Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with embracing environmentalism - Reagan was a bit of an environmentalist, from what I’ve read.  Fuzzy economics is less good.

What I’m concerned about is that the GOP is becoming a regional party that is going to look a lot like the Christian Democrats of Europe.  And then where do us limited government types go?

Environmentalism versus “global warming” is the real question. Who isn’t for reducing pollution? It’s the Gore-bull warming scam that the GOP needs to steer clear of, no matter how popular it seems at the moment. It is already unraveling at the seams, and will be completely discredited before the decade is out, IMO.

As far as Fred Thomson is concerned: Correct me if I’m wrong, but he hasn’t dropped out of the race, has he? He has more money on hand than Mike Huckabee, Rudy Giuliani or John McCain, and still has contributors, so why get out now? Super-duper Tuesday is just a few weeks away.

FRED THOMPSON is the best person to lead this country. He is a true conservative and has been his entire life. All one has to do is check his record to see this.

During my time in the Army as an Intelligence Analyst, I served under both Presidents Carter and Reagan (as my commanders in chief). Without argument, President Reagan was the best commander-in-chief a military person could ever have served under. Fred Thompson possesses the same qualities and vision as President Reagan in that he is strong on national defense and sees a dire need to secure our borders and control immigration.

I can think of no better person to lead this country and fix the problems we have. He is the only candidate from either party who has specific and detailed plans on border security and immigration reform; revitalization of America’s armed forces; saving and protecting Social Security; and tax relief and economic growth. These are detailed on his Web site at http://www.fred08.com . I challenge you to find any other candidate who has laid out specific plans to fix anything.

Fred Thompson has published his first principles, some of which are mentioned above. In addition to those, he strongly believes in individual liberty, personal responsibility, limited government, federalism, traditional American values, the rule of law and is a strong proponent of the Second Amendment — all concepts established during the birth of our country and documented in our Constitution.

Again, try to find any candidate who has laid out their plans to “fix” this country. You will find they all speak in vague and abstract terms on their plans.

For those who have heard Fred Thompson speak, you will usually hear him say that the Fred Thompson you see today is the same Fred Thompson you saw yesterday and is the same Fred Thompson you will see tomorrow. He stands by his principles and values and doesn’t shift his positions based on polls or public opinion; in other words, he doesn’t say what the voters want to hear just to get elected, but remains steadfast on his views and convictions.

During his time in the Senate he focused on three areas: to lower taxes, strengthen national security and expose waste in the federal government. Fred Thompson has foreign policy experience, having served as member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Senate Intelligence committees.

As chairman of the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, he opened the investigation in 1997 on the Chinese government’s attempt to influence American policies and elections, and this investigation identified connections with the Clinton administration (documented in the committee’s report).

As a member of the Finance Committee, he worked tirelessly to enact three major tax-cut bills. Fred Thompson remains steadfast and even though a person may not agree with all his views and he understands some may disagree with him, you can count on him to be consistent and unwavering.

Don’t be fooled by his laid back approach and what critics call his “laziness.” As a former assistant U.S. attorney, he earned a reputation as a tough prosecutor and he possesses the toughness this country needs in order to tackle today’s and tomorrow’s issues.

I ask that you take a hard look at what this country needs, then take a hard look at all the other candidates’ views, policies, their records and their track record on consistency. Fred Thompson possesses integrity, loyalty, commitment, energy and decisiveness, all traits of an effective leader, and will emerge as the best person to take this country boldly forward.

Please help Fred win in Iowa:
https://www.fred08.com/contribute.aspx?RefererID=c637caaa-315c-4b4c-9967-08d864cd0791

I’m sorry, but the last time the GOP sat out an election by nominating Bob Dole (whom I admire, but was not the best we had to offer at the time), we got unprecedented postwar corruption in the White House, dwarfing even Nixon’s modest and clumsy efforts, and we saw the unacknowledged and unanswered rise of Islamic terrorism that cost us lives throughout the nineties, culminating in 9/11.

