Only a Liberal…

Fred Thompson gave an amazingly substantive speech. The top policy highlight…

Now our opponents tell you not to worry about their tax increases.

They tell you they are not going to tax your family.

No, they’re just going to tax “businesses”! So unless you buy something from a “business”, like groceries or clothes or gasoline … or unless you get a paycheck from a big or a small “business”, don’t worry … it’s not going to affect you.

This illustrates one of the main problems with liberalism. Only a liberal could have basic economics explained to them and still insist that taxing businesses is not taxing citizens.

Democrats: Clinton, Obama

Republicans: Giuliani, (maybe McCain), Romney, Thompson

Huckabee can’t win. He’s too religious. Romney’s Mormonism won’t matter. Edwards can’t win the general election, too many skeletons. Giuliani and Hillary kind of cancel each other out… any criticism of him can be countered by analyzing her and her hubbie, and barring any setbacks, Rudy probably wins that. He needs to avoid pissing women off. Romney versus one of the dems would probably be a toss-up. He’s a power-hungry politician like Hillary, but I think an efficient-business-like approach to the presidency would be so natural to him, he would do well. He gets things done. Romney and Giuliani (even Huckabee to an extent) have all accomplished concrete things. Clinton, Obama, and Thompson have accomplished nothing substantial. “Fixed,” “saved,” and “reformed” are all verbs that could be applied to Romney and Giuliani, while Obama and Clinton have the verbs “tried” and “fought.” Show me the money.
As for Fred, I see no other candidate that is as well-versed as him. They’re all speaking in one-liners, while Fred goes very in-depth about every subject, which is boring TV, but its what should be running the country. I don’t think Fred will win the nomination because not enough people are listening to him.

If he somehow did win, they would start listening, and he would win handily. While Huckabee is talking about how he brought “hope” to Arkansas children by making sure they had highways, Fred was carefully explaining the boring details of how he would fix problems and run the country.

My rankings:

Thompson
Romney/Giuliani
Clinton
Huckabee
Obama

Why do I rank Clinton ahead of Huckabee? She’ll likely run the country same as Bill, minus Monica. It wasn’t that bad. I don’t trust Huckabee, Obama will probably be a lame duck his whole one term.

Republican debate last night… my arbitrary grades for the 5 candidates.

Thompson: A
Romney: A-
Giuliani: B
Huckabee: B-
McCain: B-/C+

I don’t think Thompson will be the nominee, but he probably should be. The guy knows his stuff cold, but what sells on T.V. is exciting political speech, which is usually dreck. He puts forth specifics in a much stronger fashion than the other candidates. I suspect Romney and Huckabee know just as much, but they spend more time on one-liners, which is why they’re beating Thompson. Romney was good too, Giuliani is great in general, but he did his usual stat-citing, which is effective, but I’d like to see the questions asked him get answered. Huckabee sucked in direct debate with Romney, Mitt absolutely wiped the floor with him. As for McCain, he seemed wimpy despite having ok answers… it appears someone advised him to back off of Romney. Bad idea.

My rankings for who’s still left (meaning, how I think they will do, not how I think they should):

Democrats
1. Obama
2. Clinton
3. Edwards

Republicans
1. Giuliani
2. Romney
3. Huckabee

Needs Big Results FAST:

McCain (must win in New Hampshire)
Thompson (probably needs a single-digit difference between him and winner)
No chance:

Paul (too defisive, great domestic policy, but suicidal on preventative defense)
Richardson (running for V.P.)