I am a conservative and a traditionalist, so naturally that's what I look for in a candidate. That doesn't necessarily mean that I will always vote Republican. There are many Blue-Dog Democrats who won in '06 that I would support for President. Unfortunately, none of them are running. For some reason, the Democrat party is running 3 radical Left politicians which risks alienating a lot of voters. Hillary is phony and much too ambitious. Edwards is an ambulance chaser who would steal your wallet if you turned your back on him. And Obama? Well, to be honest, I like him as a man. I read his book and I truly feel he is honest and devoted to his family. He is a good husband and a good father. However, his Senate record consists of many "present" votes rather than yes's and no's. He gives a good speech, he is honest, but he is a coward. There is no other way to put it. He inspires people because he speaks with passion and makes us feel good, but he has no substance. There is no way he would ever have my vote unless he showed a little backbone and took a stand for something.
First and foremost, the President is the Commander-in-Chief. He must be willing to defend this country with ferocity. He must be unwilling to defer our sovereignty to a UN committee and never allow US troops to serve under UN command. Military experience is not a requirement, but is certainly a bonus. NONE of the Democratic candidates have demonstrated the qualities that I look for as Commander-in-Chief. In fact, I have sincere concern for the military should any of them take over as President.
Foreign policy should be "America First". That means taking on China economically. That means taking care of US corporate interests. That means doing whatever it takes to make America energy independent, regardless the consequences for OPEC. That means cutting foreign aid with a broad knife to any country that is not 100% supportive of our policies, including Mexico. And that means removing ourselves from the UN as soon as possible.
As for domestic policy, here are the key components that I value in a candidate, in order of importance:
- Social Security - I have heard a sound, detailed plan for saving Social Security from only one candidate...the candidate I am endorsing. Both Republicans and Democrats are deeply lacking on this issue. No one wants to tackle it, and I think it's the biggest domestic issue this generation faces.
- Immigration - Tonight I heard my candidate say that America 'should be a nation of tall fences and wide gates where we control when to open those gates'. Amen! I couldn't have said it better myself. I'm ALL FOR immigration, but our laws must be enforced and our borders must be secured and it must be done NOW.
- Healthcare - Any candidate that wants socialized medicine will get nothing but strong resistance from me. Socializing our medical system will ruin quality of care, and access to care will vanish...all at great cost to the treasury. My candidate should be deeply concerned about the number of uninsured citizens in this country, and will put forth a plan to improve access to care via the free market with minimal government interference.
- Energy - Improve technology for cleaner energy and take steps towards energy independence. But that's all long-term stuff. What about short-term? My candidate has to advocate for more nuclear power to help our energy needs while allowing technology time to come up with something better.
- Environment - I believe in responsible policy. I care about the environment. I'm an outdoorsman and a hunter, and it's hard to find more dedicated conservationists than hunters. I want to protect the earth, but I want to do it based on sound science and with methods that will not harm our economy or job market. It can be done, and it doesn't require panic or hysterics.
- Taxes - Must be reduced. My candidate has already advocated for abolishing capitol gains taxes, the AMT, the Death Tax and implementing a fair tax system. A true conservative must fight to shrink the government and MEAN IT! This is one of my biggest gripes with Bush and the Republicans. Spending is out of control. Earmarks have become ridiculous. This must stop. Washington has to stop wasting money and balance the budget, and they need to do this with lower taxes. It can be done.
As far as values are concerned, the ideal candidate must have a strong values system, something unwavering, which means that he must have a religious background. Any candidate who conjures their own set of values will falter in difficult times. Moral relativists can not lead a nation. The ideal candidate will appoint Judges who uphold what is written in the Constitution, not apply their own vision to it. I refer especially to the TENTH AMENDMENT, which many judges conveniently ignore in order to create law and impose their own beliefs on the American people. This must stop and the President must appoint judges who will stop it. The President must be willing to do the unpopular thing if it's the right thing. The President must not govern by polls.
