McCain offered an olive branch to the Christian right in a speech about the kind of judges he would nominate planned for Tuesday at Wake Forest University. The far right has been deeply suspicious of McCain, the expected GOP presidential nominee, because he has clashed with its leaders and worked against them on issues like campaign finance reform.McCain promised to appoint judges who, in the mold of Roberts and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, are likely to limit the reach of the Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

“They would serve as the model for my own nominees if that responsibility falls to me,” McCain said in his prepared speech.

Asheville Citizen-Times

I love how the author refers to those who have had reservations about McCain as the “far right.”

In any case, judges were a big issue with many conservatives concerned about what kind of judges McCain would nominate. I’m not too worried about it. The “Gang of 14″ that he forged to get Bush’s stalled nominees through, in hindsight was actually a decent idea on his behalf. I was critical of it at the time, but it allowed Bush to get some excellent judges through, like Janice Rogers Brown, whom we wouldn’t have been able to get if that hadn’t happened.

So, I’m not too concerned with McCain when it comes to judges, but quite honestly, I don’t know if it will be possible for him to get a pro-life judge through without cloture. Even in the best case scenario for Republicans this year we won’t have enough Senators to break a filibuster, which will definitely happen if the Democrats don’t think they can win an up or down vote.

After a super-majority of Ron Paul supporters captured control of the Republican state convention Saturday, state party officials abruptly canceled the event without electing delegates to the national convention.Early in the day, state delegates supporting Paul’s continued pursuit of the Republican nomination voted through a rules change that forced the state party to abandon its preset ballot of potential national convention delegates and open up the race to the rest of the state delegates.

The Reno Gazette-Journal

I like Ron Paul very much. I think he is one of the best Congressmen in Washington in regards to governing by our Constitution. However, these shenanigans by those who continue to support his failed Presidential bid need to stop.

I think Ron Paul would have made an excellent President and his candidacy was quite impressive, especially the amount of money he managed to raise, but it’s long past time to move on. There is absolutely no chance whatsoever that he will be able to get the Republican nomination and people like the ones who crashed this state convention are only attaching a negative connotation to the Congressman and making themselves look like a bunch of asses.

Republicans should sit back and enjoy the Democrats’ current chaos rather than drumming up their own.

I really don’t know why McCain felt the need to comment on this ad run by the North Carolina GOP. It wasn’t created for his benefit and has nothing to do with him at all. It’s aimed at helping the Republican gubernatorial candidates. Barack Obama is an extreme radical leftist and the two Democrats running for governor have endorsed him. Therefore, it’s fair to say they approve of his extreme radical leftist views. I don’t see the problem here.

The last Republican to win Massachusetts? Ronald Reagan. The last Republican before that? Dwight Eisenhower. Even George McGovern managed to carry Massachusetts in 1972, the one Democratic holdout in Richard Nixon’s 49-state landslide.

Replace “McGovern” with “MoveOn.org” and you’ve seized the essence of the Obama candidacy. He’s the most liberal U.S. senator, advocating tax increases on the “wealthy” and enjoying the support of Gov. Deval Patrick, Sen. Ted Kennedy, The Boston Globe-Democrat and every 9/11 conspiracy kook in the People’s Republic of Cambridge. He’s got all the players in Massachusetts behind him except the ones who actually vote.

While Hillary Clinton soundly beats McCain in Massachusetts in the new SurveyUSA poll, 56 percent to 41 percent, the Obama/McCain number is 48 percent to 46 percent, well within the margin of error.

The Boston Herald

This is from Wednesday night’s Democratic debate where Obama was asked a question about raising the Capital Gains Tax.

Barack Obama just admitted on camera in front of the entire country that he would raise taxes on 100 million Americans in order to get revenge on 50 people who had the nerve to make a whole lot of money last year. It doesn’t matter that raising the tax would hinder economic growth. It doesn’t matter that the a large portion of those 100 million Americans include middle class folks like you and me. It’s all about “fairness.” It’s not fair that these people were successful in their investments. Does Barack Obama think it’s fair when that when that hedge fund manager’s secretary sells some stock to put her kid through college that she’ll have to pay a 28% capital gains tax on it? His response is not the answer I expect from a Presidential candidate. This is the answer I would expect from a 12 year old kid on a playground.

Taxes are there to fund the basic functions of government. Barack Obama would use them to punish people whose fortunes and lifestyles he personally disagrees with. This is not someone that should be anywhere near the White House, let alone a U.S. Senator or have involvement in any level of government whatsoever. His attitude is anti-American and destructive. This man is no brilliant genius or some messiah of change. He is just another angry, class warfare Marxist repackaged in a pretty label, typical of the kind of candidate the far left keeps putting up to pull this country down.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Growing numbers of people like what they see in John McCain, vaulting him into a tie with the two Democratic presidential contenders just a few months after Republicans faced a steep disadvantage.

The Arizona senator has made a race of the White House contest by attracting disgruntled GOP voters, independents and even some moderate Democrats who shunned his party last fall, according to an Associated Press-Yahoo News poll released Thursday. About two-thirds of them have grown disenchanted with President Bush despite voting for him in 2004, including many GOP-leaning independents, while the remaining third usually support Democrats but like McCain anyway.

The AP

I said back around Super Tuesday that this would be one big advantage by having McCain as our nominee.  He wasn’t my first choice for a number of reasons, but I said he would bring back a lot of the disgruntled Reagan coalition that Bush has pissed off over the past seven years.  Bush has given conservatism a bad reputation and it may take someone moderate like McCain to take off the edginess that many Republican leaning voters are currently feeling.

PITTSBURGH — Republican Sen. John McCain on Tuesday called for a summer-long suspension of the federal gasoline tax and several tax cuts as the likely presidential nominee sought to stem the public’s pain from a troubled economy.

Charlotte Observer

I think McCain knows as well as we all do that this is never going to happen, but it is a smart political move.  Gas prices are one of the top issues irritating voters this year and calling for a moratorium on the added price due to Federal taxation during the most heavily traveled months of the year isn’t going to earn him any enemies.

WASHINGTON — Democratic Party officials want a federal judge to order an investigation into whether Sen. John McCain violated election laws by withdrawing from public financing, saying federal regulators are too weak to act on their own.A lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission, to be filed today in U.S. District Court, questions the agency’s ability to enforce the law and review McCain’s decision to opt out of the system.

The Charlotte Observer

I don’t know if McCain is in violation or not, to be honest. He was approved for public financing, but I don’t believe he ever took the money. Technically, I believe he is supposed to get permission from the FEC to opt back out of it, but he has been unable to do so because there are not enough commissioners on the panel at this current time to hold a quorum and decide the matter. Ironically enough, the reason for this lack of commissioners is due to the Democrats blocking Bush’s nominees for the panel. It makes you wonder if this is an ulterior motive behind their actions.   Even more ironic would be if McCain actually gets smacked on a violation of campaign finance rules.

My thoughts on how McCain can win the presidency.

PRINCETON, NJ — A sizable proportion of Democrats would vote for John McCain next November if he is matched against the candidate they do not support for the Democratic nomination. This is particularly true for Hillary Clinton supporters, more than a quarter of whom currently say they would vote for McCain if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee.

It would appear that Obama isn’t the great magnificent unifier that the media and his supporters claim him to be. As it gets closer to the election and more and more people begin to realize exactly how far to the left and out of touch with America this guy is he will be more and more vulnerable to defeat. Anyone who thinks he is going to ride some wave to victory is going to be sorely disappointed.

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona said yesterday that a government bailout of banks should be based “solely on preventing systemic risk” and not on helping financial and property speculators.

“I will not play election-year politics with the housing crisis,” McCain told a group of Hispanic small-business leaders in Santa Ana. “I will evaluate everything in terms of whether it might be harmful or helpful to our effort to deal with the crisis we face now.”

Winston-Salem Journal

Good.  They shouldn’t be bailed out.  These are multi billion dollar corporations that engaged in this risky behavior and they are now paying the price for it.  They need to sink and the market needs to correct itself naturally without government interference.  Bailing them out on this will only encourage this behavior in the future.

Straight from the horse’s mouth:

“The point I was making was not that my grandmother harbors any racial animosity. She doesn’t. But she is a typical white person who, uh, if she sees somebody on the street that she doesn’t know there’s a reaction that’s been been bred into our experiences that don’t go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way and that’s just the nature of race in our society. We have to break through it…” - Senator Barack Obama

The Huffington Post

And the Huffington Post has the audio clip that you can listen to.

I wonder what exactly is a “typical white person?” I do know one thing, though. Obama isn’t going to win any election without a significant amount of votes from all of those “typical white people” in America.

I wonder how long the media circus would go on if John McCain had to explain what a typical black person is?

No caption needed. H/T Redstate

I guess his speech writers are West Wing fans as well as Deval Patrick fans:

West Wing Season 2 Ep.2 (In the shadow of two Gunmen) 38 mins 50 sec

Bartlet: “what began on the commons in Concord, Massachusetts, as an alliance of farmers and workers, of cobbles man and tinsmiths, of statesmen and students,…”

Obama’s speech today (from Drudge)

Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America’s improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787.

Can you say quid pro quo?

Dan Riehl notes, via Amanda Carpenter, that in the list of earmarks he requested, $1 Million was requested for the construction of a new hospital pavilion at the University Of Chicago. The request was put in in 2006.

You know who works for the University of Chicago Hospital?

Michelle Obama. She’s vice president of community affairs.

As Byron noted, “In 2006, the Chicago Tribune reported that Mrs. Obama’s compensation at the University of Chicago Hospital, where she is a vice president for community affairs, jumped from $121,910 in 2004, just before her husband was elected to the Senate, to $316,962 in 2005, just after he took office.”

Looks like that raise was worth it.

My wife now wants me to run.

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee (R) reiterated Friday that he will not run against Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.).

The filing period began March 3, the day before Huckabee withdrew from the presidential race, and ends Monday.

In an interview with The Hill, Huckabee said he is still “decompressing” from his presidential campaign, and reaffirmed past statements that indicated he had no interest in challenging Pryor or serving in the Senate.

In a mid-February breakfast with reporters, Huckabee joked, “There’s a greater chance that I would dye my hair green, cover my body with tattoos and go on a rock tour with Amy Winehouse.”

Huckabee repeated that joke Friday, adding: “That was a pretty apt description of my total lack of interest in running for the Senate.”

The Hill

I guess we can write off any possibility of picking off Pryor this year.  The Arkansas GOP is pretty much dysfunctional.  Huckabee is really the only big Republican name in the state that I am aware of.

 

He’s going to be debating John Edwards at a manufacturing association event on June 18.

I am voting for McCain.