The Trail: A Daily Diary of Campaign 2008

One more thing...McCain should be worried that more people in his home state voted against him than for him. If a who knows how many term senator cannot even pick up greater than 50% support from his home state in a presidential election, you have to wonder how well he's going to do anywhere else.

McCain can't win in the general election without the support of conservatives. Conservatives won't show up to vote for McCain in the general election unless he holds out an entire olive orchard on taxes, immigration, and life issues. In courting the conservatives, he will have to do an enormous shift in position and lose his straight talk image, which kills his appeal to independents. In short, regardless of what national head to head polls are saying, it will be extremely difficult for McCain to win in a general election. National level polls are nigh unto meaningless in a presidential election. All that matters is turning purple states red or blue. Whether he opts to alienate conservatives or indepedents, the dems will hand him his hat in the general election. If the repubs would have run Thompson or Romney, they could have kept the coalition together and won with the same voters that Bush did. (For Romney, that assumes that the southern evangelicals could get over their Mormon thing.) McCain can't keep the coalition together. Another concern with McCain is that his current popularity is tied directly to the positive news in Iraq. If the war in Iraq starts to go badly, his campaign is dead in the water. His association with national security will become a huge negative instead of its current plus. It's an enormous gamble for republicans as the conditions in Iraq have shown that they can turn on a dime.

JohnJacobs99:

The thought-process for McCain is that none of those conservative States will just sit by once they are faced with the possibility of Hillary and/or Obama winning their States.

I don't see how McCain will win in the Fall. He won in the Liberal states. The last I checked, the Liberal states vote Democrat. He didn't win in the Conservative states.

As we saw last night, the polls are so far off. They called Obama and Clinton close in California. When the polls say that McCain can beat Hillary, they probably don't take into account the states and how they vote.

A vote for McCain is a vote for Hillary.

What McCain, Huckabee and Obama have in common is that, in the past year, they have all gained support in the face of opponents with more money, political muscle and willingness to pander on the basis of what voters perceive as their character and sincerity.

Ideology may not be as important as that for getting to the White House after seven years of Bush and Cheney.

http://ajliebling.blogspot.com/2008/02/messages-of-super-tuesday.html

Uhhh... I'm not sure what the "dog" and "Pelosi" comment add to the discussion.

I am completely average, contrary to my mother's boasting. I am an average white female, born into a family that cherishes it's Confederate Heritage. Blue collar father - who like me, was born with a plastic spoon in his mouth.

I have managed to overcome the obstacle of graduating high school in one of the poorest counties of my state and with little more than a strong Southern will, have accumulated some education-backed wealth - which I protect (in part) with my S&W 357 that belonged to my dad.

I grow weary of throwing out my conservative credentials - like my strong pro-life stance and fiscal conservatism, but have found in today's climate - I have to do that before someone slaps a label on me that makes me want to slap them right back: I favor a path to citizenship for a highly scrutinized portion of the undocumented workers.

I do so because I think it's practical and good for our economy. I also do it because my Divine Creator has mandated that we be examples to the the very countries to whom we wish to teach compassion. I can go Old or New testament to back up that truth, another day, another forum.

Immigration as a litmus test for conservatism is repugnant. It has become the tail that wags the dog. But, for a few who cling to the idea that they do nothing but drain our economy, here's some good info by the Immigration Policy Center, in a brief called "The Economic Impact of Immigration':

- one flaw of many previous studies is that they do not consider economic contributions such as consumer purchasing power and the formation of businesses, both of which create jobs and provide federal, state, and local governments with additional revenue through sales, income, business, and property taxes.

From the brief:

The vast majority of immigrants are not eligible to receive public benefits such as Medicaid, State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Security Income (SSI), or food stamps for many years after their arrival in the United States, if ever. Legal permanent residents (LPRs) must pay into the Social Security and Medicare systems for approximately 10 years before they are eligible to receive benefits when they retire. In most cases, LPRs can not receive SSI, which is available only to U.S. citizens, and are not eligible for means-tested public benefits until 5 years after receiving their green cards. Undocumented immigrants, who comprise nearly one-third of all immigrants in the country, are not eligible for any kind of public benefits--ever.1

A 2007 analysis of U.S. Census data by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found that, between 1995 and 2005, the share of low-income, noncitizen immigrant children receiving Medicaid or SCHIP dropped from 36 percent to 30 percent. In comparison, there were increases in the Medicaid or SCHIP participation of low-income citizen children, whether they lived in immigrant-headed households or households headed by native-born citizens (rising from 45-47 percent in 1995 to 53-54 percent in 2005).2

An analysis of welfare data by researchers at the Urban Institute reveals that less than 1 percent of households headed by undocumented immigrants receive cash assistance for needy families, compared to 5 percent of households headed by native-born U.S. citizens.3

I could have supported Huckabee before he revealed a major character flaw by flip-flopping on immigration... then I discovered his idea of less government is goevernment mandates on smoking and health related issues. That sounds too much like Hillary-care to me.

John McCain - '08. Got my vote.

Soooo, if a Dog has Teddy, Lurch, Reid, and an Aided Ninny Peloser, astride it's back, but is not an Under-Dog, what exactly is it?

McPain is not a Female, so he could not be called a "Pelosi" either!

WAIT! I got it!

He is a PROFESSIONAL Politician! A Life-Long member of the Problem that has destroyed MY Life!

Hey Nancy! Put on a BIGGER One!

He deserves it! ;~)

...and, he couldn't have done it without the MSM pushing him and publishing his lies and misleading statements without pointing out that they were lies and misleading statements.