Bizarre Presidential Talk. A few days ago a friend sent me an article from one of the New York daily newspapers (News?) titled "Hil vs. Giuliani: The race we've dreamed of", that speculates that the 2008 Presidential contest could be between two New Yorkers, Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton. I told my friend:

RIDICULOUS. It is so much feminist claptrap that Hillary Clinton will be the candidate of the Democratic Party. She is DESPISED in much of the country. The only people who would vote for her are (a) Radical-Feminist lesbians and (b) people who really want her husband back in office and think that if Hillary is elected, Bill will be the real power, behind the throne. Those two constituencies amount to nothing. As for Rudy Giuliani, if people think the Protestant evangelicals who control the Republican Party are going to vote for a pro-abortion Italian CATHOLIC from NEW YORK CITY, they are halluskinatin'.

On November 13th, The New York Times published an article entitled "For Evangelicals, Supporting Israel Is ‘God’s Foreign Policy’, which contained this observation:

white evangelicals make up about a quarter of the electorate. Whatever strains may be creeping into the Israeli-American alliance over Iraq, the Palestinians and Iran, a large part of the Republican Party’s base remains committed to a fiercely pro-Israel agenda that seems likely to have an effect on policy choices.

Aside from the lunacy of Christian Zionism — if the Jews are God's chosen people, then Christians are NOT; if God still has a special covenant with the Jews, then He does NOT have a special relationship to Christians; if Judaism is the faithful perpetuation of that Covenant, then Christianity is heresy, and the Jews properly not just reject Jesus but arguably killed him with justice; so no real Christian can be a Zionist on theological grounds without disowning Christianity, which not merely ignores Judaism but indeed overthrows it — the point to note here is that Evangelicals comprise a quarter of the electorate, about half of a winning vote for President. 70% of Evangelicals voted Republican this month. The Republicans still lost. They cannot afford to alienate Evangelicals by offering a pro-abortion Catholic. And Rudolph Giuliani is even worse for Evangelicals, because he brazenly conducted an adulterous affair with a woman he brought into Gracie Mansion, the official residence of the Mayor of New York — in front of his children! The suggestion that Rudy Giuliani will be the Republicans' choice is madness.
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Hillary is a harpie, as much of the Nation sees her. Nobody believes her recent conversion to a nuanced view of abortion, to make it available but rare. That's bull and everybody knows she is all for abortion on demand.
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Moreover, this country is not Radical Feminist. Remember the so-called "Equal Rights Amendment"? It went down in flames and there has been no attempt to resurrect it. Many people say they have no problem voting for a woman for President, but people lie to pollsters. When asked if they think their friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc., would have a problem, a large proportion of voters say yes, those OTHER people would have trouble with that. This projection onto others of hostility to a woman President is regarded by pollsters as an indicator of what people really think themselves but are unwilling to be held to account for.
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If ever there will be a woman President in the United States — and despite the rhetoric that it's "inevitable", remember that we have had only one Catholic President in the entire history of this country — it will have to be a woman people like. Hillary ain't it.
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As for the other prominent person who announced his intention to explore a run for President this week, John McCain, nobody in his right mind could vote for McCain because altho he may be likable, he is absolutely, friggin' demented. His politics are all over the map and you can NEVER know how he'll react to any given piece of news. On Wednesday, October 18th:

[McCain] joked Wednesday he would "commit suicide" if Democrats win the Senate in November.

This is a man who is supposed to appeal to Democrats? Many Democrats feel that McCain is so sympathetic to many of their views that he should leave the Republican Party for the Democratic Party, but he jokes that he'd rather commit suicide than see the Dems win the Senate?
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Where are the sane and sensible candidates from the major parties?
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If you want an odd candidate, I'm available. I could attract the gay, bald, disabled, and elderly vote, since I'm all of those things. A couple of weeks of grammatical and vocabulary drill, and I'll be fluent in Spanish, French, and Portuguese. I'm an ardent believer in the magic of our Constitution and the limited government it set forth, but also a true believer that the rich can take care of themselves, and the function of government is to help those who can't take care of themselves. Vote for me, and I'll set you free!
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 2,865 — for Israel.)

- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:01 PM