Straw Man

by Ambrose Athanasius

An interesting and almost predictable result happened at today’s Straw Poll at the Family Research Council’s “Washington Briefing 2007” summit in the nation’s capitol. Religious conservatives showed their support, again, for former Governor Mike Huckabee.

Mitt Romney, with his very large bankroll and Hollywood looks couldn’t mesmerize enough of this crowd into believing a Mormon is no different than a Presbyterian. He finished second in the overall vote tally, which included online as well as onsite voting.

Many Christian conservatives, me included, are going to have to deal with the fact that the group of folks who frequent these events do not do their homework on candidates. Though Huckabee is openly pro-life, and the life issue was tops on the list of concerns of the attendees, his record on taxes in Arkansas is not that good. Ironically, this was very high on the list with the Summit folks. Also, it is clear, by policy and public statement, that he would be as bad if not worse than the President on border and immigration issues.

With the voting results, this crowd indicates that they feel China, Al Qaeda, and an open border are no threat. Duncan Hunter received a warm reception, much less than he deserved, perhaps we do not deserve to have a man of his caliber as a leader.

Fragmented, fickle and foolish: this faction of professing conservatives is no different than anybody else in being vulnerable to a good line of political rhetoric. God help the republic.

Schlafly not keen on GOP frontrunners

October 22, 2007

Conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly is expressing strong dissatisfaction with the top-tier Republican presidential candidates. She also questions the validity of the results of the Values Voters straw poll on Saturday.

Eagle Forum founder Phyllis Schlafly says most of the GOP candidates who have been designated frontrunners are globalists. According to Schlafly, candidates Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, John McCain, and Mike Huckabee all “need to wake up” and realize they need the votes of Reagan Democrats to win.

“I think that’s a great mistake for the Republicans. I feel that it’s very important that they reach out to people on the jobs issue,” Schlafly shares. “I was quite disappointed with the debate that was broadcast from Michigan, which is an economically depressed state, and they didn’t appear to have any sympathy or compassion for all the millions of people who’ve lost their jobs that have moved to China.”

In the straw poll taken over the weekend in conjunction with the Values Voters Summit, former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney topped former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee by a mere 30 votes. Schlafly contends that Huckabee was the winner among conference attendees who heard the weekend’s speeches.

“The straw poll was interesting,” she offers. “People were able to vote on it even though they weren’t here. They could vote for the prior two weeks before the conference took place and before they heard any of the speakers.” And in her opinion, that means one cannot say a whole lot about the validity of the poll.

Schlafly believes all that can be deduced from the poll is that so-called “values voters” are still shopping for their candidate. And she says while social conservatives are divided in many ways, they all agree they cannot support a candidate who is not pro-life. The Eagle Forum founder tells OneNewsNow the only GOP hopefuls she is comfortable with are Congressmen Duncan Hunter of California and Tom Tancredo of Colorado.

All Original Content Copyright 2006-2007 American Family News Network – All Rights Reserved

(Note: Duncan Hunter was the only candidate to stand up to the front runners on trade issues during the recent debates, and he regularly points out the jobs we have lost to China, the trade deficit we have as a result, and the national security issues that ensue as China builds weapons with our trade dollars that are designed to combat our military, particularly our Pacific Navy, and that are also being sold to Iraqi and Afghan insurgents via Iran.   Duncan Hunter has a PERFECT rating from Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum)

(Note, on this website I try to keep all criticisms of other candidates to a minimum and limit to technical discussion. This article goes slightly beyond my own policies and style, but I felt that it was a very well written article that mentions Duncan Hunter criticizing Fred Thompson and gaining applause for it. More coverage on this debate should be coming soon!)

In First G.O.P. Debate, Thompson Blows It

(From the New York Observer) http://www.observer.com/2007/thompson-blows-it

by Steve Kornacki Published: October 9, 2007

Tags: Opinion, Politics, Fred Thompson, John McCain, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney, Rudolph Giuliani, Sam Brownback, Tom Tancredo

At the tail end of this afternoon’s Republican presidential debate, CNBC’s Maria “The Money Honey” Bartiromo asked Fred Thompson how his first appearance on-stage with the rest of the G.O.P. field had gone.

“I’ve enjoyed watching these fellas,” he finally managed, after stumbling for something sufficiently light-hearted to sat, “But I gotta admit: it was starting to get a little boring without me.”

Actually, Fred, it was much, much worse with you.

It almost feels like piling on, given the reams of negative reviews Mr. Thompson’s entry into the race has generated, but his performance in Dearborn was pretty close to a catastrophe for the low-key Tennesseean.

How bad? Put it this way: Even Duncan Hunter, who may not even win 100 votes in the New Hampshire primary, managed to stir more of a response from the audience than Mr. Thompson. And actually, Mr. Hunter did it by beating up on Mr. Thompson, who – rather amazingly – seemed rhetorically overmatched.

