The 2016 Presidential Elections and Polls (#Trump, #Hillary)

Speaking of Great Pumpkins rising out of the Pumpkin Patch, it looks as if Hillary's pumpkin may not be rising after all.  She is behind Trump in the latest polls, and the electoral college is all tied up.  Some websites are saying that the race is over, that Hillary is headed for defeat.  I certainly hope so, but you never can count on anything until the votes are counted.

I see former President George H.W. Bush will be voting for Hillary Clinton.  Bush is all upset because Trump massacred his son's political chances -- I refer to the awful Jeb Bush.  Jeb Bush is the quintessential liberal establishment Republican, who supported Muslim and illegal immigration and even transgenders in the military.  He would have been a disaster as President.  Drudge Report today described former President Bush as "Hillary's Bush," a funny and not so subtle reference to the fact that Mr. Bush is one giant pussy.

The presidential debates are a week away, and Shrillary has to be trembling in her pantsuit.  She is a terrible speaker and has so many targets pasted on her prodigious behind that Trump should have an easy time of it:  Benghazi, Email Server, Clinton Foundation and corruption.  Then there are the books of former guards and associates that describe how vile, profane and vitriolic Hillary really is, when out of sight of the public.

The question is, will Hillary even show up?  She has far more to lose than gain in the debates.  Will she have another coughing fit during the debates?  Will she call in sick?  Or will she just state that she will not share a public platform with the "racist, sexist, Xenophobic, Islamophobic" Donald?

Will 2012 Presidential Debates Be Fair? All Moderators Will Be Partisan Democrats!

Will the 2012 presidential debates be fair?  It appears all assigned moderators will be died-in-the-wool Democrats, and in a position to influence the debates with their questions.    Will there be hostile questions to Romney and soft-ball queries to Obama?  Will the array of questions be designed to make Romney look bad and Obama look good?

You can bet on it.

Who Will We Vote For? GOP Candidates Debate

Pundits are reporting that Newt Gingrich won the first Republican presidential debate.  Ugh, I won't vote for him.  Judge him by his life thus far and not how well he debates.  He supported man-made global warming.  Same with Mitt Romney.  I am still learning towards Michele Bachmann unless someone better emerges.

Consumer confidence has sunk to the lowest point in thirty years.  If we run the right candidate, we can repeat Reagan's overwhelming electoral victory of 1980.  He defeated Jimmy Carter, and Barack Obama is another leftwing disaster awaiting correction by the electorate.

Whoever the GOP candidate is, he or she would almost certainly be our next president.  That makes the primaries and the debates more important than ever.

Second Republican Debate Completed: Michele Bachmann the Winner?

The second Republican candidates' debate took place yesterday in New Hampshire.  Unfortunately, the media are saying that Mitt Romney appeared well informed and presidential.  I have a feeling that he will eventually emerge as the GOP candidate for 2012.  Nevertheless, I will support more conservative candidates.

Michele Bachmann apparently did very well.  Herman Cain didn't win this debate.  His lack of specifics on foreign policy is beginning to hurt him.  He needs to study this area and come up with a tentative but workable plan.

The Democrats and the mainstream media (but I repeat myself) will try very hard to push the Republican they think will be easiest for Obama to beat.  Be suspicious of anyone the New York Times and the Washington Post find desirable as our candidate.

McCain Scores in Final Debate

I just finished watching the last of three presidential debates between John McCain and Barack Obama. Clearly it was the best of the three and had the best moderator and the best questions.

I was pleased with McCain's performance. He was vigorous and showed excitement and appeared in earnest about many issues. Obama was smooth as usual and displayed his dazzling imitation of a chamelon as he pooh-poohed his extreme positions on late term abortion, charter schools and other issues. It was all a big misunderstanding, you see, he was always opposed to late term abortions (in spite of his past statements to the contrary).

Yes, Obama is slick - too slick, in that he isn't sincere about his past and present positions. He can lie so sincerely, and that is his greatest strength.

Did McCain hit a home run? No, but he did hit a solid triple and is now standing on third base. Let's hope he can steal home before the final out.

McCain improved considerably over the first two debates and should be seen as surging late in the game. Obama was about the same as in the first two debates. Let's hope the impression of a surging McCan isn't lost on the American public.

McCain released this ad following the debate. It's pretty good.

The Second Presidential Debate

I listened to the second presidential debate tonight between McCain and Obama. It wasn't much better than the first. McCain was still way too polite to Obama. McCain, I think, did a little better than Obama did. Obama was really boring, whereas McCain was merely boring.

On the campaign trail, McCain has really been kicking Obama butt, criticizing Obama's associations and bad judgments without apology or restraint, and it is powerful. Why he can't bring that same energy to a debate is anyone's guess.

The polls show the race narrowing again, probably as the result of a positive bounce from Palin's debate performance last week. Although Obama still has the advantage, this race is far from over and anything can happen.

McCain Promises a Fiercer Fight

McCain has promised a "fiercer fight" against Obama in the remaining debates. With a month to go before the election, it is still possible to turn this election around. However, the tides of public opinion are now against him and it will be an uphill battle.

McCain can enhance his chances by focusing, finally, on the following:
1. Obama's radical associations with admitted Communist terrorists, i.e. William Ayers and Benardine Dohrn;
2. The culpability of the Democratic Party in the subprime mortgage mess and Obama's opposition to Bush and McCain's attempts to head off the crisis as much as two years ago;
3. Obama's socialist agenda that will raise taxes, suppress economic activity and deepen the recession, and
4. Obama's plans to downsize the military budget and his naivite in the face of totalitarian threats around the world.

