. And second, science is treated as something apart. If someone butchers history or literature, well at least that’s debatable, and anyway where’s the real harm? If someone butchers science, then our entire world will come crashing down upon us. In a sense, this is certainly correct. If I’m an engineer, and instead of following established physics principles, I design a plane in a way that seems aesthetically pleasing, things are sure to go badly. Errors in science often have enormous, obvious implications.

But, I wonder if we’re not doing a disservice to history and English and philosophy, and those categories that aren’t so “hard” and are presumed to be broadly debatable. Is it really an intellectually rigorous viewpoint to insist that, after all, reasonable people can disagree about whether Hoover favored government intervention? And are the implications of such a misreading really so slight? Could not a student, presented with such “knowledge”, come to the conclusion that fiscal conservatism was the problem and government intervention the solution? Where does that viewpoint, widely disseminated, take a society? Where does it leave it? And are crashing planes really much more significant? Is the crumbling edifice of a society preferable to the crumbling edifice of a building?

But, beyond this, it’s not even clear that Intelligent Design is that sort of science. If a scientist misunderstands thermodynamics, he’ll ruin cars. If a scientist mistakenly adopts intelligent design, he’ll ruin paper trying to articulate “hogwash”. Perhaps he’ll persuade others to do the same. But, there’s no reason to believe he, or his students, will end lives or dash scientific pursuits more broadly. Especially given the sorts of things ID and evolution are; ideas that potentially go to the very core of our existence. A man who adopts ID, in the face of evidence for evolution, does so, in part, because he thinks his world view depends upon it. It’s a limited mistake with limited implications (incredibly limited, in this case, because evolution and ID are rarely involved in applied science). I’ve never heard of a man deciding that energy can be created and destroyed because he feels his world view depends upon it. He’d be a strange creature indeed. But, he’d also be a rather tame one. I’d keep him away from my cars, and hope he could find some science to do that made sense. I wouldn’t throw a hissy-fit, and proclaim the end of the world. Some will, quite rightly, point out that a failure to address history properly doesn’t justify a similar failure in science. Duly noted. But, before you toss well-meaning people out of a movement, maybe you should consider that you’re overreacting a bit, that ID isn’t a monumental threat to our national well-being, and that you’ve stood tacitly by as schools propagated far more dangerous falsehoods.

Wesley Clark this morning on CBS’s “Face the Nation”

 ”I don’t think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president.”

Take a look at the telling video, most notably from 0:21 to 2:15:

You have got to be kidding me, right? Clark on McCain: “He hasn’t held executive responsibility.” That may stand as one of the strangest things an Obama supporter could hit McCain on. Have you taken a look at your candidate’s resume, Mr. Clark? What executive responsibility has he held? As a former general, you should be ashamed that you are supporting one of the least qualified presidential candidates in American history. With so much at stake when it comes to national security, how do you, Mr. Clark, support a man who has not admitted the success of the surge because of his own political ambitions.

Give me a man who chooses country before party and self.

Go ahead Barack, put Clark on the ticket…what a laugh.

Update: A Clarification- I do not believe that McCain’s military service qualifies him for the Presidency. I do believe, however, that Clark is not acknowledging the fact that McCain gained valuable lessons of war and leadership in Vietnam and that it is hypocritical of him to criticize McCain for running only as a former service member when the candidate Clark supports, Barack Obama, is a champion of the mysterious policies of “Hope” and “Change.”

After eight years of railing against President Bush as a big-government religionist who destroyed classical conservatism, political pundit Andrew Sullivan has found the cure for what ails him: Barack Obama, big-government religionist.

Obama has moved far more to the position of the Christianists than the Christianists have moved to his. And that gives Obama a great opportunity electorally. I say this with reluctance. Obama’s comfort with religious politics, and his connection of the Gospels with the redistributionist state, are far closer to the Bush-Gerson position than my more secular preference. But this is very clever politics and Dobson has taken the bait.

This is one of the more fascinating aspects of this race: Obama is a more appealing candidate to moderate Christianists than McCain is. And if Obama can break through the propaganda and reach the under-40s among evangelicals, we’re talking about a landslide.

