Hucksters and half-wits: Paul trumps all

In every national election there can only be two kinds of candidates--the phony and the real.

Roughly translated these two "types" become winners, as in the case of the phonies, and losers, as in the case of those candidates who reserve some shred of genuineness.

The 2008 presidental election and its primaries are chock-full of the first kind, headlined by the Republican winner of the Iowa Caucaus, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.

The self-glossed evangelical has already begun reinventing himself in order to appeal to a much-broader electorate than he encountered in Davenport and Des Moines.

Inasmuch as he wants to be seen as the good ole' boy Baptist preacher by some, he is also taking great pains to fashion himself as a moderate on issues like national security, taxation and immigration.

On the issue of crime, however, he need not remake himself as a moderate, despite his tough talk about killing more criminals than any other candidate. He has also granted clemency to more criminals than any other candidate, including one such pariah in Arkansas who paid back Huck's gesture of good will with the subsequent rape and murder of a woman in Missouri.

Further, Huckabee is not the fiscal conservative he pretends to be. Just ask anyone who lived in Arkansas during his tenure. His record on spending for defunct social programs and his willingness to get behind expensive (if not unconstitutional) new legislation puts him in the company of John Edwards--not Ronald Reagan.

And while a win in Iowa for Huckabee doesn't exactly give him frontrunner status, it does afford for him the blessing and curse of more money in donations and more scrutiny from politicos.

My prediction for this huckster: Huckabee will alienate his tenuous evangelical base by kowtowing to moderate republicans and independents in New Hampshire, a state he will not win. Further, I do not believe he has the intestinal fortitude to defend some of the backward thinking he has subscribed to in the past, and that many Southern Baptists still subscribe to today.

In a nutshell, Huckabee is Mitt Romney without the latter day saints. He's desperate to remake himself into a true conservative while trying to wring his hands with respect to the controversial facets of his faith.

Another huckster third on medal stand


Hillary Clinton, the prohibitive favorite just one month ago, finished third in Iowa behind Senators Obama and Edwards.

Iowa voters, if history is any indication, relish their distinction as the rudder that directs presidential elections every four years; and this year, they really made history.

It is my belief that they went for Obama for no other reason than they believe him when he speaks. His counterparts, Clinton and Edwards, have the combined believability rating of the first girl dismissed from season two of the Flavor of Love.

Obama, for his part, just might spend us into oblivion in the hope of re-creating many elements of LBJ's Great Society. That's the key point--he might just do it. He believes that government that's best governs MOST.

Clinton and Edwards, on the other hand, are phony baloney career guardian class politicians--not true believers. They live in the "do as I say, not as I do" world of pandering politics. For Clinton, such vile rhetoric is in her blood; for Edwards, he just wants, more than anything, to be a hot-air spewing contradiction in terms--a rich boy populist.

Drop dead (i.e. out of the race), Fred

Fred Thompson, the fourth place Republican in Iowa, couldn't inspire a pedestrian to yield the right of way on the Autobahn. This guy is at a metamorphic stage somewhere between the Addams' Family butler and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

How he even garned 13 percent of the vote in Iowa is astounding. He entered the race late and, like anyone playing catch-up would, gangster-walked to the finish line!

Here's a guy who has about as much energy as solar power plant in the Pacific Northwest. But, in his defense, he does have an appealing voice and a face made for television to go along with an attractive and much younger wife.

Is that all it takes to be considered a legitimate candidate?

Apparently.

Give me the man with the face made for radio


Ideally, in every election there is one candidate that I can stand behind on principle. He's is the one candidate who speaks truth to power and, however unelectable he may be, makes demands on the "legitimate" candidates that no one else can.

Men like Pat Buchanan, Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, Alan Keyes, Ross Perot and their ilk garner little recognition from the popular press while enlisting legions of supporters at the lower rungs of society--people like me who are tired of an oligarchy supported by lies, pandering and political money.

Ron Paul, the libertarian Congressman from Texas, is this political season's iteration of the classic electoral foil. The candidate who inspires grassroots support from disillusioned realists from sea to shining sea.

You see, Paul tells the truth without respect to persons. With forseeable consequences, he shoots from the hip on every issue including the war in Iraq--currently the only Republican candidate in favor of an expedited pull-out.

His stance on America's financial support for Israel earns for him the disfavor of rightist hawks as well as evangelicals who may also be rightist hawks.

His stance on government bureaucracy and spending puts him at odds with the spend-happy, increasingly $green$ party of the Bush43 Republicans.

His stance on the war on drugs puts him in the company of libertarians and a bunch empty-headed ancharist college students--more acid than base.

His immigration policy alienates Republicans and Democrats alike, in that he doesn't politicize the issue in the hopes of selling out for votes to groups of disparate interests.

His position on foreign policy is at odds with most Republicans who, as evidenced by the war in Iraq and, to a much less extent, Afghanistan, are in the midst of an historic transition. Neo-conservatives have shirked the longstanding non-interventionist plank in the party, preferring to meddle in the affairs of equally sovereign nations.

These stances, and others, have compelled me to throw my meager primary vote in the state of Michigan to Ron Paul. And while I don't agree with him on every issue, even certain facets of issues I have just delineated, I do have an appreciation for statesmen with integrity.

Quotable Ron Paul

"I am just absolutely convinced that the best formula for giving us peace and preserving the American way of life is freedom, limited government, and minding our own business overseas."

"I have never met anyone who did not support our troops. Sometimes, however, we hear accusations that someone or some group does not support the men and women serving in our Armed Forces. But this is pure demagoguery, and it is intellectually dishonest."

"Legitimate use of violence can only be that which is required in self-defense."

"Our country's founders cherished liberty, not democracy."

"The moral and constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy and economic turmoil to our people."

"When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads."

Paul speech to the U.S. House of Representative