A few more primary wins and B. Hussein Obama will be able to light up a cigarette during a televised speech and still get the nomination. It looks like the only thing that can stop him now is an endorsement from Al Gore.
Gore is always lunging into a movement just as it has passed its prime -- the Internet, Howard Dean, global warming, trying to talk black when he campaigns at a black church. He probably bought a big house a few months ago. Gore is such a supremely unlikable human being, he even subverted the mainstream media's affection for liberalism during the 2000 election.
And my brave little Hillary needs a bold move after the Potomac primaries this week. If she can't trick Gore into endorsing Obama, she may have to divorce Bill.
Hillary is, shockingly enough, the most conservative candidate among the top three presidential candidates.
The Rev. Jerry Falwell once remarked that his people would rather vote for Beelzebub than Hillary Clinton.
He didn't mention John McCain.
Pat Buchanan says if McCain is the nominee, the Republican Party will lose its soul. I'm more worried about the Republican Party losing its mind.
Republicans are doing what the Democrats tried in 2004 with John Kerry. In a state of despair, Democrats dumped the legitimate leader of their party, Howard Dean, for a candidate they deemed "electable." Kerry served in Vietnam! Republicans: Conniving has never been our strong suit. Honor is our strong suit.
Sen. John McCain's claim to being a Republican comes down to two factors:
(1) He was a POW -- I know that because he mentions it more often than John Kerry told us that he served in Vietnam.
And (2) he has a relatively conservative voting record compared to, say, Maxine Waters.
I note that there were hundreds of POWS in Vietnam. We can't make them all president. If we're just going to pick one, how about one who doesn't want to shut down Guantanamo and give amnesty to 20 million illegal immigrants? Hey, didn't Duncan Hunter serve in Vietnam? Why, yes, I believe he did!
Moreover, it's crazy to imagine that military service makes one qualified to be president. Everyone knows the true test of presidential leadership is an ability to cry on cue. Another point for my Hillary.
To be sure, McCain has a relatively conservative voting record -- but only relative to Republicans who have to get elected in places like Vermont. Relative to Republicans from conservative Arizona, McCain's voting record is abominable.
We keep hearing about McCain's "lifetime" rating from the American Conservative Union being 82.3 percent. But McCain has been a member of Congress for approximately 400 years, so that includes his votes on the Spanish-American War. His more current ratings are not so hot.
In 2006 -- the most recent year for which ratings are available -- McCain's ACU rating was 65. That year, the ACU rating for the other senator from Arizona, Jon Kyl, was 97. Even Chuck Hagel's ACU rating was 75, and Lindsey Graham's was 83.
Since 1998, only four Republican senators have had worse ACU scores than John McCain -- and none were from Goldwater country: Lincoln Chafee, Susan Collins, Olympia Snowe and Arlen Specter. The last time McCain ranked this far down in his class, he was at the Naval Academy.
In fact, McCain and Romney are mirror opposites: As Romney had to tailor his conservative views to the liberal voters of Massachusetts, McCain has had to tailor his liberal views to the conservative voters of Arizona. While Romney's record in a liberal bastion is as bad as it will ever be, McCain's record from a conservative bastion is as good as it will ever be. Which isn't very good.
In the immortal words of -- well, me, actually: Always choose a strong conservative from a blue state over a lukewarm conservative from a red state.
Bob Dole from Kansas had a pretty good voting record, too. But no one fully believed he believed it. Another feather in his cap was that he didn't burden voters with a "Straight Talk Express," a means of conveyance even more useless and idiotic than an electric car.
Even McCain's supporters on the Spaghetti-Spined Express know he can't be trusted on social issues like abortion. I notice how everyone seems to agree that of course Rudy Giuliani's voters would go to McCain.
Why would that be? On the two seminal issues of our time other than abortion -- taxes and the war on terrorism -- the two could not be more different.
Rudy cut taxes in New York City and, as a presidential candidate, proposed the biggest tax cut in U.S. history.
McCain voted against Bush's tax cuts twice.
Rudy supports torturing terrorists -- or using "enhanced interrogation techniques," as they say, announcing in one of the debates: "I would tell the people who had to do the interrogation to use every method they could think of."
McCain is hysterical about pouring water down terrorists' noses and campaigns to shut down Guantanamo.
He demands that no terrorist interrogation be "degrading" -- perhaps recalling how not degrading it was for people in the upper floors of the Twin Towers to have to leap to their deaths rather than be burned alive on Sept. 11.
So why is it obvious to everyone that Rudy would endorse McCain?
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