With all this in mind, there are only 2 candidates that meet my criteria. Duncan Hunter has a phenomenal platform and will make a great running mate for the eventual nominee, but he is too deep in the polls to win and he needs to work on his delivery to connect with voters. Therefore, I endorse Fred Thompson for President. He is a true conservative with a solid values system who will be strong on foreign policy. He will likely drop out if he doesn't win in South Carolina, but I am not picking winners, I am picking my ideal candidate.
Vote for Fred!
10 comments:
Doctor,
Briefly. I will only comment on the few items w/ which I strenuously disagree. Of course you are entitled to your opinion but I confess I am somewhat surprised by your choice.
Fred Thompson is not the second coming of Ronald Reagan. He is a much better actor and Reagan, although I agreed w/ few of his policies, was a much better leader.
You are entiltle to distrust John Edwards, but calling him an ambulance chaser says much more about you than it does about him.
When you or yours has been injured as a result of the acts or omissions of another person; when your ability to work; perform ADLs; or just be w/o pain has been temporarily or permanently affected, you will get little recompense and zero justice from the insurance industry or the local Chamber of Commerce. I regret that you have succumbed to the insurance industry's quarter century campaign to limit the rights of injured people and to dispargae trial attorneys who seek justice for them. Unfortunately, you are not alone.
A religious background is not necessary to have a strong and unwavering values system. Let me repeat that: a religious background is not necessary to have a strong and unwavering values system.
We have in the last 30 years seen religion mix w/ politics to the detriment of both.
If your cmment regarding Social Security includes Medicare and Medicais, I agree completely. If it does not, the challnegs posed by Medicare and Medicaid are much more serious from a funding prspective than that of Social Security. Of course addressing the healthcare system may have a salubrious effect on the M&M issue but you cannot make an omelet w/o breaking eggs. Revenue has to come from somewhere. The worker base to support the retiring baby boomers is shrinking. Whether its "soak the rich" by mandating that people continuing to pay FICA no matter what their earnings, you have to find the $ somewhere.
I think yor concerns regarding activist judges are chimerical. "Activist judges" tend to be jurists w/ whom you disagree. The judge in the Terry Schiavo case was accused of being an activist judge even though all he did was apply the law that was in situ. The Amendment w/ which you should be most concerned is the 14th not the 10th.
I can see voting for John McCain even though I have misgivings about his age and health. I would never hand the ball to Fred Thompson on 4th and short; I would not rely on him to score the goal to put the game into OT. I would not traut him w/ the crucial free throws or w/ the at bat necessary to win the game.
I wouldn't even trust him to bring home a trout to feed the family.
One the one hand, he was a personal injury lawyer once upon a time. On the other hand, he was alkso a lobbyist.
Regards.
Fred Thompson is my pick, too. I believe that he is the only true conservative out there. Since I am a very conservative person, he is my only choice.
Honestly, my only reservation is that he has young children. Since they are not my children, I can't make that decision for him. Also, it's not about him being president, but rather his roll as a father.
Well, though I disagree with Thompson, I'm admire that you're picking him based on ideals. That's the way I see things things too. I hate it when people vote for who "can win" rather than who they want as president.
Loop, you can defend Edwards all you want but the next time you voice concern about our healthcare system remember that HE was part of the problem. Edwards made millions suing doctors. Specifically, he made millions suing obstetricians on the claim that they failed to perform a C-section timely enough to prevent cerebral palsy in the baby. There was never any sound clinical evidence that an expeditious C-section could prevent cerebral palsy, and since Edwards' witch hunt there have been studies that completely debunk and disprove the theory altogether. Although that has never mattered to Edwards.
Edwards has never admitted that he was wrong and has never apologized for ruining the careers and lives of many physicians, forcing them in some cases to close up shop or move elsewhere and thus increase the need for healthcare access. There are John Edwardses all over the nation who did the same thing, and people now wonder why it's so hard to find an obstetrician for basic health care. That's why I call him an ambulance chaser. He destroyed people with junk science and that alone makes him unfit to be the most powerful man in the world. I haven't bought anything pushed by the insurance industry, I'm talking about what I've seen with my own eyes. Edwards is not a hero, sir.
