A Letter to South Carolina

Dear Voters of South Carolina,

You have a very important weekend ahead of you.  The eyes of the United States will be on you this weekend.  You will cast your votes to help select the GOP nominee who will hopefully defeat President Obama.  I think the best candidate to do that is Newt Gingrich.

Is Newt perfect? No, not even close.  No one is.  There have been a lot of articles written about Newt’s personal life going back to the Clinton years.  As Thomas Sowell has written, “If Newt Gingrich were being nominated for sainthood, many of us would vote very differently from the way we would vote if he were being nominated for a political office.”

Gingrich isn’t the perfect candidate.  He’s not the most conservative politician in the United States.  However, he is at least as conservative as the other candidates.  He also has an impressive list of accomplishments.  I think most political observers would say he is the smartest person in the room among the presidential candidates from both parties.  He deserves credit for engineering the Republican take over of the 1990′s.  He deserves credit for the “budget surplus’s” and the welfare reform of the Clinton years.  I think he is more knowledgeable on domestic and international issues.

A general election would stack up Newt’s record against the President’s record. If you boil President Obama’s record down two or three issues, they’re 1) Obamacare, 2) a terrible economy, and 3) an abysmal foreign policy.  On issue 2 and 3, I honestly believe the GOP candidates that are left will all be a great improvement over the current president.  That leaves Obamacare.

If Mitt Romney is the GOP nominee, then Obamacare is entirely off the table.  ”Romney-care” from Massachusetts  share’s many similarities with Obamacare.  The White House is going to say in a general election that they based Obamacare on Romneycare.  Mitt Romney has failed to distance himself from his Massachusetts health care plan, and has defended his plan over and over.  The American people deserve a debate on Obamacare, and the president deserves to be held accountable for his health care plan, one way or another.

Newt Gingrich isn’t a good candidate for sainthood.  He is a great candidate for President.  He should be your choice for the GOP primary.

America the Beautiful Day 9: Innocent Until Proven Guilty

One of the things we should all be thankful for is the way our legal system works.  For all of it’s flaws, one corner stone of the system stands out: the fact that the accused is innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

I suspect since before the founding of our nation, people have tried cases in the court of public opinion.  There are numerous examples of that in today’s world.  There are also many examples of cases where the public, and the media, felt someone was guilty only to discover the evidence wasn’t as strong as we were lead to believe.

Take for example the 2006 Duke lacrosse case.  To refresh your memory, three men from the Duke lacrosse team were accused of rape by a black student who also worked as a stripper.  She claimed that she was at a party where three of the team members attacked and raped her.  The media quickly sided with the accuser in this case.  Not only was the media certain that the white members of the team had raped this student, they also alleged it could be  a hate crime.  The school suspended a number of the players.However, evidence contradicting the accuser’s story started to surface.  Questions about the character of the alleged victim surfaced.  The victims story started to change.  Finally, the prosecution had to drop all charges on the Duke players, and publicly declare them innocent.  The original prosecutor even had ethics charges brought against him because of his conduct in the case.

However, few in the media have learned from lessons like this.  We now have a similar situation playing out on TV.  A Republican candidate is polling well.  Suddenly, there are allegations of sexual harassment surfacing.  There is no proof of any wrong doing as of the writing of this blog.  Does that make the women attacking Herman Cain in public liars?  No.  Should we assume Cain was in the wrong because it sounds like a story we would normally see on TV?  No.  We should wait until all of the facts have surfaced.  If Herman Cain actually harassed these women, they will be able to prove it in court.  If they can’t, there will be a lot of reporters who will get to relearn the lessons of the Duke rape case all over again.  Either way, we should assume Herman Cain is innocent until he is actually proven guilty.

America the Beautiful Day 7: Presidential Elections

With the constant barrage of campaign emails, flyers, and TV spots, it may be hard to be thankful for Presidential elections.  It’s hard today to go an hour without catching some sort of reporting on President Obama or one of the many Republican candidates.  However, for today’s America the Beautiful post, I would like to celebrate presidential elections.

The first national presidential election day was November 7, 1848.  Since that time we have continued to hold our national elections on the same day, regardless of what was going on in the country.  We have also peacefully changed power from very different political parties without blood shed.  We take this for granted in our nation, but this isn’t the norm in the rest of the world, or through time.  Look no further than the current “Arab Spring” for evidence that a peaceful transition of power isn’t the norm.

As we approach the election next day, we should all be thankful that regardless of who is elected, it will be done without bloodshed and without the loss of life other nations have experienced.

This Week, In Politics..

There are a number of significant events happening in politics this week.  Here is a quick round up of them, along with my predictions for each:

The Republican Debate on Wednesday.  The fourth GOP debate will be held on tonight at the Ronald Reagan Library.  This will be the first debate since Rick Perry announced his candidacy.  Tim Pawlenty has bowed out of the race, so there should still be the same number of candidates on stage.  The expectation seems to be that this will be the Rick Perry show.  It may be, however I expect the media to try to make this a Romney vs. Perry event.  I will be watching to see what happens and to report back with my thoughts.  MSNBC will be televising the debate beginning at 8PM.

The President Addresses the Nation.  It feels like this is the hundredth or so speech by President Obama.  However, this is his second, non-state-of-the-union-speech-to-a-joint-session-of-Congress, so maybe it will be different.  The White House is claiming that the President is going to announce his economic plan.  I expect the plan to be very thin on specifics, and very heavy on rhetoric.  The speech will be on Thursday, which is opening day for the NFL 2011-2012 season.  Worse still, the President will be facing pre-game coverage of the Green Pay Packers (2011 Super Bowl Champs) vs. the New Orleans Saints (2010 Super Bowl Champs).  The “timing” of the speech hasn’t been set, but the White House says the speech will end before kick-off at 8:30.  For my next prediction, I expect every single major story on the President’s speech to mention the Packer – Saints game.  This will hurt the president by making his joint-session-of-congress speech seem no more important than a  football game.

September 11th, 10th Anniversary.   This isn’t a political event, but there will be a number of politically themed stories surrounding the tenth anniversary.  I encourage you to take some time and remember where you were and what happened that day.  I will be participating in Project 2996 again and will be posting here on September 11th to remember the victims.

Fox News GOP Debate

Tonight I will be live blogging the Fox News / Washington Examiner GOP Debate.  This is a great chance to learn more about the candidates. I will be posting my comments here, and the blog will be open for your comments. Hope you’re there!