Andrew and I have both spent the last few years calling for an end to the unholy mix of Caesar’s kingdom with God’s. Apparently, that’s only something Andrew feels strongly about when said mix doesn’t positively impact his candidate. Still, Andrew and most other pundits are missing the obvious. Of course there were politically casual religious voters who voted for Bush in 2000 and in 2004 because he was the “religious guy” in the race. But for every such voter, there was likely a politically casual secular voter who didn’t vote for Bush because his religiosity freaked them out. For every Bush voter that selects Obama simply because he’s the most overtly religious candidate on the ballot this year, there will be a Kerry voter who pulls the lever for McCain because his religious views are the most muffled. For every religious liberal, there’s a secular conservative.

If I were advising McCain, I’d recommend that he use Obama’s pandering to the religious as yet another opportunity to draw parallels between Obama ‘08 and Bush ‘00. Like Bush, Obama clearly believes that it is his duty as a Christian to run a Gospel-based government, centered around the Golden Rule, whatever the cost. Is this the sort of person that Americans want in charge of the federal budget? Or entitlement reform? Or immigration policy? Do you really trust Barack “Ned Flanders” Obama to make the calls that are in America’s interest when faced with military actions that may lead to civilian casualties, but that are essential to victory in the war against Islamism? Do we really want another president whose sole political philosophy is that government should “do good?”

The Boston Globe highlights McCain’s history in overseeing defense spending and industry contracts. While forever championing a strong national defense, the article points out the Senator’s “legendary” battles with the Pentagon and some of its more controversial projects:

WASHINGTON - In more than two decades in Congress, Senator John McCain has earned a reputation as a leading defense hawk, using his perch on the powerful Armed Services Committee and his war-hero status to advocate for a stronger military.

But in the plush office towers of some of America’s leading defense companies, the recipients of billions of dollars of Pentagon contracts each year, the presumptive Republican nominee for president has another label: persona non grata.

For even as McCain has railed against cuts in defense spending and sought to increase soldier benefits and operating funds, he has been equally dogged in his efforts to cancel some of the industry’s most prized weapons contracts and micromanage others that he believes are wasteful and come at the expense of more pressing needs, according to a Globe review of his Senate record.

The result: Despite McCain’s national security credentials and staunch support for continuing the war in Iraq, he has only slightly exceeded presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama in campaign contributions from the defense industry, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The latest figures released by the Federal Election Commission show that McCain has raised $301,284 and Obama has raised $300,403 from employees who gave more than $200 and, in McCain’s case, contributions from political action committees.

Industry officials and defense analysts said McCain’s low level of financial support reflects deep anxiety among arms manufacturers at the prospect of a President McCain with the power to upend the Pentagon procurement budget. Some leading Wall Street analysts have recently cautioned clients that a McCain presidency could eat into some of their profits from big-ticket weapon systems.

Government watchdog groups and both Republicans and Democrats in Congress credit McCain for helping to save taxpayer dollars and redirect funds to more pressing concerns. But others say his desire to play the role of maverick has also led him to overreach, at times seeking to apply contract changes or reforms to numerous programs without a full assessment of the impact. His abrasive personal style has also alienated many in the arms industry, according to several executives who recalled meetings with McCain in which he browbeat them.

…

McCain’s weapons oversight efforts appear to stem from a deep-seated suspicion of the power wielded by large arms manufacturers and their lobbyists. To justify his scrutiny, he has cited the farewell address of President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1961, in which he warned about the influence of the “military-industrial complex.”

“Eisenhower is rolling over in his grave,” McCain told a 2003 meeting with representatives from government watchdog groups and staff members to discuss the Air Force’s leasing deal with Boeing, according to two participants in the meeting.

Over the years, McCain has taken on ships, aircraft, and other equipment developed by defense companies for all the military branches. He has voted against annual defense appropriations bills that he believed were too accommodating to industry interests, such as one in 2000 that he said was “so full of wasteful spending and smoke and mirrors gimmickry that what good lies within is overwhelmed by the bad.”