The subject was China and its trade policies and apparent currency manipulation, not exactly material that had the audience perched at the edge of its seats. But Mr. Hunter, rather shrewdly, tried some old-fashioned red-baiting, denouncing “Communist China” as a direct threat to the American working man – and then tying China to Mr. Thompson.

“Senator Thompson,” he said, “and some of the other senators here: You all voted for Most Favored Nation trading status for China. That set the groundwork for 1.8 million high-paying manufacturing jobs going off-shore, some of them never to return.”

Mr. Hunter continued in this vein, delivering his attack – on China and on Mr. Thompson – with genuine zest, his voice alive with outrage. When he finished, his remarks were greeted with applause.

When it was his turn to respond, Mr. Thompson showed no emotion whatsoever, in his facial expression or in his words.

“Free and fair trade has been good for America,” he blandly asserted, selling the statement with all the enthusiasm and confidence of a telemarketer reading from a script. And that was the highlight of his response. When he finally finished, the crowd was silent – as it was for every answer Mr. Thompson gave during the two-hour debate.

One of Mr. Thompson’s biggest obstacles is supposedly the high expectations that initially greeted his candidacy. That he failed to meet them in several appearances over the summer and in the month after he officially entered the race produced wide – and corrosive – skepticism among the opinion-shaping class. Still, there was some thought that this suddenly low bar would allow Mr. Thompson to “exceed” expectations in his first debate appearance, thus putting his once-promising campaign back on track.

And in fairness, he did show some improvement on the debate stage – but only in terms of his technical handling of policy-related questions. On the campaign trail, Mr. Thompson has generated poor reviews by seeming to be oblivious to the Jena-6 controversy and referring to Russia as “the Soviet Union,” a term that hasn’t been applicable in 15 years. In Dearborn, at least, he was able to answer immediately when co-moderator Chris Matthews – in an effort to mimic a gotcha question that embarrassed then-candidate George W. Bush back in 1999 – asked him to name the Prime Minister of Canada.

“Harper,” Mr. Thompson replied, and while Mr. Matthews didn’t ask him for the Prime Minister’s first name, the immediacy of his reply suggested that he knows it’s Stephen.

But not stumbling over the basics of policy hardly made this debate a success for Mr. Thompson, even if you take the recently lowered expectations into consideration.

The bigger problem is that the fervor that essentially drafted him into the G.O.P. race had to do with style, not substance. That Mr. Thompson seemed to hold positions in-line with the party base and its interest group establishment didn’t hurt, but it was the notion that he could communicate those positions in a powerful and compelling way that led Republicans to demand his candidacy. Like Ronald Reagan, another actor who didn’t always exhibit a command of policy details, Mr. Thompson would win over the masses with a public style that would warm up and win over any audience.

But faced with an auditorium full of Republican in Dearborn, he managed to put them to sleep. Amazingly – and despite Ms. Bartiromo’s admonition – each of the eight other Republicans on stage managed to provoke applause and laughter from the audience, multiple times in most cases, either with well-aimed humor or forceful statements of principle.

Ron Paul, for instance, won his share of applause for his customary assault on U.S. interventionism – and for heaping scorn on Mitt Romney’s suggestion that lawyers ought to decide whether a President needs to consult Congress before attacking Iran.

John McCain mixed his familiar borscht belt schtick – “We can’t hear you over hear in the cheap seats,” he chided Ms. Bartiromo at one point – with familiar pleas for fiscal restraint and an embrace of the “surge” in Iraq.

Sam Brownback invoked his mother to talk about unions and expressed his love for America by declaring, “This place rocks!” That won a loud ovation.

And the debate’s master rhetorician, Rudy Giuliani, time and again turned potentially uncomfortable situations into unifying applause lines by creating opportunities out of thin air to invoke the specter of the Clinton restoration.

“I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have Republican presidential candidate who’s actually beaten Bill Clinton at something,” he said at one point, deftly turning Mitt Romney’s criticism of his opposition to presidential line item veto authority in the 1990s into an applause line. (Mr. Giuliani, as New York mayor, had appealed to the courts to take the power away from Mr. Clinton.)

And later, when Mr. Giuliani was asked about a possible third-party candidate next fall, he brought the discussion around to Mrs. Clinton and her support for Canadian-style “socialized medicine.” If the U.S. adopted such a system, he lamented, there’d be nowhere for Canadians to get their health care.

But there were no such moments for Mr. Thompson, even though he was given more than his share of opportunities, with the moderators giving the candidates uneven speaking time. He made no effort to tie his answers to some broad theme, to engage his opponents, to invoke the Clinton name, to fire off a humorous line or two.

