The Future...

I have been doing a lot of thinking since the election.
What is the future of the Republican party - what does it need to do to survive and flourish?
What is the future of this blog?
How will Obama govern with the Dem majority in Congress?
How will the world react to Obama now?


I have felt for a while now that the future of the GOP is the moderate vote.
I believe the GOP must become the party of the moderates, the open-minded, etc.
This does not mean we throw aside our conservative message, but it does mean we start to welcome more views in, we start being willing to fight hard for our beliefs, and be willing to compromise on some.
The Democratic party has for as many elections as I can remember had a larger amount of people registered than the GOP, which means that the Republican candidates need to, and have gotten, a larger percentage of the Independent, generally moderate, vote.
This election was odd. We selected a rather moderate (especially in comparison to Obama) candidate, but Obama won a larger percentage of Independents than Kerry did four years ago, or Gore won 8 years ago, and I think Obama is the more liberal of them...
The reason this happened, I think, is that the far-right "base" of the party was in outrage at McCain being selected - so he had to extremely visibly court them. Obama on the other hand already had the far-left part of the Democratic party behind him, so while McCain had to look ever more right-wing, Obama was able to portray himself as the centrist candidate.

Personally, I think it is not McCain, or Palin, or even Obama that cost the GOP the election this time - I think it was the right-wing part of the party. We need to get to the place where no one wing of the party is "the base" - and we need to get it so the "social issues voters" (ie, the pro-life/anti-gay voters) are not the primary focus of the party - because at the end of the day, it will be whether our economy is strong, our military is strong, our trade is strong, and our future is strong that will determine whether we continue to have the right to even debate the "social issues".

I am not trying to demean those issues, I believe that allowing abortions is taking away the right to life of infants, and hurts our society as a whole, as life no longer becomes important. If we have the right to kill others simply because they depend on us, then it becomes a slippery hill that will eventually destroy this nation to follow that line of thinking through.

I do disagree with the anti-gay crowd, I believe gay should be able to have civil unions (though not marriages, the word marriage is specifically defined as a social institution between a man and a woman - dictionary.reference.com, let's not have the government changing the meaning of our language just to benefit one group....) as they should be able to get the same benefits from living in the same house, or insurance, or being family or whatnot in the event of death - that is their right under the constitution, but I am willing to debate that with people, I just think it is more important to first ensure we will have the opportunity to debate it.

I think we need to become more visibly active in the environment - I don't care whether you are doing it because of global warming or not, it is also a national security issue, an economic issue, a quality of life issue (regardless of global impact being from man or not, it is never good for our health to live in polluted areas), so let's start showing people that we mean business about the environment and aren't just going to keep pushing the status quo - which is what people think of us.

We need to lay out specifically what the government should and should not do, and then explain why we believe the way we do on each issue using that as a reference - because from what I have seen most people agree that a smaller government is ideal - so let's show them why that is, and why our views will accomplish that to all of our general good.

Another thing we need to do is start reaching out and bringing in more minorities and young voters.
In California, Prop. 8 passed (the ban on gay marriage), and one of the biggest reasons is that the majority of the black population that voted for Barack Obama also voted to ban gay marriage.
Many of these voters are more in-line with what Republicans believe than what Democrats do, it is just the Democrats have always made a big show of helping them, and are now reaping the benefits of that.
We need to show them why our views will in the end help them more, and help everyone more.

For the young voters, I think we just need to talk to them and show them why we are correct - I think the GOP does not target them enough, at least from what I have seen.
Young voters like to think they know everything, or at least "enough" - they also feel they are on top of the world - so because of that they tend to gravitate toward the party that claims to offer everything, because they firmly believe anything is possible.
We need to lay out for them why we can't have everything right now - it is possible, but it takes time to work towards it and make it happen, and, in the end, what Conservatism offers is better than what Liberalism does, once it is working.
Do you really want a good, strong, working system, plus high taxes and a huge government that barely functions - or do you want a good, strong, working system that also has low taxes and a small, functional government?


As far as what we need to do right now - we need new leadership and a clearer message.
I think Michael Steele is an awesome choice for Chairman of the RNC.
Eric Cantor is running to move up to the head whip position in the house (running unopposed last I heard), which is another good choice.
Both of these reach out to minorities (Steele being African-American, and Cantor being Jewish) as well as bringing a clearer, more Conservative, as well as a more level-headed, view for the party.