McCain is one of the few Republicans that recognizes that we are no longer fighting the Cold War. There will be no standing armies awaiting our arrival in the Middle East or anywhere else. The Pentagon should be cautious not to place all its eggs in one basket by bolstering air and sea defense systems. We must enhance our knowledge of insurgency tactics and develop ways to hold and gain the trust of local populations.

I strongly applaud John McCain for his efforts to reduce wasteful and unnecessary defense spending during his Senate term. I believe that this issue will resonate with the American people and stand out as a reason why McCain can be trusted to efficiently manage government agencies and Pentagon expenditures. The campaign should use this evidence alongside the Senator’s calls for a troop surge as early as 2003 and his doubts of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to demonstrate to the electorate that McCain has produced reform, while Obama has only dreamed of it. In fact, there are some strong parallels here to Harry Truman’s leading role in a WWII-era Senate committee that investigated military waste and mismanagement.

SurveyUSA Virginia General Election

• Barack Obama 49% (49%)
• John McCain 47% (42%)

Survey of 630 likely voters was conducted June 20-22. The margin of error is +/- 4 percentage points. Results from the poll conducted May 16-18 are in parentheses.

Looks like SurveyUSA is following in the footsteps of Newsweek and the LA Times:

• Among Republicans: McCain 86%; Obama 12%
• Among Democrats: Obama 79%; McCain 19%
• Among Independents: McCain 49%; Obama 43%

So, how on Earth is Obama leading in this survey?

• Party Affiliation: Democrat 43%; Republican 31%; Independent 23%

In the 2004 presidential election, the breakdown by party was: 39% Republican; 35% Democrat; 26% Independent.

That’s the case if columnist and political pundit Kathleen Parker is to be believed. Thanks to the wonderful world of time shifting, I was able to catch last Sunday’s edition of The Chris Matthews Show today and caught the tidbit about Crist during the “scoops and predictions” segment of the show. During this segment, Andrew Sullivan reported that Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty still tops the McCain list, and Sullivan believes that the choice has probably already been made. Parker refuted this claim by putting forth her own intel which held that Crist is inching his way back up the shortlist due to one consideration: Florida. Team McCain believes that Crist could help take Florida out of play once and for all, thus raising McCain’s electoral floor and narrowing the battleground.

Politically, it does make a great deal of sense for McCain to keep his Electoral College floor as high as possible. Because of the way electoral votes are allocated, Obama could win the popular vote easily and lose the Electoral College to McCain should the senator from Illinois repeat his dismal primary performance among working class whites in the Upper South and Great Lakes States. By taking Florida out of play, McCain limits possible red state defections to seven states: Missouri, Virginia, Iowa, Ohio, Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico. The geographical concentration of these states into two distinct regions would make multi-state campaigning easier on the part of a cash-strapped Team McCain, and would force Obama to make inroads into the very sorts of voters who are most suspicious of him in order to win. In this scenario, McCain could simply spend the entirely of the fall campaign jumping back and forth between Missouri, Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, knowing that whoever wins the majority of those five states probably wins the election. And we all saw how far Obama’s millions went in places like Ohio and Pennsylvania during primary season.

Crist is a generally center-right Republican who annoys conservatives for not being strictly doctrinaire on either fiscal or social issues but who is generally hard-right on law and order and who has moved right recently on key issues like energy exploration. His heterodoxies aren’t deal-breakers for most base conservatives and may actually reinforce the notion of a maverick GOP ticket.

Rasmussen Arizona General Election

• John McCain 49%
• Barack Obama 40%

 

Favorable / Unfavorable (Net)

• John McCain 60%/ 36% (+24%)
• Barack Obama 47% / 49% (-2%)

Survey of 500 likely voters was conducted June 25. The margin of error is +/- 4.5 percentage points.

McCain leads by twenty-seven points among men but trails by six among women. The Arizona Senator is supported by 81% of Republicans and enjoys a twelve point lead among unaffiliated voters. Obama gets the vote from 75% of Democrats.

Twenty-seven percent (27%) say McCain is too old to be President while 50% say Obama is too inexperienced.

Forty-seven percent (47%) say it is more important for the U.S. to win the war in Iraq than to get the troops home. A virtually identical number—46%–disagree and say that getting the troops home is more important.

Sixty-one percent (61%) say that offshore oil drilling should be allowed and just 29% disagree.