The stakes are too high to abdicate to the Democrats, now more than ever. I will hold my nose and vote if I have to, but as much as I like your blog, professor, this is a prescription for disaster. We can’t afford another eight years of the ostrich.

Agree Bush squandered his capital. He could have pushed for entitlement enforms, instead he pushed for NCLB and Prescription Drug. He accomplished what I would expect a principled Dem or R faced with a strong opposition.

Rudy and Romney are both running on solid conservative platforms. Rudy is pro choice and Romney’s history is a mixed bag, but they are both pushing to enact a conservative judiciary.

They are both running on tax cutting, limited spending platforms. I’d like to see SS and MC fixed by the next president in his first term, but its probably unlikely.

The both seem to grasp the existential nature of our struggle with Islamicists and both seem willing to shudder the bad press of a hard diplomatic effort.

Frankly I think that you are over reacting in your backlash against Romney for his “flip flopping” and I’m not sure (outside of the pro choice - which I think is overrated, since beyond judges there is little the pres will be able to do) disqualifies Rudy. Both have been successful executives dealing with Democratic areas, and both were successful before that.

If Thompson ended up as VEEP for Romney or Rudy, might that swing you back?

I’ll tell you what will happen:

The GOP will lose the Presidency. There will be hand wringing. New ideas will be hatched. Excitement will stir. I’m not sure if this will take four or forty years, but when the highest office is reclaimed, power will be taken back.

And…

it will be viciously fought for and clung to like it was oxygen.

Seriously, get a grip! Reagan’s legacy was full of rancid moral errors and poor judgements.  Iran Contra, etc. Please - if we knew half of what transpires in govt we’d be disillusioned forever.  The backroom deals, the lying, the incompetence.  Nothing will ever change. Nothing will change that - no temporary exile from power will have anything to do with affecting this dynamic.

Be a good conservative. Our natures won’t change. Power is corrupting.  Look at the staggering moral hypocrisy that Gingrich et al showed IMMEDIATELY upon regaining control of Congress in the Rev of 94.  Cmon already. Wake up.

I’ll bet that Romney at least knows the difference between an Israeli and an Israelite.

Didn’t Bush campaign in 2000 on NCLB and Prescription Drug Plan for Eldery and a Guest Worker Program so that the Republican establishment could win against Gore?

GOP’s problem is that they believe running Centrist candidates is the way towards winning elections and unifying the country, however the results is a country more divide than ever and Democrat is the majority in Congress.

Perhaps if Fred would bash the troops, trash Rumsfeld/Bush and those evil Zionist neo-cons in the White House, call for greater taxation, tell the people that the government is capable of curing all death and disease, preach about how illegal is okay cuz we’re all God’s chilen, tell us the church is okay with abortion just as long as their believers receive from the government the gold coins of entitlement goodies, and calls on all reasonable Conservatives to embrace Al Gore’s Greenie fad to save the polar bears, he might be a top GOP contender who can beat Hillary and the Dems.

Ron Paul 2008!!!

It seems odd to me that you don’t mention Bush’s most pernicious legacy: the unprecedented concentration of power in the executive.  Few conservatives do, though; I wonder why that is.

Too bad we can’t have Bush for a third term to finish his work. He is the best president we have ever had by FAR and the truest conservetive.

>>Each of the other four is deeply flawed (although none quite so badly as Ron Paul).

The one candidate who actually espouses limited government values is held in the most disdain by the party of ‘limited government’.  Several reasons I imagine, chief among those he doesn’t advocate continuing the fiasco in Iraq.  Well this is one conservative that decided a long time ago to go fishing on election day.  Voting for the ‘lesser of two evils’ is still voting for evil.  Both parties are determined to drive us either into the poor house with handout programs, unending war, or both. Thanks but no thanks

It’s not so easy a choice.  We have to weigh the cost of a Democratic White House and Congress against the mere possibility that the Republicans will be the better after being out of power for a while.

Are we confident enough that a new, improved Republican party will issue that we are willing to risk (1) a government that is unserious about national security, and (2) a President who will appoint policy-making judges?  Maybe so; the beauty of our constitutional system is that we can withstand most any abuse.  But maybe not.  It’s a question that I, for one, will be wrestling with until Election Day.