McCain has to lose the nice guy approach and come out swinging. If he doesn't, he can kiss this election goodbye.

First Presidential Debate Revisited: McCain Wins on Foreign Policy

I listened to the debate on my car radio on the way home last night, but I missed the last third of the debate, the part that covered foreign policy. I didn't realize the debate was 90 minutes and thought it was about over when I pulled up in the driveway. However, I just watched the last 30 minutes, which is recorded on CNN's site. This changes my opinion of the debate somewhat.

John McCain certainly appeared more knowledgeable and comfortable with foreign policy than did Obama and won that part of the debate, though it was by no means a knock-out. Obama was smooth and spoke well and even somewhat knowledgeably on the issues, though his major premises were often wrong. His belief that we must "be respected" by the socialist/pacifist governments of Europe as essential to foreign policy successes being a case in point. Those governments are well on the way to self-extinction and I do not want the United States to follow them into the dust-bin of history.

McCain was comfortable, smooth and self-assured, but not particularly aggressive on the issues. As Pamela Geller points out today, one the biggest problems she (and I) have with McCain is his refusal to go for the jugular and press his advantage when the opportunity appears.
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I really liked McCain's suggestion that we replace the United Nations with a League of Democracies, a kind of U.N. with only democratic countries represented. Those countries could then apply economic and other kinds of pressure on rogue states like Russia when they commit aggression. The U.N. is effectively toothless because the inmates are in charge of the asylum.

McCain certainly did himself no damage in this first debate, but that's not enough to impress the public. He needs to make a clearer distinction between himself and Obama. He needs to go for the knock-out punch. Hopefully he will do so in later debates.

You can watch the debate here.

First Presidential Debate: Terminally Boring

The first presidential debate is over and I'm wondering if my ballot will have a choice that says "None of the Above." It was a string of boring sound-bites, vocal bumper stickers and playing it safe. Nothing extraordinary was heard. Obama went with his McCain is Bush theme and McCain declined to attack Obama and the Democrats with the truth about their ruination of the economy by eliminating mortgage lending standards to racial minorities (where borrowers needed no job, no credit and no down payment).

My honest conclusion: the debate was a draw and that hurts McCain. He gained no ground tonight. McCain made me groan when he repeated some of his zingers from the Saddleback forum. They were funny and effective then, but being repeated now made him sound stale and scripted. He repeated the comment, twice, that he "didn't win Miss Congeniality" as a member of the Senate. He also repeated the now stale joke about the earmark for studying bears' DNA: was it for determining the bears' criminality or paternity? Ha ha. So funny. ZZZZZZ.

A very disappointing debate. McCain will have to do much better if he is to overtake Obama in the polls.

Presidential Debates Begin on Friday

At long last John McCain and Barack Obama will meet face to face for a Presidential debate at the University of Mississippi. This is where the campaign gets serious, where all the media spin and pundit blather takes a backseat to political realities.

I'm looking forward to it. The polls are still tight, with Obama gaining ground. Let's see what the candidates are really made of -- who has actual knowledge and wisdom on critical national problems and who is an unqualified pretender. Who can answer questions presented to him with credibility and who merely sidesteps the questions. Who can think on his feet and who cannot.

It all comes down to this: the candidates must battle head to head in the arena of ideas and fight it out man to man. Win or lose, the fight cannot be sidestepped or wished away, nor would I want it to be. The hoped-for result is that the candidates will reveal their true selves and give real insight into their ability to lead.

Let the debates begin and let the chips fall where they may.

McCain Outshines Obama at Saddleback

There seems to be widespread consensus among liberals and conservatives alike that McCain was the clear winner in the Saddleback Church interviews over the weekend. Obama's answers were dishonest (pretending that his opposition to the Iraq war was his greatest moral challenge when he wasn't even a U.S. Senator at the onset of the war); they were doctrinaire talking points and not sincere, heartfelt answers. McCain, on the other hand, was confident and didn't mince words.

Now, of course, the moobats are claiming that McCain overheard the questions put to Obama so that he was more prepared for the answers in advance; it isn't true, of course, as McCain was enroute to Saddleback at the time Obama was being questioned. McCain was more prepared, as his handlers drilled him on possible questions before the debate, which were not difficult to anticipate, considering the views of the evangelical host. Furthermore, McCain has a lot of experience handling questions of this sort and isn't afraid of negative political fallout as a result of giving frank answers. Obama, on the other hand, knows that his real positions won't play well with the American people and so tries to "nuance" or sidestep politically dangerous questions.

John McCain isn't the perfect candidate for conservatives, but he is a lot closer to what we want than is Obama. As the two candidates are questioned in debate forums, Obama's lack of a teleprompter will continue to show him for what he is: an inexperienced poser with little substance and few intelligent answers to questions about the economy, class warfare, our military preparedness and future responses to evil, aka terrorism.

For Obama, it's all downhill from here. The campaign is taking an interesting turn and it will be fascinating to see how this is reflected in the polls over the coming weeks.

As for me, I am no longer simply voting against Barack Obama. On the strength of John McCain's performance at Saddleback, I will be voting FOR John McCain, a good and honorable man. He won me over.

Watch the Debate online at this link.