Over the past few months, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal has been marketed as the next great conservative leader — a true uniter who would excite conservatives of all stripes and who would lead America towards a red dawn as a highly intelligent, uber-educated movement conservative of Indian descent. Unfortunately, the political realities on the ground may not back up this assertion.

Upon closer examination, Gov. Jindal appears to be more similar to Mike Huckabee than Ronald Reagan, yet another piece of evidence that old-fashioned “Reagan conservatism” may not be viable fully three decades after the Reagan Revolution. While every GOP governor in the country would like to lay claim to Reagan’s three-legged stool of economic, social, and defense conservatism, only one truly does, and she has a newborn to tend to. The rest of the aspiring Reagans either go wobbly on fiscal issues, social issues, or both. The result is that while in the 1990s we had lots of very popular three-legged stool conservatives in the nation’s state houses, such as John Engler, Frank Keating, and Tommy Thompson, most of today’s prominent GOP executives are cafeteria conservatives…or not conservatives at all. We’re now the party of Michael Bloomberg, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Tim Pawlenty, Charlie Crist, and Mike Huckabee. I would argue that this is more a sign of the times than a failure on the part of any of these men. Maybe Reagan conservatism is simply well past its freshness date.

In any case, since coming to office, Jindal has done exactly what I suggested he refrain from doing in order to build a national profile: he’s thrown down the gauntlet as a culture warrior while backing down on fiscal issues. Good politics for the Mississippi River region and for the deep south? Judging from Huckabee’s success, probably. But we all saw how Huckabee-style politics played this year with the governor’s tepid showings in states outside the south, and with the Huckaboom always supposedly just days away from filtering into non-evangelical populations (it never did).

Behold, the broken campaign promise. Jindal recently signed into law a massive legislative pay increase in Louisiana after specifically promising not to do so on the campaign trail. I guess a 123 percent raise is justified given today’s gas prices. Or something.

But never fear, Gov. Jindal is not the sort of politician that will back down on all of his principles. Especially when those principles involve religion. Indeed, Jindal has just signed into law a measure that will allow public schools to teach something other than science in science class. Local school boards can now approve “supplemental materials” for schools to include in discussions of evolution. Something tells me those materials won’t involve the scientific method (because if they did, they’d already be there) and will involve lots of concepts that belong in philosophy, theology, and religion classes, not in science class.

With these actions, Gov. Jindal is off to a very Huckabeean start. But that should probably have been anticipated. Jindal was always more of a culture warrior than most of us secular conservatives liked to believe when we saw a non-Caucasian, young, smart conservative who could actually form coherent sentences make his way onto the stage. And he was always less interested in fiscal issues than economic conservatives would have preferred. He voted for the tax-hiking, pork-laden farm bill and against the Central American Free Trade Agreement. Meanwhile, he continues to support a ban on abortion with no exceptions, and has written articles on how Catholicism is the true Christianity and the true path to God. If you thought Huckabee’s women-should-submit language was unfairly taken out of context, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

So let’s just say that this skeptic remains especially skeptical of Jindal, who seems at this point to be an economic moderate and hard-right social conservative more in line with the former governor of Arkansas than with the former governor of California. If this trend continues, I suspect that economic conservatives, moderates, and Independents will ensure that a future Jindal presidential campaign has the same fate as Huckabee’s, and once again, a certain segment of the Republican base just won’t be able to figure out why.

By Mike DeVine, an original contributor at Race42008.com

Then was Jesus led up of the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. Jesus said unto him, it is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. [The Gospel of Matthew 4:1, 6-7 KJV ]

We are told that the presumptive Democratic Party nominee, Barack Obama, threatens to peel off a significant portion of the Evangelical Christian vote that has been the largest and most reliable voting block critical to Republican Party victories in five of the last seven presidential elections. It is said that so many of these voters are alienated from the GOP’s champion in 2008, John McCain, that a large percentage will not only stay home, but that millions will actually cast a vote for the more “overtly Christian” candidate.