Huck says to Mitt, “You’re so lame!”
Replies Mitt, “I’m an agent of change!”
But when the voters have spoken,
Their hearts will be broken
As the White House is won by McCain.

You continue to amaze me professor.
The eight hundred pound gorilla in the race isn’t going away.

Ron Paul in ‘08.

"If I can’t have Fred, I’d rather drop dead.”
Seems like weak logic to me.  If we applied that in 2000, we would have boycotted Bush and had to endure 8 years of Gore. While Bush has done many things that I disagree with, I cannot imagine that Gore would have been better.  But wait,Gore could have been sooo bad that the dumbass Republicans would have had an epiphany moment and now would be voting for - for Fred?  That’s possible, but not possible enough for me to sit out 2000 and endure 8 years of Gore.  If we sit out 2008 so that Hillary or Obama can run the country until 2016, hoping Fred (or his reincarnation) might still be around and running, will we even be around to find out how that worked out?  I’m not willing to bet my life on that one, no matter how conservatively impure the current batch of non-Fred Republican candidates are.

Vercules:

Ron Paul finished 2nd in Nevada, 4th in Wyoming and Michigan, and 5th in Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina.

He has won a whopping 6 delegates.

Ron Paul is not an eight hundred pound gorilla. He’s a pygmy marmoset.

DCM: You’re missing the point. The point is that we had an acceptable alternative to a rebuilding season in Fred. But if he’s out, we might as well get on with the necessary processing of rebuilding. The GOP needs to figure out what it stands for. It also needs to bring up a new generation of leaders.

He has won a whopping 6 delegates.

^^^^^
Which is the same amount as Fred Thompson and more than Rudy.....

But kudos on the marmoset....at least you are original when you bash him. Which is refreshing

Rudy on McCain (Quote of the Day): 

At a campaign event Aug. 8, 2007, Giuliani told a crowd in Iowa, “I happen to be a very big admirer of Sen. McCain and I can tell you quite honestly that if I weren’t running for president I would be here supporting him. If for some reason I made a decision not to run he’d be my candidate.”

It was the second time this summer Giuliani voiced support for McCain without much prompting.

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/Decision2008/story?id=349244 0

it is kind of sad that a liberal(McCain), Rockefeller Republican(Giuliani), and a Christian Socialist(Huckabee) are now all of a sudden more acceptable than a Taft conservative.

All because people who have next to NO faith in this country actually believe that a bunch of homeless, nomadic, ragheaded terrorists are going to accomplish what Soviet Communism, Nazism, and the British Empire utterly failed to do.

That total lack of faith in the character of the American people and the nation is possibly the most anti-American thing I’ve ever seen.

Does terrorism worry me?? Of course and we need to combat it...but nation-building and spreading democracy like Bill Clinton on steroids is not the conservative way to do it.

And while terrorism worries me.....I’m not retarded enough to think that the first time in human history that terrorism brought down a nation, it will happen to the most powerful nation in history.

Terrorism is a danger....but it is not nearly the dire threat to the future of our nation that the massive fiscal crisis is.

In 30 years the three major American social programs(which are 60% of our federal budget now) will be 100% of our budget.

When that happens not only will we be forced to pull our troops back from everywhere anyway...but we also won’t be able to furnish a national defense to respond to threats or even protect our homeland.

Its like the Republicans in Washington want to ensure our destruction later in order to preserve our lives now. Sounds a lot like Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson to me.

Professor Bainbridge,

With all due respect, I’m not missing the point; I just disagree with it.  Our country and our lives are not a sports game.  We cannot forfeit the next 8 years of “games” in the hope that by “firing” all of our veteran players (even though they may not be Hall of Fame caliber) that we might, might be able to recruit some new players who will lead us to a winning season in 2016.

The seven stages of voting McCain:

Shock or Disbelief--How could this be, his campaign was DEAD last summer?

Denial: McCain cannot win, Mitt Romney is the stronger candidate. McCain does not want to round up Mexicans and put them in concentration camps. A Republican cannot be trusted unless he is pro torture.

