Archive for January 15th, 2008
January 15th, 2008
 
Mike Huckabee, the Baptist minister who’s running for president, SAIDÂ Monday that he thinks we should “amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards…”
OK, we could do that. One problem, though, Mike. Who’s going to decide what “God’s standards” are? You? Me? The pope? Pat Robertson? Some rabbi? Maybe a Muslim?
You see, Mike, most Americans believe in God, but they don’t all agree on what God wants. Even within a given religion or denomination — take Catholicism, for instance — the faithful are not of one mind on how best to serve or please God.
Maybe it’s best to leave the Constitution the way it is and not try to fill it with your ideas of what pleases God. Millions of other religious Americans have ideas different from yours on that score.
Maybe, too, you should just go back to preaching in churches and forget this notion that you’re qualified to be our president. Lots of good and faithful Christians — not to mention plenty of people of other religions or no religion at all — think you’re not qualified. Your proposal to change the Constitution only proves their point.
January 15th, 2008
When it first looked as if Mike Huckabee might capture the Republican presidential nomination (which still could happen), the party establishment made its displeasure known.
And now that John McCain’s candidacy has come back to life after months of seeming irrelevance, the party poohbahs have MOVED HIS NAME BACK TO THE TOP  of their fecal roster.
The worry among the GOP elite is that neither Huckabee nor McCain can sufficiently excite the party faithful or attract enough independents to defeat the Democratic candidate in November.
But while Huckabee is simply seen as out of his element in a presidential race, poor fellow, the Republican worthies are viscerally opposed to a McCain nomination because they hate the guy.
So, Mitt Romney’s got that stuff going for him. But if he doesn’t start winning primaries pretty soon, it won’t matter. His showing in Michigan today is critical.
January 15th, 2008
The stereotypes of liberals as secular and evangelicals as ultra-conservative  AREN’T VALID anymore, if they ever were.
January 15th, 2008
CNN is launching a nightly wrap-up of presidential campaign doings, as the cable networks discover that there’s BIG RATINGS for coverage of national politics.
January 15th, 2008
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The polls show the Republican contest in Michigan to be too close to call, but I expect that John McCain will win by at least five percentage points over Mitt Romney, with Mike Huckabee not far behind in third.
If this is right, Romney will be in deep trouble and will face pressure to get out of the race, which would greatly please Rudy Giuliani (who still doesn’t have a chance at the nomination, anyway).
If Huckabee finishes third in Michigan, he’ll have to win in South Carolina on Saturday to maintain any real hope of winning the nomination.
Fred Thompson and Ron Paul? They aren’t even dark horses in this race.
On the Democratic side, most of the candidates have shunned the Michigan primary in accordance with the national party’s displeasure with the early date. Hillary Clinton is the only contender whose name will appear on the ballot. But therein lies a risk.
If Hillary doesn’t draw a whole lot more votes than the “uncommitted” choice on the ballot, she’ll be politically embarrassed and will lose a bit of her momentum from New Hampshire.
Some liberal bloggers are encouraging Michigan Democrats to take Republican ballots and mark for Romney. The theory is that a Romney victory today would throw the GOP race into further turmoil and slow the McCain surge.
But I don’t think many Dems are going to heed the suggestion, even if their own party’s ballot offers little choice.Â
January 15th, 2008
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In a recent SPEECH at DePaul University in Chicago, Barack Obama referred to the Constitution having made Congress a “co-equal” branch of government.
This notion of co-equal branches is an article of faith among most Americans. It’s popularly viewed as the provision that gives us our system of checks and balances. But it’s not true.
The irony in this matter is that Obama, like most of the other politicians who play the co-equal card, intend to argue against any presumption that the presidency is pre-eminent.
The fact is that the Founding Fathers did not create a system of co-equal branches of government. Rather, they intended for the legislative branch to be dominant, as is evidenced in the Federalist Papers and even in some of the arguments against ratification of the Constitution from people who wanted co-equal branches and regretted that they weren’t getting them.
Historian Garry Wills presents a convincing case against the “co-equal” theory — and against various other popular myths about the Constitution — in his wonderful book “A Necessary Evil,” which was published in 1999.
In that same year, Wills addressed the “co-equal” issue in THIS LECTURE at Harvard University. (Scroll down to pages 14 through 17 for the salient parts.)
