The right of the citizens to bear arms in defense of themselves and the State …
All the major networks seem to have conceded that Mike Huckabee has won the Republican caucus in Iowa. All I have to say is this:
What the hell are they putting into the corn in Iowa? Are you people nuts? This guy is a big government nanny stater!
Hopefully other states have better sense. I really fear for the future of our country if Mike Huckabee is the best the Republicans can do.
Fred is apparently surging in Iowa.
Predicting the top three in Iowa. Anyone falling under this is out of the race:
Democrats:
Reason for Hilly is that she does well among older demographics, who are going to be the ones showing up to the caucuses. Young people have jobs, families, and don’t have time for that crap. Hilly walks away with it.
Republicans:
Expect old people to screw us here too. They’ll like the big government preacher in Iowa.  Romney will be a close second. I think McCain will do better than predicted.
According to Jacob, they’re increasing their efforts on behalf of Richardson in Iowa. Good.
Makes me think perhaps they should just try buying people’s vote outright.
With polls showing John McCain coming back strongly in New Hampshire, and me looking at a distinct possibility of Huckabee pulling a win out of Iowa, and with my preferred candidate Fred Thompson not looking good at all, I’m prepared to bury the hatchet with the whole idea of McCain and get behind him by the time Pennsylvania’s primary rolls around.  Compared to my other choices, McCain isn’t looking too bad.
That says a lot about my other choices, none of it good.
Eric notices she’s not doing too well among the young. Looks like she does best with the over 55 crowd. She would also appear to not be a college educated person’s type of liberal.
My theory on this is that younger, better educated people aren’t enamored with the whole idea of a woman president. To our generation, the idea that a woman could be president isn’t very revolutionary; we expect it will happen, and the idea isn’t novel. Aging women, who didn’t grow up with full societal acceptance of women in positions of power, really want to see a woman president in their lifetime, and Hillary is their gal.
According to this AP article, Hillary Clinton doesn’t want the media talking to her kid:
But onstage, Chelsea never speaks; she stands next to her mother and applauds but utters not a single sentence and doesn’t even say hello. And reporters covering the campaign have been put on notice that Chelsea is not available to speak to them. An aide follows the former first daughter as she works the crowd, shushing reporters who approach her and try to ask any questions.
Seems kind of odd to me to have your child show up and campaign for you to just be a pretty face.
Not much going on with our normal blogging topic over the holidays, so I’ll pick on Ron Paul some more. Tyler Cowen echos some of my feelings in regards to Congressman Paul:
Many libertarians see the Paul candidacy as their chance to have an impact and they may well be right. There is also no one else for them to support. But, raw milk or not, I am not myself tempted to take a stance this year in favor of any of the candidates, Paul included. Liberty is lacking in the United States but I’d like to see it more closely bundled with reasonableness, moderation, and yes pragmatism; I am looking to advance on all fronts at the same time. Call me fussy if you wish.
I fear that Ron Paul is so taken with his own ideas that he is unable to see how or when his views might ever be wrong; it is in that sense I consider him insufficiently intellectual.
I’m sure that’s going to make for some interesting comments over at Marginal Revolution. Many will take the “insufficiently intellectual” as an accusation that Ron Paul is a stupid man, which I wouldn’t agree with.
I’m not going to jump on the “Ron Paul is racist!” bandwagon, because I don’t have any evidence that the man is, to be honest. I don’t agree that this statement to Tim Russert is evidence, but I do take exception to it:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jbOE4Ip7In0[/youtube]
I think Matt Yglesias said it best:
Obviously, yes, there were better ways to end slavery. That’s why Abraham Lincoln didn’t run on a platform that said “let’s have a bloody civil war!” Rather, his idea was to prevent the expansion of slavery into new territories and try to nudge the country in the direction of compensated emancipation. The South, though, decided that rather than abide by the results of the election, they would secede from the country and establish a new herrenvolk democracy committed to slavery uber alles. They, not Lincoln, put resolution of the slavery issue through the political process out of reach.
I pretty much agree Yglesias with this. I don’t think civil war was going to be avoided unless the issue of ending slavery went away, which it wasn’t going to do. Other countries were able to end slavery because they had much less to lose from doing so than the cotton states did.
I might agree that’s it’s a valid point of view that there were better ways to end slavery, but it’s views like this that make me very skeptical that Ron Paul is going to capture the mainstream and win the nomination for his party. It’s a shame too, because I like a lot of the ideas he espouses, I just think he’s a very poor vehicle for moving them forward.