Yes, McCain was caught on tape in 2000 telling California republicans that America was not ready for the reversal of the 1973 court decision making abortion legal nationwide, and, when caught, lashed out at two prominent evangelical televangelists. Since then, Senator McCain has voted to confirm two pro-life justices of the Supreme Court. Senator Obama not only opposed Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito, but also bemoaned a court ruling upholding a federal law prohibiting the killing of babies whose legs dangle towards Earth outside the womb while their skulls remain inside the scissor-accessible vaginas. Moreover, Obama opposes laws that require that born alive infants who survive botched abortions not be drowned or otherwise snuffed out while still attached to their moms via umbilical chord.

Obama, the sweet, compassionate, Jesus loving Christian formerly a member of the “Minister” Louis Farrakhan honoring, Trinity United against God damned America, whose words below were heard in 2006 above the din of his 20-year pew-parked butt in Rev. Wrights’ church, saying:

Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America’s population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.

And even if we did have only Christians within our borders, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s? Which passages of Scripture should guide our public policy? Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is ok and that eating shellfish is abomination? How about Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount – a passage so radical that it’s doubtful that our Defense Department would survive its application?

Funny how a “once” (but no longer, according to Obama) Christian nation got so diverse, isn’t it? Of course, we never were “just” a Christian nation. What we were, and still are, is a nation founded by mostly Christian believers, many of whom came here to escape religious persecution, and whose founders, while not all orthodox believers, nevertheless embraced the Judeo-Christian values of the Bible as superior to all values on Earth.

Now why, pray tell, would we want to ditch the values that allowed Obama’s precious value of “diversity” to flourish. Have the Islamic values overseas fostered diversity over there or do most of those nations make it a capital offense to say the name of the Apostle Paul?

Whose Christianity would we teach in schools?

Well, how about whatever version each local school prefers, rather than have Obama’s superhero oligarch lawyers on the Supreme Court impose a supposed valueless secular religion on children that alienates them from their parents by equating the utterance of their God’s name in science class with the F-word? And in Chicago, why y’all could still teach your brand of a black Christ whose Pop damns America and blames all the world’s problems on greedy white people in audaciously hopeful sermons.

Obama, you mock Holy Scripture that Christ came to fulfill when you conflate old Jewish laws meant for a people under siege much like an army in which strict discipline is essential to survival.

And while you must understand that the Sermon on the Mount delivered by Jesus “render unto Caesar” Christ was not meant for government, let’s explore what an application of same to American armed forces would reveal, shall we deacon?

Will our blessed forces serving today in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world and those that served from 1776-yesterday:

That mourn, be comforted?
That are merciful, obtain mercy?
That make peace, be called the children of God?
That are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, inherit the kingdom of heaven?
That are reviled and persecuted have all manner of evil falsely said against them, be rewarded with eternal life?

Christ laid down his life for you Obama. Hundreds of thousands of DOD employees have as well. Their families mourn for the fallen among them, as well as the fallen on 911 and their fallen comrades in arms in Iraq and the fallen innocent Iraqis before and after the liberators of the red, white and blue arrived without any tricked up light blue comic seals.

Has the United States and its military been merciful in the Argonne, Paris, The Philippines, Korea, Berlin, Vietnam, Bosnia, Baghdad and Kabul? Surely, and in spades.

Did protestors “make” peace in Vietnam or Cambodia? Communists in Dallas or Poland? Jihadists in RFK’s Los Angeles or US embassies in Africa? Community organizers anywhere on Earth?

No!

Can any of the above survive the application of Mountain sermons better than the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force or Marines?

NO!

Yet, who made peace in Europe twice, freed the slaves of the now Reagan-killed Soviet Union, and mostly now in ancient Babylon?

Who actually “makes” peace but those that vanquish the mass slaughterers, whether they be anti-Christian Kaisers, Nazis, Communists or Taliban?

The armed forces, mostly Christian soldiers of the United States of America have made more peace than all the prize winners of the Nobel variety combined and multiplied by a trillion!

Shall DeVine gamecock dignify the mocking of scripture any longer? Not much longer, but just long enough to tackle Satan’s favorite modern day liberal mock of the past 40+ years, i.e.

38: Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth:
39: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
40: And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloke also.
41: And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain.
42: Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away.
43: Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy.
44: But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and