Every time he was called on, Mr. Thompson looked and sounded like a backroom politician who had been forced to appear before the press to field a questions.

Actually, it’s rather ironic: The only professional actor in the race couldn’t even pretend he wanted to be there.

Dr. Dobson was on the Hannity and Colmes show the other day discussing more in depth his positions on Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson. Its a very interesting interview. The only thing I wish Dobson had said in addition was that a nomination of Giuliani or Thompson could mean a loss for the Republicans because of their moderate record. Bob Dole ran as a moderate and lost. Bush senior proved himself to be a moderate and he lost reelection. Bush Jr. has sat on the fence and barely won both of his elections and has lost more support from conservatives in recent months. Only a principled, proven, and consistent conservative can win the election. Duncan Hunter is by far the best person to fulfill that description.

Here is a video of part of Dobson’s interview, where he specifically goes after Giuliani.

Below is Ann Coulter on the show after Dobson supporting Dobson’s arguments and positions, and she specifically goes after Fred Thompson.

Published on PoliticsWest (http://www.politicswest.com)

Dobson on Thompson: “Not for me, my brothers.”

By: Eric Gorski, The Associated Press

Created 09/19/2007 – 9:39pm

James Dobson, one of the nation’s most politically influential evangelical Christians, made it clear in a message to friends this week he will not support Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson.

In a private e-mail obtained Wednesday by The Associated Press, Dobson accuses the former Tennessee senator and actor of being weak on the campaign trail and wrong on issues dear to social conservatives.

“Isn’t Thompson the candidate who is opposed to a Constitutional amendment to protect marriage, believes there should be 50 different definitions of marriage in the U.S., favors McCain-Feingold, won’t talk at all about what he believes, and can’t speak his way out of a paper bag on the campaign trail?” Dobson wrote.

“He has no passion, no zeal, and no apparent ’want to.’ And yet he is apparently the Great Hope that burns in the breasts of many conservative Christians? Well, not for me, my brothers. Not for me!”

The founder and chairman of Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family, Dobson draws a radio audience in the millions, many of whom first came to trust the child psychologist for his conservative Christian advice on child-rearing.

Gary Schneeberger, a Focus on the Family spokesman, confirmed that Dobson wrote the e-mail. Schneeberger declined to comment further, saying it would be inappropriate because Dobson’s comments about presidential candidates are made as an individual and not as a representative of Focus on the Family, a nonprofit organization restricted from partisan politics.

Dobson’s strong words about Thompson underscore the frustration and lack of unity among Christian conservatives about the GOP field. Some Christian right leaders have pinned their hopes on Thompson, describing him as a Southern-fried Ronald Reagan. But others have voiced doubts in recent weeks about some of the same issues Dobson highlighted: his position on gay marriage and support for the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform legislation.

Republican presidential hopeful Fred Thompson and his wife, Jeri, arrive in the town square as he campaigns in his hometown of Lawrenceburg, Tenn., Saturday, Sept. 15, 2007. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

Dobson and other Christian conservatives support an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would bar gay marriage nationally.
Thompson has said he would support a constitutional amendment that would prohibit states from imposing their gay marriage laws on other states, which falls well short of that.

Karen Hanretty, a spokeswoman for the Thompson campaign, said Wednesday in response to the Dobson e-mail: “Fred Thompson has a 100 percent pro-life voting record. He believes strongly in returning authority to the levels of government closest to families and communities, protecting states from intrusion by the federal government and activist judges.

“We’re confident as voters get to know Fred, they’ll appreciate his conservative principles, and he is the one conservative in this race who can win the nomination and can go on to defeat the Democratic nominee.”

In his e-mail addressed “Dear friends,” Dobson includes the text of a recent news story highlighting Thompson’s statement that while he was baptized in the Church of Christ, he does not attend church regularly and won’t speak about his faith on the stump.

U.S. News and World Report quoted Dobson earlier this year as questioning Thompson’s commitment to the Christian faith — comments Dobson contended were not put in proper context.

Dobson in this week’s e-mail writes that suppositions “about the former senator’s never having professed to be a Christian are turning out to be accurate in substance.”

Earlier this year, Dobson said he wouldn’t back John McCain because of the Arizona senator’s opposition to a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage.

Later, Dobson wrote on a conservative news Web site that he wouldn’t support former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani should he win the Republican nomination. Dobson called Giuliani an “unapologetic supporter of abortion on demand” and criticized him for signing a bill in 1997 creating domestic-partnership benefits in New York City.

Last week, Dobson announced on his radio show that the IRS had cleared him of accusations that he had endangered his organization’s nonprofit status by endorsing Republican candidates in 2004. The IRS said Dobson, who endorsed President Bush’s re-election bid, was acting as an individual and not on behalf of the nonprofit group.

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