House of Eratosthenes

We are big Fred-Heads here. And in our case, that means we get a lot of e-mail from others who we consider very close to us on issues and principles, exhorting us to change our minds. The one recurring theme to these off-lines, aside from Fred having made some movies that aren’t that good, is how much more important it is to promote a winner than it is to promote principles.

Well, we’re “hip” to the argument, or at least the logic involved in it — having been briefly sympathetic to H. Ross Perot’s candidacy for President in ’92, and after that debacle having been jaded on third-party junkets of others. We’re not about to reject the “don’t throw away your vote” platform after having used it ourselves over the years.

But we see Fred as a winner. If he has a weakness now, his weakness is that there are too many candidates. He makes a much stronger impression sharing a stage with three others than with six others, and I’m probably ready to admit at this point that his late arrival hasn’t helped him much. Fred is living proof of the multi-point perspective of this apparently-simple thing we call “charisma”; he’s got quite a lot of some of the stuff that goes by that name, and suffers a glaring lack of other such stuff. Not a lively guy, that Fred.

Our hope for Fred is that he prospers once the field starts to get whittled. Obviously, such a plan depends on him not being among the whittled. We’re optimistic about that. It’s clear to us the media establishment hates him, and that is a problem, but for the last eight years the media establishment has been pretty far away from deciding everything…or for that matter, anything.

To our reasons for being optimistic, add this. No, it really doesn’t say anything good about Fred…other than him being ahead of John McCain by a good healthy margin. But it is a reminder of the cruel shake-up going on in these caucuses.

On the donk side, Edwards is in front. Barely.

And on the Republican side, this guy who is consistently mentioned by the folks lecturing at me that I should be voting for a winner…is not mentioned here. We find this amusing. Four months ago, we would not have, because we had substantially greater fondness for the former mayor of New York than we have now. Back then, we saw him the way our lecturers wanted us to see him: As a Republican powerhouse agreeing with us on the important issues, demanding compromise only on the trivial ones. Now, we see that candidate as an apologist for the corrupt businesses that have manufactured the problem we have today with illegal immigration, exacerbating it to the point that it ultimately threatens to bring the very concept of law and order to a complete standstill. And we don’t see that candidate as a winner either, with or without this poll.

We’re still in the primary process. Once the nominations are finished and the general elections are underway — and we’re convinced that across the nation, a lot of opinionated people on both sides of the conservative/liberal divide are forgetting this — the debate will change dramatically. It’s impossible to say how at this point, because the change will be a calculated consequence of the outcome of the primaries. A Clinton/Giuliani match-up would be a disaster. It is the only way, at this point, that we can see Hillary Clinton becoming our next President. Rudy Giuliani could probably beat any other democrat. Hillary Clinton would go down in flames running against any other Republican.

But Rudy Giuliani cheated on his wife.

Hillary Clinton is a wife who got cheated-upon.

My point is not that philandering is sufficient for a candidate to lose my support. Although it most certainly is…but no, the point I wish to make is that we are not yet in a position to see any evidence of how the debate would be shaped if Hillary got the donk nomination and Rudy got the Republican nomination. But we really don’t have much need for such evidence. One can guess. We would be commanded by those who have no faces or names but can direct what conversations people have nevertheless, for three or four months, to solemnly contemplate the gloom and doom and wreckage in the wake of our serious social problem of…adultery. You can bet your bottom dollar the Sunday-evening “newsy” television shows will have an anthology of “specials” about this terrible, terrible problem. Each episode of which will contain a twenty-second tangent, presented as an after-thought bunny trail but you’d better believe it’s central to the exercise, mentioning our former First Lady, the former Mayor of New York, or both. Probably both of them.

You’ll hear about adultery in those four months, as often as you’ve heard about Britney Spears’ little sister in the last two weeks.

Hillary would kick his cheating, unfaithful ass from here to Timbuktu and back again. It would be the first truly overpowering democrat victory since 1964. It would dwarf the electoral margins achieved in 1992 and 1996 by her husband…and oh Lord, you’d better believe you’re going to hear about that in the long winter ahead.

It’d be no small irony. Her husband would have been elected because adultery didn’t matter to us, and she’d have been elected because it did. About that paradox, you won’t hear a single peep. Maybe “conservative” blogs like the one you’re reading now. George Will might take notice of it. Other than that you won’t hear butkus.

So there’s quite the shake-up going on, and thus far it seems to be a healthy one. I like that the donk candidates are in a statistical dead-heat. It just goes to show what everybody paying attention already knows: donks have nothing to say. Nothing. If they could be somehow restrained from using the words “Bush’s fault,” in sequence, or from using merely the first of those two words, they’d be robbed of about 95% of the arguments they’ve made. About anything. Not just in this election campaign — in this century.

I think you’re wrong about Hillary beating the snot out of Rudy on infidelity grounds. The absolute LAST thing Ol’ Hill wants is the resurrection of Bubba’s infidelity…and all the accompanying baggage, of which there is much. IF Rudy is the nominee (and I have my doubts), and IF Hillary is the other nominee, there will be a “Gentleman’s Agreement” of sorts between the two about infidelity.

Mark my words.

As to who the GOP will nominate? It ain’t gonna be Fred, Morgan. Best you begin starting to “get your mind right.” I’m beginning to doubt it will be Rudy, too, FWIW. The way things are going it looks to be a dog fight between McCain and Romney. Now that’s ug-lee.
- Buck | 12/30/2007 @ 19:30
Well, I’m tempted to agree Buck. Fred’s had some smooth road since the “I don’t do hand shows” thing, but his prospects remain distant. Right now I’d characterize him as something of a freakish blend between the “he’s got a real shot” candidate and the “aw shucks, maybe he’ll pressure the other guys in a way I’d like to see them pressured” candidate that nobody expects to win. He’s in a peculiar in-between land.

I think over the long haul — and this is an unprecedentedly long haul, a 22-month campaign season, you already know my feelings about that but here we are in it — principles become powerful, weighty things. The candidates that have ’em, prosper, and the candidates that don’t, suffer. Nearly two years into the presidential campaign, the nation is going to be passionately hungry for candidates that have been consistent. By the Republican convention, we will have had a year & a half to get sick of the other kind…and this is something the country has not seen before.

At end-o-year ’07, this looks like Romney’s thing to botch up. Him & Huck. Well they both have a LOT of baggage here…the whole “he’s got the right position now and I hope he sticks to it, but at the same time he hasn’t always been in my corner and I’ve got that concern in the back of my head” thing.

It is NICE to be a Fred-head that way, palee. We don’t have this kind of problem with our chosen candidate. Not much, anyhow.
- mkfreeberg | 12/30/2007 @ 20:26
I know what candidates I’d like to see in the GOP, but well… OK, now everyone is running on “change,” what exactly does that mean? BDS is even spreading across the aisle.

I think this will be the most nonsensical election in my lifetime. My all time favorite from Sen. Clinton, “I am experienced at change.” If that does not peg your Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Meter I don’t know what does.

Some further follies:

Gov. Huckabee, “…” you already know what I’m saying.
Sen. Edwards, “two Americas…” a rich guy decrying wealth.
Sen. Obama, “can’t we all just get along.” It’s been done.
Gov. Romney, “I had no idea that those illegal aliens were working around the house.” Yo gov, where I grew up my dad made me mow the lawn.

On the other hand.

Sen. Thompson, ” I’m not playing that silly shit.”
Sen. McCain, “You might not like where I’m going, but you for damn sure, will know what it is.”
- Allen L | 12/30/2007 @ 23:45

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Edwards LeadsSunday, December 30th, 2007

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Sunday, December 30th, 2007