Anger: I am sitting out this election or voting for Hillary! Just watch me do it! I am going to join a third party of Neo Buchananites and I am stockpiling food and weapons in the mountains.

Guilt: How did we ever let this happen? What did I do to allow the GOP to sink so low?

Depression: Pass me the liquor. I feel sick.

Bargaining: McCain better make things right with the base, he has to get approval from Rush, Hannity and then agree to have Fred Thompson as his running made to keep him in line (actually even I hope for that!).

Acceptance and Hope: Well, it is better to win the general than to face President Hillary in the White House for possibly two terms. GO MCCAIN!

I will not vote for McCain over Obama; I will stay home or write in “Fred Thompson”.

I may vote for McCain over Hillary.

I will not vote for Huckabee over Obama or Hillary; I will stay home or write in “Fred Thompson”.

I will vote for Giuliani over any Democrat candidate.  But not comfortably.  And not if there’s anything particularly interesting on TV that night.

I will vote for Romney over any Democrat candidate.  But not without a lot of trust issues.

If G.W.Bush were a candidate in this primary, I would feel the same about him as about Romney and Giuliani.

I would vote for either Giuliani or Romney far more enthusiastically if they had Fred Thompson as veep.  Heck, under those circumstances, I might campaign for them.

I’m near-broke on $45,000 a year in suburban Atlanta with two kids, but Fred Thompson has $100 of my cash and I’m thinking about sending more, even at this late date.

He is truly the sole adult in the room; he is philosophically conservative and has been that way a long time, on all the issues, with scarcely any deviation.  He is a better conservative than Reagan was.

Oh, and Ron Paul?  (Not that he has any chance at the nomination.) Had life been about nothing but domestic politics, he’d have been my second choice after Fred.  He’d perhaps have been my first choice if he hadn’t shown such astoundingly bad judgment in hanging out with racists back in the day.  (Even if you’re not one yourself, you don’t have to *hire* the toothless inbreds.)

But the domestic politics of the United States are largely governed by the Congress; the President has a uniquely freer hand in foreign affairs.  And that (the realm of foreign affairs) is exactly where I don’t want Ron Paul.  Domestic spending should be halved and entitlements nonexistent, but defense spending—provided it’s correctly spent, of course—should be half again its current levels.  So I prefer Ron Paul in Congress, voting “No” to the 90% of the work going on there which doesn’t fall under the federal government’s enumerated powers.  I want him nowhere near the White House.

Ronald Reagan may have preached smaller government, and even went so far as to declare it to be the problem and not the solution, but the reality/legacy of the Reagan years was not smaller government but bigger governemnt, more costly government, more indebted government & more activist government.

It is truly galling to hear the pendants and dilettantes emerge from wherever they’ve been the last seven years, bemoaning the lack of conservative leadership in the GOP. You get what you deserve for looking the other way as your boy ruined the country. Talk about being “concerned solely with clinging to power for power’s own sake.”

Bush has been blatantly profligate, needlessly callous and utterly insincere in his so-called Christian underpinnings. Yet he enjoyed the support of millions who cared only to see the other side lose--regardless of the consequences.

Well, here come the consequences. Whoever wins in ‘08 will inherit a house with bad plumbing and a leaky roof with no money to fix it. Bon apetite, wingnuts.

i>The stakes are too high to abdicate to the Democrats, now more than ever</i>

Ah, the battle cry for those who would rather win at all cost, rather than return the party to some semblance of true conservatism.

When I voted for Bush, it was because he was the only one talking about the perils of base line budgeting and how it enables government to grow. He was talking less interventionism. He was talking balanced budgets and smaller, smarter govt.