For the next election, and future leadership, I think Palin will be up there, but she won't be ready yet in 2012, I would say 2016, but who knows?
For 2012 I am personally watching Mitt Romney, Bobby Jindal, and Tim Pawlenty.
I think if Eric Cantor runs he will be up there too, and he is getting more of a national name for himself here of late, but I think he will wait and get a little more experience first.
Also, if Palin does run this time, she will definitely be popular, but on her own I don't know how well she will stand up against more experienced candidates...

I think of those that ran this time, only Romney will be a quality candidate in 2012, and I think he will pour himself even more into 2012 than he did this year, as I think that will be his last real shot, the others I am watching will all also do fine in 2016 or later.

Huckabee was only viable among the "social issues only" voters to begin with, and that is not the direction we need, as he would tear a huge rift in the party.
Ron Paul was always a joke as a candidate - he was older than McCain, few Republicans will take his foreign policy, and he just seemed not to have a good television presence.
Ron Tancredo won't tread any better a second time than he did this time, especially with the decreased focus on immigration (though that may cause him to run again itself...).
Duncan Hunter will do better I think if there is no good "Reagan Republican" running, but I think in a field with Romney, Jindal, Pawlenty and possibly Palin and Cantor he will be overshadowed.
Fred Thompson and McCain won't even run again - or if they do they will be perceived as too old, or has-beens.


As far as my blog, I have two options I think.
I will be turning 19 here soon, and will no longer be a teenager the next time an election comes around.
So, I can either end this blog at that time and start a new one (or rename this one possibly), or, I can pass it on to another to continue.
It has been surprising to see that my blog has generated some spin-offs in it's short existence already, like the Asian Conservative Teen or the ConservativeTeenager, so I would like to see this blog continued as a voice for all of the "young voters" out there who are Conservative.
If anyone would be interested in helping out (the more the merrier I think, we can have multiple people writing here, and I think more perspectives, even disagreeing ones, would be awesome) just comment here, or email me at gallfire [at] gmail [dot] com (replace with "@" and ".").


How will Obama govern?
I am really quite apprehensive of what he (and Reid/Pelosi) are planning, but to be honest, I hope it is not as bad as I think it will be, rather, I hope he does well.
If he does really well I will be the first to admit it - I probably won't just give up my views just like that, but if he is successful for two terms AND the President after him does well that will certainly shake some of my views.
Waiting time now though, to see what it will be, heaven, hell, or the same.


How will the world react to Obama?
I think they will do exactly as Biden predicted they would.
Several nations have already made it clear they will wait for Obama to discuss things, because they don't like what they are getting with Bush.
Russia seems to have either though Bush was weak now, or Obama would be weak, as they began to more visibly flex their muscles after the election.
I see nasty days ahead, but perhaps Obama will be stop them, otherwise I hope he has what it takes to get us through them...


I'm going to try and keep following politics and the news on this blog, but updates will be less frequent now.
I will continue to write about my ideas, and probably criticize the government.

So, my first criticisms of President-elect Obama:

1. Rahm Emanuel - while I appreciate the sentiment about reaching out to the Jewish population and Israel, Chief of Staff is hardly a foreign policy position, so I interpret this as a meaningless gesture.
2. Has anyone else noticed Obama is acting like he is already President? I think he should scale back and let Bush finish his term before he starts dictating policy.
3. Obama's government growth program - he is already planning an Environmental Security Agency (or something to that effect), and two of the top candidates for the Secretary of Environment Security are Arnold Schwarzenegger and Al Gore - why can't he just wrap "whatever" it is he plans to do with this into the other environmental agencies?
4. Will he now, finally, start dealing with all the allegations of his heritage? I can understand not wanting to give credibility to them during the election, but he really needs to address them now.
   

There are probably more I have forgotten, but that is enough for now.

A long night...

Ok, so I am watching exit poll data on FoxNews, they are already giving Kentucky to McCain and Vermont to Obama, with 10% of the vote in or so - which I think is a little early.
Now they have added West Virgina to McCain.

But the interesting thing is, McCain is leading on average through the BattleGrounds by 7-10% out of a few hundred thousand votes already - so perhaps some good news, but way too early to be able to trust these numbers...

Virgina looks to be having 2 Democratic Senators, so that does not bode well for McCain.
I heard as well that apparently the Obama campaign has virtually given up on North Carolina, which could bode well for McCain and Elizabeth Dole, who is one of three GOP senators in close races I predicted would hold their seats (the others being Norm Coleman and Saxby Chambliss) due primarily to the ground game going to the GOP.