As for religion, I challenge your claim that a human being can have an unwavering system of morals without a religious foundation. Knowing what we know about human nature, that's a very difficult argument and quite idealistic. Anyone without religion basically creates their own set of morals and therefore determines what is right and wrong by their own personal definition. What is unwavering about that? Is there anything that would keep that person from redefining right and wrong?
Religious morals are unwavering because they come from God. I can't change the rules because I didn't make them. And I'm not talking about any one particular religion. I think the President must have a firm religious foundation, be that Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist, whatever.
By activist judges, I include members of the SUpreme Court of somehow "interpreted" a woman's right to abort a human fetus from the Constitution. This is outrageous. The 10th amendment covers the issue quite clearly be leaving such issues to the states. Roe v Wade was a flat-out unConstitutional ruling and these things must not be allowed to happen in the future. It's the PResident's job to ensure that his judges read and interpret the Constitution as it is written, not insert their own personal views between the lines.
Meanwhile, you levy some strong attacks on Thompson without backing them up, except to say that he was once a lobbyist and a plaintiff's attorney. Does that alone disqualify someone? Seems awfully superficial for you.
Doctor,
Saturday morning chores await so I will leave the defense of John Edwards for another time when I can address your comment w/ the thoroughness it deserves.
So far as yor comment about the ability to have a firm and unwavering system of values w/o the benefit of religion, I confess to being an idealist.
Have you ever read any of the works of J. Krishnamurti? Google "Truth is a Pathless Land" for a start. It will be well worth the 5 minutes or less it will take you to read it.
The problem w/ religion as I see it, and here I paraphrase Krishnamurti from another of his works, is that most, not all, proclaim themselves to be "THE WAY." Religion should be like a telephone w/ God on the other end of the line. Too often, in fact the rule not the exception, is that people worship the telephone instead. The intractable conflicts between, by way of example and not by limitation, the doctrines of Southern Baptists and Wahabbism are an example of this.
Look at some of the comments about Mitt Romney's faith that have been made recently. I live in a community that has a significant number of LDS members in it. As rule, they are ideal neighbors: sober; hard working; and kind. Yet until reletively recently, their religion treated people of color as inferior humans.
I am married and have two daughters who are young adults. Do you recall the recent flap regarding Mike Huckabee and his endorsement of the Southern Baptist tenet that women should be subservient?
I do not think I need waste anyone's time w/ the treeatment of women throughout much of the Muslim world.
So which religion is best?
I think it is a mistake to aver that there can be no sytem of ethics or values that is subject to change or is situational unless it is founded in religion. Even religious tenets are subject to change.
Meanwhile, I certainly do not claim that there are no activist judges and I am familiar w/ the aarguments regarding the lack of Constitutional underpinning of the decision in Roe v. Wade.
The Constitution is a marvelous document w/ many attributes, not the least of which is its flexibility. Certainly, the people who wrote could never have conceived of the the way you and i are able to communicate; or that te trip from Philadelphia to New York could be accomplishe in an hour and a host of other things.
"Activist judges," in my opinion is just another buzz word, typically used by conservative. But strict constructionalism is also fraught w/ peril. As is common, a moderate stance is opitimal. If one approaches the constition w/ the view that: "It says what I want it to say" one is bound to commit as many mistakes as the person who says: "I know what the founding fathers meant and they only meant what they said."
So far as Sen. Thompson is concerned, you say, "I like him b/c...."
I merely say, this man has given me no reason to believe that I should trust him to be the most powerful leader on earth. On the one hand I distrust Hillary Clinton's ambition. One the other Fred Thompson's ambilvalence fails to inspire me.
I am not implying he is dishonest and do not use trust in that sense.
I merely say nothing he has done in word or deed leads me to believe that he is the best qualified candidate for the job. That is why I tried to express myself metaphorically.
robert m.
I suggest that ideals, as we have seen all to often are greatly overrated and occupy the other end of the scale from "who can win."
My own criteria are based on "Can he/she do a good job."
Recent history has reminded me to be very circumspect about ideologues, no matter what their ideology.
This, of course, is the flaw in kristina's decison making process. One may as well support a candidate who shares yor favorite ice cream flavor.