Turns out he was all talk. We got the opposite. No budget reform. Interventionism up the wazzu (I was for Iraq, but took the admin at its word that this would not be an occupation) No smaller govt. but more horribly and needlessly complicated bureaucracy (medicare d, homeland security, war czar, etc.). Instead we got bridges to nowhere. We have a congress that couldn’t bother planing for needed energy infrastructure improvement (remember the east coast blackouts a few years ago), yet has no problem convening an emergency session to interfere in the court case of veggie girl. We have a party who preached states rights… unless of coarse there is even the slightest possibility the states may not vote the way we demand (gay marriage, marijuana laws). We have a congress that passes tougher bankruptcy laws for the average consumer, yet spends it’s way to a 9 + trillion dollar national debt.

In my opinion, this party got lost when abortion and gay marriage became more important than the concept of smaller and less intrusive government - when individual rights lost out to the dictates of the religious right.

I believe both parties have forgotten the concepts of liberty and freedom. Both parties wants to control our lives - one through excessive govt regulation, the other through religious driven ideals. Both are bad for the country. I probably will not vote for another republican until the party can show that it is more concerned with the quality of my government, which it has control over, than it is with the morals of our lives, which it does not and never should.

My rant is done.

Sounds like you ought to start advocating for preferential voting. That way you’d get a bigger choice of candidates without the worry of thinking about strategic voting.

My problem with Paul is that when I hear him speak I feel like I want to stick a gun to my head and blow my brains out.

C’mon people show some spine! Are you really that myopic?

Send as much money to Fred as you can! He’ll stay awake long enough to drop out of the race, take our cash and his pretty narcissistic trophy wife to some nice warm place where you will find no people of color (well maybe the wait staff)or any known gays.

Fred and his pretty wife will really appreciate it.

So will McCain, who, as you all know, already is The Party’s chosen one!

I’ll never vote for a Mormon.

I have no problem with the idea of not polluting when you can avoid it.

If that’s what environmentalism is, then I support it.

But the Democrat’s brand of environmentalism borders on the radical.

>>My problem with Paul is that when I hear him speak I feel like I want to stick a gun to my head and blow my brains out.

Yes, the fear of hearing liberty and freedom as intended by the Framers can have that effect on party faithful....

If you believe what your candidate says (whoever that may be), vote for them.  If they don’t get the party nomination, write their name in.  But to vote for a candidate solely as a vote against another candidate was not the intention. It was never the intention.  And to engage in such a course of action is being disingenuous to the original intent. 

Course I imagine that’s why the Framers did not require the public vote to directly effect the Presidential election as it does today.  Until 1868 not all states allowed public opinion (and that’s all it is) to effect the electors sent to the Electoral College

I’ve soured enough on national politics that I almost favor all-out civil war at this point.  Fire and steel would clarify things far quicker and more sharply than “wandering in the desert” until the next election.

The Repubs can’t even be bothered to point out that one of the front-running Democratic candidates is an ardent Marxist. If they’d set up a contrast of a party that embraces Jefferson and Madison, versus one that embraces Marx and Gramsci, then maybe there’s hope.

Failing that, expect more of the same crap.

But Rudy Is Running!

Go Rudy!

Just be advised that should the GOP actually reinvent itself after a decisive loss, you may like the new invention even less than the machine you’ve forced it to replace.  And you won’t be in any position to do a thing about it.  You certainly don’t think anybody’s going to be soliciting your advice, do you?  As opposed to, say, wishing you luck out there in the wilderness of your own creation. 

Seems to me the folks spouting this sort of nonsense lack a certain obvious historical perspective.  The religious right was quick to claim Bush I lost his bid for re-election because he just didn’t energize ‘em back in 1992, and that’s precisely how we got the Clinton’s the first time around.  If you’re prepared to repeat that experience all over again, don’t look for anybody to come a courtin’ when they’ve been twice burned.  Maybe Bill can manage to screw up Hillary’s 2nd term as badly as he screwed up his own, but I wouldn’t count on it.  By then the country you fancifully think you’ll be taking back may not look much like the one you’re letting go.

Let me get this straight.  You think that if the Republicans lose to the Democrats, they will come out of the election more conservative than before?  What kind of logic is that?  The loser almost always adopts more of the traits of the winner because that’s what won.

I’m upset that Fred is doing poorly, too.  I’m now supporting McCain.  He’s not Fred, but he’ll do.