I'm going to stay up until we have a winner between McCain and Obama, but mostly good news so far for McCain it appears...


EDIT 1:
Ok, so I am going to make a few predictions, besides the one about which GOP Senators I wrote about above...
Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana and Florida will go for McCain.
Ohio and Pennsylvania will be closer.

Beyond those states, I have no clue, but it will be interesting to see what happens based on the first exit polling...


EDIT 2:
FoxNews now projects that Kay Hagan has defeated Elizabeth Dole - but only 4% reporting. Dunno how this will affect McCain, but it looks like I was wrong on at least one of my Senate predictions.


EDIT 3:
FoxNews and others are now projecting Obama will win Pennsylvania, but I have yet to see a single vote count, so I am a bit skeptical...
On a brighter note, Saxby Chambliss is now projected to keep his seat.

EDIT 4:
Now Ohio has been projected to go to Obama - looks all but impossible for McCain now...

EDIT 5:
Obama is now up in Florida and North Carolina. Although McCain maintains a steady lead in Virginia, it may not matter any more.
Going to wait now for some absolutely solid vote counts before I post again, because, from the projections alone, it looks like Obama will win quite handily...

EDIT 6:
Obama now has a 50,000 vote lead in Virginia with 91% of precincts reporting, and Pennsylvania is also showing a large lead for Obama.
If there is a silver lining to this, McCain is now on top on North Carolina - but it won't be enough.
I think most likely Obama has won now, even if McCain comes back in Florida.

Looking back, I think it was McCain who killed himself. Months ago he could have attacked Obama on his connections and on his socialist plans, both of which have done well for him these last two weeks, but he needed to make them sooner.
In the end, I think where he failed was that he was tentative on the economy.
Coming out of the conventions he had sometimes double digit leads in the polls.
Then wall street crashed, and Obama gained as large a lead.
McCain at that time didn't come out with a strong, decisive plan for what to do, instead he appeared slow and confused about what to do.
In the end I think he did eventually come out with the better plan, but it was too late, the public had already formed the opnion that he was inept on the issue.


I think, after all this, McCain was the best candidate for us to pose.
The reasons being:

1. With the econimc crisis, few of the possible GOP candidates could have survived it, and Romney, who is most likely to have been able to, would already have been too far out on other issues, and he would have had a harder time with the base even than McCain.
2. McCain losing will not hurt the GOP next time around, because he won't be running, so perhaps Romney can come back without having lost last time.
3. Palin was a bold choice, and I think she is going to be a strong contender next cycle for President.

I must say well done to Obama (or his campaign staff) on a good run in the race - and I just request that I don't have to congratulate you on a grand farce in a few months, and you actually come through on your promises...

Milestones...

Today my blog turned one year old. It seems incredible how much the political landscape has changed in just that time, and how fast it has gone.

Another awesome milestone - it appears as if we have now, finally, won the war in Iraq.
This article has a lot of good stuff. I have heard more encouraging news as well, but I can't find any links at the moment - but there were no American deaths from combat in Baghdad (a first) and last month saw the fewest deaths of American soldiers ever during the war.
As well, apparently one commander began sending troops in his province home, and is now down to about 500 (again no link, sorry :S ), and this by his own power saying the situation is firmly under control and ready for them to move out.

Now let's see what milestones come tomorrow, if any, though I think there will be a few.

McCain landslide shaping up?

It sounds way too good to be true, but some reports are showing McCain doing far better than mainstream polls are indicating.

Zogby reports that on Friday (only, no 3 day average) McCain surged into the lead, 48-47%, with undecided's beginning to break heavily for McCain - I have seen reports that the margin may be as high as 4 to 1.

There is also a poll out, supposedly from GOP internal polls, that indicates McCain having a larger than 20% lead in PA, an 8 point lead in New Jersey, a 10+ point lead in Michigan, and within a point in California. (link)

While this sounds the most far-fetched of anything I have seen yet, and I was ready to dismiss it mostly when I read it, I found some other links that seems to verify the trends it represents, if not the actual number themselves.

As well, Paul Marston (hats off to Casey's Critical Thinking blog for the link) predicts McCain will win by at least 42 electoral votes, due primarily to PUMA voters.

Finally, there was a post at redstate.com that supposedly was from a former Hillary Clinton staffer turned Barack Obama staffer.

In it she explains the 4 "true weaknesses" of the Obama campaign.

