armchair cultural observation since 1995

Elsewhere: A case for each (and every) candidate

Candidates are listed in alphabetical order.

Chuck Baldwin, Independent

Specific issues that are a concern of mine are the national debt, the devaluation of the Dollar, foreign policy and general economic issues such as right to work laws, taxation and the government’s involvement in the economy. I’m a proponent of the free-market which is not to be confused with capitalism although some people confuse them as being one and the same. I also despise socialism and all its derivatives.



Ultimately, I decided on Baldwin because he understands that this is not an issue of political parties competing for the most votes. It is a matter of standing up for the basic rights and liberties inherent in all human beings, not just whatever the ruling class decides are rights and what are privileges. If the Democrats and GOP want to keep going down that road, then more power to them. Ultimately, we’ll answer to a higher being anyways. I prefer to uplift my standards as it is.

Chris For Liberty Blog

Bob Barr, Libertarian

This election season, Obamamania is feverishly hot; news stories of women fainting at rallies, pious displays of Obama as the Messiah, and even Obama’s own claims to “stop the sea’s rise” allude to the fact that the Democratic party is obsessively consumed by the cult of personality erected around “The One.” “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” he tells crowds of supporters.

For the GOP, a party I no longer identify with, there is much less excitement. McCain’s not exactly electrifying, and the hype around Sarah Palin has fizzled out. But what’s worse is that the Republican ticket is confirming what the Bush II presidency already established: that to be a Republican these days is to be something different than a conservative.

So to other disaffected conservatives disgusted by the bailout, the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, excessive spending, and the Federal Government running roughshod over the states, I offer you an impractical alternative: vote for Bob Barr.

-Andrew B. Lohse, the Dartmouth Review

John McCain, Republican

The case for McCain is straightforward. The financial crisis has made us forget, or just blindly deny, how dangerous the world out there is. We have a generations-long struggle with Islamic jihadism. An apocalyptic soon-to-be-nuclear Iran. A nuclear-armed Pakistan in danger of fragmentation. A rising Russia pushing the limits of revanchism. Plus the sure-to-come Falklands-like surprise popping out of nowhere.

Who do you want answering that phone at 3 a.m.? A man who’s been cramming on these issues for the past year, who’s never had to make an executive decision affecting so much as a city, let alone the world? A foreign policy novice instinctively inclined to the flabbiest, most vaporous multilateralism (e.g., the Berlin Wall came down because of “a world that stands as one”), and who refers to the most deliberate act of war since Pearl Harbor as “the tragedy of 9/11,” a term more appropriate for a bus accident?

Or do you want a man who is the most prepared, most knowledgeable, most serious foreign policy thinker in the United States Senate? A man who not only has the best instincts but has the honor and the courage to, yes, put country first, as when he carried the lonely fight for the surge that turned Iraq from catastrophic defeat into achievable strategic victory?

There’s just no comparison. Obama’s own running mate warned this week that Obama’s youth and inexperience will invite a crisis — indeed a crisis “generated” precisely to test him. Can you be serious about national security and vote on Nov. 4 to invite that test?

-Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post

Cynthia McKinney, Green Party

She was campaigning that 9/11 was an inside job before any of the other candidate. She doesn’t live in denial. She is the smartest of the candidates. She is the most honest. She is nobody’s fool. Cynthia McKinney deserves my vote the most.She is 100% black. She is 100% woman. She is 100% American bulldawg, pun intended that she is the other presidential candidate running from Georgia. Most importantly, she is 100% anti-neocon.
I’m a Thomas Paine and J.S. Mill Libertarian, a geolibertarian, so there is some common ground with the Green Party. The Green Party just lacks the wrong fundamentals. 

However, we have to unite against the New World Order or else there won’t ever be any other alternative. And Cynthia McKinney is our top gun in the field of presidential candidates standing against the neocons. Cynthia McKinney is a hero and true patriot. She has my endorsement.

New World Liberty Blog

Ralph Nader, Independent

…This could be the year we change the lives of 47 million Americans by providing them with decent health care and millions more with a living wage. It could be the year that we listen to 68 percent of Americans and 84 percent of Iraqis and withdraw occupying forces. It could be the year that we cut the near-trillion dollar defense budget, repeal NAFTA, revoke the Patriot Act and the illegal wiretapping FISA bill, build a green energy infrastructure, discipline runaway corporations, and reign in the manic speculation driving the current food and housing crises.

That is Ralph Nader’s plan, anyway — to offer Americans what the polls show they want.

So, while McCain sings about bombing Iran and Obama uses rhetoric about ’smart’ and ‘dumb’ wars to stay in dumb wars and start new ’smart’ ones, Nader stands for strongly negotiated peace in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. While Obama dismisses his earlier commitments to fair trade as “overheated,” Nader would replace NAFTA with uniform environmental and labor standards. And while McCain chants “drill, baby, drill” and Obama prepares to replace Big Oil with Big Corn or Big Nukes, Nader calls for a renewable infrastructure.

But the Democrats tell us that we cannot vote for Nader because there is too much at stake this year. After eight years of Bush, the argument goes, we cannot afford another Republican. We must rally behind the change party. And for the most part, students are buying it. Emphatically anybody-but-Bush and unfamiliar with the Democrats’ duplicity, these students mistakenly believe that ousting the current administration will exorcise the demons of war, jingoism and economic imperialism they represent.

History, unfortunately, tells a different story.

-Ashley Sanders, youth spokeswoman for the Nader campaign. Source.

Barack Obama, Democrat

Top 10 Reasons A Conservative Should Vote For Obama

10. A body blow to racial identity politics. An end to the era of Jesse Jackson in black America.

9. Less debt. Yes, Obama will raise taxes on those earning over a quarter of a million. And he will spend on healthcare, Iraq, Afghanistan and the environment. But so will McCain. He plans more spending on health, the environment and won’t touch defense of entitlements. And his refusal to touch taxes means an extra $4 trillion in debt over the massive increase presided over by Bush. And the CBO estimates that McCain’s plans will add more to the debt over four years than Obama’s. Fiscal conservatives have a clear choice.

8. A return to realism and prudence in foreign policy. Obama has consistently cited the foreign policy of George H. W. Bush as his inspiration. McCain’s knee-jerk reaction to the Georgian conflict, his commitment to stay in Iraq indefinitely, and his brinksmanship over Iran’s nuclear ambitions make him a far riskier choice for conservatives. The choice between Obama and McCain is like the choice between George H.W. Bush’s first term and George W.’s.

7. An ability to understand the difference between listening to generals and delegating foreign policy to them.

6. