Looks like it's going to be...

McCain/Huckabee against Clinton/Obama (or Obama/Clinton or something, take your pick...).

Huckabee won the first Super Tuesday state, West Virginia, when John McCain's campaign ordered his delegates to swing to Huckabee to propel him past Romney, who had nearly 50% or the vote on his own.

It now is clear that McCain and Huckabee are working to destroy Romney together.

They tag-teamed him in Iowa and NH, they covered each other in Michigan and S.C.
They blasted him in Michigan and Florida.
And now, they are making sure that if Romney is winning a state, their delegates go to the stronger of the two and make sure it is Huckabee or McCain who wins...

If this pans out to a McCain/Huckabee ticket, I am voting democrat.

Now that Fred is out...

After Fred left, I felt rather disappointed, but I soon came to the conclusion that I should find another candidate to support, because I did not want Huckabee, Giuliani or Paul to be the nominee, and voting for Thompson would in essence be a vote against the more conservative alternatives.

I had by that point already narrowed the choice to McCain or Romney.
So, I decided I would investigate them, and see if the most recurring attacks on them are true.
I knew that McCain was bad on immigration and iffy on abortion at this point, but beyond that I thought he was pretty good.
I was wrong.


John McCain:
The most recurring attack on McCain is that he is a maverick, and that he is bad on taxes and illegal immigration.

After researching McCain for a while, I have come to these determinations:
He is indeed a maverick, and is willing to do anything to get into the White House, he even thought about changing his party affiliation to Independent, following his loss to Bush in 2000 (read about it), and he also offered to run with Kerry against Bush in 2004.

He is bad on taxes, and flipped on them. He states that the Bush Tax Cuts were a foolish tax cut that only helped the rich, but he now states that we should keep them since they are already in place.
He also supported some new taxes as Senator.

He is bad on illegal immigration, but once again flipped.
He opposed the wall on the border, but when polls showed people wanted it, he said he'd build it.
He is opposed to sending all the illegals back.
In 2006 he was rated at 17% by the USBC (link to a recent article on McCain), indicating an open-borders stance.

So far, all the attacks on McCain seem to be well-founded.
But there are other areas, outside of the common attacks, where McCain is also bad.

He is not good on abortion, having voted to increase embryonic stem-cell research.
He was rated 75% by the NRLC, indicating a mixed record on abortion.

He says gay marriage should be allowed (watch the video).
Though in the same video he did later say he was against it, sounds like he pulled a Hillary...
In 2006 he was rated 33% by the HRC, indicating a mixed record on gay marriage.

For the reasons listed above, and for far more, please go to:
http://therealmccain.com/index.php


Mitt Romney:
The most recurring attack on Romney is that he is a flip-flopper.
He is a flip-flopper on abortion, gay marriage and gun rights.

Abortion.
Yes, Romney used to be pro-choice, feeling that he should not force others to hold his personal views on this issue, which are pro-life.
He came to that conclusion when a close friend died during an illegal abortion in the 70's.

In 2004, though, he had a conversion:

In 2004, Romney had a change of heart on abortion. It was triggered by a meeting with experts to help him better understand stem cell research.
"At one point, the experts pointed out that embryonic-stem-cell research should not be a moral issue because the embryos were destroyed at 14 days.....it just hit us hard just how much the sanctity of life had been cheapened by virtue of the Roe v. Wade mentality." - Mitt Romney

At that point he decided that his personal views on the matter were the only that were acceptable.
On abortion it seems that the attacks that he supported abortion were correct, but I don't think the flip-flopper attacks are quite on the mark, he genuinely converted (that is if any politician can genuinely do anything).


Gay Marriage:
This is kind of a gray area from what I have found.
He did say that he supported gays and that he would work for equality and non-discrimination. But that was at the time when gays were not under some (all?) of the anti-discrimination laws in Massachusetts, he never stated that he supported gay marriage or even civil unions.
He did once say that he supported civil unions only if marriage was the only other option available.
So it appears that the attacks on his record on gay marriage were not quite right.


Gun Rights:
Romney supported the Brady Bill and renewing the restrictions on bans on Assault weapons.
The Brady Bill seems to have been an honest attempt to make guns safer, but it doesn't work, and has just become a way for the government to control more of our rights.

Assault Weapons Ban:
Romney did indeed support this, and has now flipped on it, stating that he doesn't think we needed any new laws to make guns safer, just that we need to enforce the ones we already have.
Yes a flip, and I have seen no reason for this one except that he wants to appeal to social conservatives here.

Beyond these issues, I haven't seen a whole lot of substantive attacks on Romney. There were a few about his health-care plan and taxes vs. fees as governor.
On health care it seems he supports free-market "no mandates" solutions to get everyone insured, but I may be missing something here...
On taxes it looks like he cut them, and has always been for removing waste and cleaning up government to decrease the deficit, before ever considering new taxes.


In conclusion, I feel McCain is good on foreign policy (though I don't think we should stay in Iraq forever, there does come a point when we will no longer have anything worthwhile to do over there), he is good at cutting waste, and almost acceptable (though far from perfect) on social issues.

I do have some reservations about Romney's health care plan, and about why he is not for gun control now.
But I also feel he has flipped less than Huckabee or McCain.
And where he is a question mark on taxes/health care, McCain and Huckabee are bad.
And on the issues of abortion and gay marriage, neither Huckabee nor McCain are perfect either (Huckabee campaigned for pro-choice Democrats against pro-life Republicans while governor, he also spoke at a large pharmaceutical company that specializes in finding cures for diseases using stem cell research).
Gun Control alone seems to be the issue that Huckabee and McCain absolutely trump Romney.

But what I respect is that, unlike McCain and Huckabee, Romney does not change his record, or lie about it, or deny it.
He acknowledges his mistakes and says he has changed.
Huckabee ignores and distorts his own record tremendously.
McCain seems to be pretty consistent on a several issues, but he has twisted or backtracked on quite a few as well.

In light of these records, I have come to the conclusion that I will not vote for McCain or Huckabee if they are the nominee.
They may not be nearly as bad themselves as Hillary or Obama, but they will cause a huge rift in the Republican party, will cause the Republican party to go more liberal, and will make it very hard to win another election any time soon.
They will cause very liberal changes on most issues in Washington, and my feeling is that we should let the Democrats cause a mess if they want to, but don't let everyone blame Republicans for the higher taxes, worse economy, and terrorist attacks.
I will vote for Ron Paul over Hillary, but not Obama.

I therefor feel that Romney is the only remaining candidate who is a Reagan conservative, and the only one I can trust of the Republicans (except Paul, but I trust him to be a disaster) not to be a RINO on most issues.
I will vote for Mitt Romney in my primary, if he is still in.


A new list of the candidates in order of who I would vote for.
Note, this does not mean I will enjoy voting for Obama or Clinton.

• Mitt Romney
• Barack Obama
• Ron Paul
• Hillary Gack! Clinton
• John McCain
• Mike Huckabee

Redraft Fred Thompson in '08 or vote for Romney.