Cluster Column

Would the Limited-Government Candidate Please Stand Up?

 

By Jeff Scott

 

With the 2008 Presidential primary race heating up (by this edition, the Republicans will have already been through Iowa, Wyoming, New Hampshire, Michigan, Nevada, and South Carolina, with the Democrats through Iowa, New Hampshire, the meaningless Michigan, and Nevada), and Georgia’s primary date being part of the February 5 “Super Tuesday,” it is time for everybody to decide who they are going to support. 

For Democrats, this is a relatively easy task.  They have only three serious candidates, all of whom are busy beating the fascist, big government income-redistribution drum, so Democrats have a choice between a power-hungry woman looking to get back into the White House; a charismatic black Senator who speaks like a preacher; and a former losing vice presidential candidate with really, really nice hair. 

So you Democrats just have a choice of the face you want on your redistributionist candidate.  There aren’t very many real differences between Hillary Rodham Clinton-Rodham, Barack Hussein Obama, and John “Pretty Boy” Edwards in terms of their policies, so you guys get to decide on a personality.

 

Republicans and conservative-leaning libertarians have a much more difficult choice.  Sure, we can vote for a third-party candidate in November, but here in Georgia we have a primary vote that matters.  I know that I do not want to just sit on the sidelines and let the rest of the state speak while I stand silent (after all, when have I ever stood silent?).  So what do believers in limited government and defending America do in this race?  The best thing I know of is to go through the candidates, one by one, and look for the least bad in the bunch.  After all, none of them is both serious and dedicated to the principle of limited government.  I’ll take them in the order in which they finished in New Hampshire:

 

John McCain:  The longtime “Maverick” Senator who made a miraculous comeback to win New Hampshire after his candidacy was declared dead following his sponsorship of last summer’s amnesty bill.  But McCain has other negatives besides his support of amnesty for illegal immigrants.  For example, remember that McCain was a primary sponsor of the campaign finance reform bill that severely limits and even criminalizes some forms of political speech by Americans.  Should a believer in the principle of limited government support a man who supports using government to limit the speech of Americans?  Are conservatives willing to support a guy who is as willing as McCain to work with Democrats as much as McCain?  I, for one, am not.

 

Mitt Romney:  While Romney has been successful in the business world, and in his leadership of the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, two words prevent him from getting my support for President:  socialized medicine.  Romney has already accomplished as Governor of Massachusetts what Hillary wants to accomplish as President:  a universal health care system.  Why Republicans have not attacked him more heavily for this issue baffles me.  You would think that comparing somebody to Hillary, a comparison that is very easy to make with Romney, would be the first thing that an opponent would do.  I know I, for one, will not support him, and that will have absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he is a Mormon.

 

Mike Huckabee:  Huckabee has become the emergent major factor of this race.  He went from a third-tier nobody to a top-tier contender, despite his lack of money, because of his appeal to evangelical Christians.  I am no friend to evangelical Christian voters, but even independently of that, Huckabee has comparisons to the Clintons other than the fact that he is from the same town and once held the same office as Slick:  Governor of Arkansas.  He is the only candidate, other than the Hildebeast, to propose a national ban on smoking.  While I hold disdain for low-quality tobacco products (preferring an occasional fine cigar instead), I still cannot support a complete ban on the rights of people to choose to smoke.  Can anybody say “nanny state”?  Also, remember that, even though Huckabee claims to support the FairTax, he raised taxes more than Clinton as Governor of Arkansas.

 

Rudy Giuliani:  A joke I heard claims that, to formulate a sentence as Rudy Giuliani, you simply use a noun, a verb, and “9/11.”  Other than his banking on his reputation as New York City Mayor on that horrible day, Giuliani is also a little…weird.  He has been photographed too many times wearing drag for me to take him seriously.  Even worse was his program to get guns out of the hands of law-abiding New Yorkers.  Remember that the first step that totalitarians must take is to disarm citizens.  That’s something to expect of Democrats.  Also, don’t forget that he ran a sanctuary city as mayor of New York.  That is just localized amnesty.

 

Ron Paul:  On first analysis, you would think that Ron Paul would be my man.  I’m a libertarian, he’s a libertarian.  I believe in liberty, he believes in liberty.  So it should be a natural fit, right?  Wrong.  There is one overarching issue that prevents me from supporting Ron Paul:  He is completely unwilling to defend this nation from Islamic fascism.  He does not even see the threat from Islamic terrorism.  Defending this nation from those evil forces should be the top priority.  We may differ on how to do so (I happen to agree with Paul on his belief in isolationism), but we absolutely must fight them and destroy them.  On domestic policy, while Paul votes against unconstitutional spending bills, he is always sure to get pork projects for his district into those bills.  Sounds like hypocrisy to me.

 

Fred Thompson:  I have to admit, Fred Thompson is the candidate towards whom I am leaning ideologically.  The only problem is that he does not seem to want to be running for President.  He is strong in his convictions, which include securing the borders, fighting Islamic terrorism, and cutting taxes and spending (despite a disappointing flip-flop on the FairTax).  Unfortunately, he is not a very strong or charismatic figure.  He’s no Reagan in that regard; instead, he compares more with President Bush.  He’s a bumbling, “aw, shucks” kind of speaker—not exactly the kind of personality that anybody wants to identify with because of Bush’s lack of popularity.  He also does not have experience as a strong leader that indicates that he will fight for those principles against opposition.

 

So what to do?  At this point, I do not know.  I might write-in a professor’s name.  I might vote based on the horse race, by voting for someone to stem the tide of support for somebody else (I might especially do that to stop Huckabee).  I might vote for the least repugnant Democrat (being a registered independent has its advantages).  I do not know what I will do when I enter the voting booth on February 5.

 

Jeff Scott is the host of the Jeff Scott Show, which airs every MWF 11am-1pm on Mercer Radio (radio.mercer.edu).