New Hampshire Primary Running Thread

Oh, lord. A new voice from the comfortable starboard.
I'd say the Democratic Party has a fairly clear message and goal this time around. To strike the government from the hands of a bunch of criminal bunglers who have wrecked it. The rest is details. And, by the way, please square your assessment of the D's with how the GOP establishment is having conniption fits over Mike Huckabee. Please show your work.

 

If you will re-read my post I think you will agree that I do not contend that, contrary to your response, Obama lacks substances. ("The idea that Obama has no positions on any of these issues and that Hillary just keeps serving up the steak is hilariously false.")

From a progressive standpoint, Obama is substantively wrong on major issues, and it's going to be a problem for him sooner or later.

 

Wow, I wonder who had the most annoying voice between Stephen A. Smith and Craig Crawford...

 

Southerners are conservative on right to life, national security, economic issues, etc., true. But that's not my point. Huckabee rubbed people's political noses in his religion in Iowa--why it sold there, I couldn't tell you, maybe there are a lot of hardshells in those cornfields--and I don't think the South will care for it much.

Let's see how the Huckster does in S.C. I could be wrong, but I think 5 to 6 candidates will pull more voters than he.

 

JJBN: Here on the Western periphery of the South, Bible-thumpers are very, very much in vogue. And I don't say that as a smarty-pants secularist who likes to stereotype Christians. I go to church myself (albeit one considered an apostate, liberal abomination by most around here.) No one's holding primaries in my region any time soon, but Huckabee would kick ass in a GOP primary around here, just because the evangelicals feel he's the only one of their ilk on the ticket. IN this area, it's Jesus-rhetoric first, warmongering second, fiscal conservatism a far-distant third.

POO: You wrote "from a progressive standpoint." Am I to infer that you feel that, in general, HRC is to the left of Obama? Honest question.

 

Crawford, by a landslide, but neither one of them was as annoying as Carlson.
And I may wind up apologizing again JackyJack, but I think the Huck's gonna getcha in SC. His 13 percent in NH, where he had no organization and no natural constituency, was in some ways the most impressive performance of the night.

 

P..:

I think he's wrong on social security. I'll concede that. I don't it's in total crisis, but I think it does need to be dealt with eventually.

What else? I think he's right on foreign policy. I think he wants universal health care, which I'm in favor of. I think he's right about cutting up all the red tape and administrative costs by shifting it to on-line. Old people will figure out the Interent eventually. They're going to have to whether Obama or Clinton is their candidate. I'm fine with his positions on immigration.

What else? What do you want to hear?

And if guys on the other side of the aisle are wrong on pretty much everything, though, I'll take my chances.

 

So the message is they'll unseat a lame duck administration?

 

I'm a long way from the South now, and perhaps I grew up in a very strange town, but people where I came from didn't want to be preached at. Unless the politician served his preachery with liberal helpings of cake and ice cream--and I'll grant that Huck is loading that on--it didn't sell well.

Read The Earl of Louisiana by A. J. Liebling and you'll see what sells in the South. It was a while back, but some things don't change that fast. I'll bet William Jefferson didn't plan to spend all that money in that freezer on steak for dinner.

 

I think he's wrong on the nature of the political battles that it's going to take to right the ship again.
There simply are not enough Republicans in the Congress who will be willing to make the leap to the kind of bipartisan progress Obama seems to want. Good faith negotiating went out with the Gingrich revolution, and the congressional GOP is made up of its children. No retreat. Not one step backwards, as Stalin sid to the Red Army. This is a party that's going to have to be wrenchingly disenthralled from its crazier elements. What? Mitch McConnell or Boehner are going to give up being obstructionist assholes because of Barack Obama's mighty charisma? I don't think so. That's the biggest qualm I have about the guy.
And, Leo, I don't understand the question.

 

Calling this administration "lame duck" is like calling Keith Richards "familiar with the rock-n-roll lifestyle."

 

Jacky,
You know better than to judge anything by Louisiana standards.