One the other hand, kristina, if Fred Thompson were the optimal candidate for president, far otstripping all others, I pose the following two questions: 1. Given his talent, couldn't he balance his prediential obligations and his parental ones? 2. If he could not, shouldn't you and he be willing to let his children muddle along w/o his complete attention for the greater good of the nation?
Regards.
Loop,
I was trying to come up with a way to express my thoughts when I commented and was just unable to do so. Thanks for the help!
1. It will be very difficult to balance presidential obligations and parental ones. If there is ever a conflict, the presidential obligations must take presidence.
2. I am more than will to let his children "muddle along" for the greater good of the nation.
As a mother of children that are often left by my husband for the military, I understand what it takes to give up that time for the country. My entire family does it willingly. As a mother, though, I frequently feel my heartstrings being pulled for children. Also, since Fred Thompson would be good for the WHOLE country, his children would also benefit from him being president.
I hope that clarifies things.
Loop, just a few things to point out. YOu mention LDS and their treatment of people of color, but don't forget the atheist mantra of Nazism. They weren't exactly kind to minorities.
And for Huckabee's comment, I have to step in and defend him. I don't like him, but what he said was - as is typical for Christian leaders - taken WAY OUT of context. The media plucked this out of a speech and ran with it, somehow trying to portray him as a sexist, chauvenistic mongrel who looks down his nose at women. It was unfair.
To his credit, at the most recent debate he was asked about the comment and instead of deferring it as an "out of context" attack, he answered the question. And his explanation was extraordinary. I literally wanted to stand in my living room and applaud.
Anyone can leaf through a religious text and cherry pick passages that reflect poorly on that religion. It's been done for centuries, and obviously is still a favorite of the anti-religion crowd.
In my opinion, this amounts to nothing more than plain ol' bigotry.
I agree that anyone can go through a religious text and cherry pick. Is it your position that the tenets of the SBC and LDS do not hold that women should be subservient?
Regards.
I won't speak for LDS, but as a Southern Baptist I can tell you with absolute 100% certainty that we do NOT feel women should be subservient to men. I would have words with any member of my faith who said otherwise since this idea would be a gross misrepresentation of the teachings of God. And any non-member is displaying a great deal of ignorance (or perhaps hostility) of the Christian faith if they make similar claims.
Just because Dan Brown says so, doesn't make it true.
Religion, especially the Christian
Religion, has high moral/ethical content; we humans need a compass to help us determine right from wrong, positive from the negatives, etc., and leaving it to political parties is scary enough, so forget that!
Religious notions? An impossible grid pattern, multiple paths, leading to no specific location.
>>
So, being too lazy to set personal standards, it's easier to follow the leader of your favorite Denomination, and with it, the "Official" Doctrine of that Church, and that Set of Rules.
>>
Would we all be better off, with a
non-denominational approach? All religions do fall short. They all CLAIM to speak for a Very Mute Creator Of The Universe!
I would rather trust My Bachelor's
Degree in Common Sense (if I could
only find where I misplaced it!)
>>
The Largest Christian Church Demands Obedience, and make Broad
Claims of Infallibility! When scholars challenge, they quickly add, "It's very limited...to matters of "Faith & Morals".
Well, if Faith deals w/thought, and Morals w/Action, then the entire range of human experience is encompassed within the Papal Claim! Digest that one, friends!
(The Mormons have "Devine Revelations"). I'm comforted with
their low population, and they seem
to have good family values.
So, Goodbye Constitution, Hello Theocracy! Here's your new Canon Law, or Shari'a (Islamic Law). Accept It, or You'll Wish You Had!
>>
Example: The Church & Medicine
a) Episcopal Principle, Therapeutic Abortion
b) Baptist: Sterilization of the Feeble-minded
c) How a Methodist Nurse Should behave in a Mormon Hospital
d) Jewish Views on Caesarian Section
e) Christian Science: On Migraine Headache
f) Jehovoah's Witness: Objection To Military Service
g) Catholic Opposition to Cremation
h) Catholic Doctrine on Ectopic Gestation (Tubal Pregnancy)
(Relax folks, all are fictional, except the last three!) reb
__________________________________
www.lazyonebenn.blogspot.com
Post a Comment