If you really want to change the party, run for office.  Until then, we will have the same pack of dingbats no matter what platform they espouse.

I find it quite short-sided to throw a fit and sit out an election that could decide the very fate of the Middle East and quite possibly the West. There are no Dems that I could possibly entrust with the Big Red Button, so the choices are what they are.

That being said, you are right on in your desire to see a massive explosion of the Republican party. There will continue to be a schism in conservativeland until we acknowlege that there are many different brands of conservative out there, people who see a real conflict with statements like “Is government smaller? Have we hacked away at the nanny state? Are the unborn any more protected?”. So we’ll rid ourselves of the Nanny state, but leave the Nanny state in the position to make decisions about abortion, marraige, culture and whatever else the prudes of the party set their sites on?

That type of “traditional” conservative thinking is a political dead end in today’s world, with it’s constant public preening and posturing. Get used to ideas like conservation and environmental stewardship because those things matter to young people on many levels, not the least of which is national security. And many today don’t see the logic of ever increasing government on any level including the social and cultural (read: moral).

Maybe I’m kidding myself and should consider myself as an independent or libertarian or something, but there are millions of people like myself. Call us South Park Republicans, Crunchy Cons, Radical Moderates or whatever, but we do need to be accounted for and we will vote elsewhere if needs be.

I’ve always been flabbergasted by the kind of political reasoning in this post.  Since when was political participation all about strengthening the party?  I thought it was about choosing the best candidate, even if that candidate isn’t a perfect one.  Yes, our two party system makes that a choice of the “lesser of two evils” as the cliche’ goes.  However, sitting home only creates an electoral environment that allows the greater of the two evils to win.

I hope Fred manages to make an inspired, albeit miraculous, comeback or at least get the VP slot, but I don’t see any GOP candidate, with the possible exception of Paul because of national defense issues, who looks less palatable than the offerings on the Democrat side.

So, I intend to vote for the sake of my country.  If the party suffers a bit as a result, then so be it. Case in point: However bad Bush has mangled some conservative principles, what would the country look like right now after 8 years of Gore?  Better?  Worse?

And would we really be looking at a stronger candidate than McCain in the lead of the GOP race?

"fear of hearing freedom and liberty as intended by the Framers”

If the Framers spoke so depressingly morbid about freedom and liberty as does Paul there would be no America for him to whine about; Nihilists the Framers were not, it was optimism which inspired their faith.

Any day now I expect Paul to come out singing a round of Kurt Cobain lyrics to arouse his supporters.

I frankly don’t understand the thinking of those who would rather see the Dems in power for the next eight or eighty years if that’s what it takes to bring up a true conservative candidate.  We are in the middle of an existential war—“existential” meaning that we are up against people who are truly determined to wipe us out.

Granted, I can see sitting out the election if Huckabee is the candidate, as he is not only objectively liberal on most domestic issues but more importantly seems to have no serious views on foreign policy and national defense.

But I just don’t see why Republicans should sit out the election if McCain is the candidate, especially when either of the leading Dem candidates have already signalled that they would be disastrous war leaders.

I frankly don’t buy into those who harrumph and declare that this is about principal, that it’s better to lose honorably.  I have to ask: What gives you the right to be so childish when our security is so tangibly at stake?

Do not allow the perfect to be the enemy of the good.

The irony is that when Mitt McGulabee wins the nomination and loses the election, conservatism will be blamed.

Not because comservatives sat home, but because the RINO candidate was not moderate enough.

I was thinking Thompson/Romney but after SC and all this talk about Thompson realy wanting the VP slot I am thinking Romney/Thompson. But above all, just keep RP and MH off the ticket and I’ll vote for it. McCain is not conservative but he was right about the surge, when even a lot of conservatives wanted to cut and run. I think that shows good judgement on national security issues, priority number one, IMHO.

Ray Robison is the author of Both In One Trench: Saddam’s Secret Terror Documents

http://www.bothinonetrench.com

Democrats don’t learn from their mistakes because they’re moron.

Republicans don’t have that excuse.