Here is a link for the full thing, but there are some interesting parts I would like to point out.

First, the four weaknesses themselves:

1. Hillary voters - apparently the Obama campaign has internal data suggesting they are only getting about 75% of them...
2. Sarah Palin - really threw them a curve ball when she was picked, they have fumbled it since the outset and are now seeing some negative reactions from it.
3. Obama's radical connections - apparently it doesn't play well with voters to see the full line-up of Wright, Ayers, Rezko, Khalidi, etc.
4. The "Bradley Effect" - they seem to think it is going to be as much as 10 points they have to accept as lost to it.

Now, there really isn't much new here from first glance, regardless of whether this is a real report, or a fake.

The post goes on to point out how many of the mainstream polls are receiving as high as 80% "refusal to respond" results - and that the majority of the RTR's are McCain supporters. Combine that with the already known issue of some polls taking a much higher sampling of Democrats as it is, and you can get some pretty skewed results.

Now, if that above statement is true, that could indicate the numbers being reported in the GOP internal poll are perhaps more accurate than not.

Again, I think the above results are a bit too good to be true, but they are interesting to think about.

Let's see what happens if we try to quantify and apply all these "biases" in the polls:

1. Assuming for the moment that the Bradley effect is real, we'll put it at 4 points (considering the peak to be about 10 points 20 years ago, and an apparent weakening of the effect since then).
   
2. Now assuming it is correct that up to 80% of people contacted for polls refuse to respond in some polls, and there is a bit in all, we will put it at about 50% average at least refuse to respond.
   
3. Next, assuming it is accurate that a majority of the refusals to respond are McCain supporters (ok, now how can they really know that?) let's put it at 60% for McCain - which means a total disregarding of about 10% of McCain support (20% more RTR for McCain for 50% total refusals...).
   
4. Finally, assuming Democrats are indeed sampled 15 points more than Republicans, we will subtract away 7 points for the approximate weighting of Democrats to Republicans as reported by rasmussen, that leaves us with an 8 point bias to Democrats.
   

Taking the math that way - rasmussen currently reporting a 51-46% lead for Obama - it would not be hard to get it to McCain having a 52-45% lead after factoring in just the Bradley effect and the sampling bias. If we also include the refusal to respond bias for McCain, it could be as much as 57-40%.

Now, all those numbers are pure conjecture on my part, but it is liberals who keep going on and on about the Bradley effect, not me. If we take my number for that effect alone, then the race is basically tied, with Obama having an insignificant 1 point lead.

So I think, for the purposes of trying to understand that data, that bit of math is at least good for showing how skewed the polls could/might be - whether they are really or not we will have to wait for Tuesday to truly see, but this just confirms for me that this is indeed very much McCain's race to win or lose now.

Will it be a landslide? I doubt it.

Will McCain pick up the states he needs to win? I think it is plausible, if not likely.

Go McCain!

3 days to go...

In my previous post I remarked on how it was now McCain's race to win, as it had been Obama's to lose and he blew it.

Apparently the things he had already done weren't enough for him though.
Now, Obama has come out saying anyone who doesn't support his "redistribution of wealth" plan is "selfish".

The polls continue to move in McCain's favor as well, as he now clearly has the momentum in the race.
From rasmussen McCain has now moved to within in 4 points in Pennsylvania, a large movement from just two weeks ago, not to mention a month.
As well, on a variety of issues (economy, national security, taxes and social security) he is now trusted more than Obama. He is also now tied at 47% with Obama on the issue of Iraq.
Obama does still lead on a few key issues, such as ethics, balancing the budget, energy and the environment.
But what these polls show is that McCain truly has been successful in not only stealing Obama's thunder on the economy, which was arguably Obama's strongest point - and McCain's weakest, he has also regained the publics trust on the issues that he is strong in, but Obama had surpassed him in with his large surge.

Does anyone else notice (or rather, not) Biden?
I haven't seen him out campaigning very much anymore since his last gaffe, at the very least not on the scale of Sarah Palin.
Even McCain is getting out more than Obama from what I am seeing. That can't be a good sign for Obama.

I am only hoping McCain wins, or, if Obama comes out on top, he really makes good on his word, and everything is all fine and dandy...
The only problem with that is, I don't want another Bush.
I think he has ruined a lot of our government.
Now we have a candidate who we know even less of, promising things just as grand or more, and I'm supposed to just trust him to make everything right.
Yeah, that's a good idea, just see where that got us last time...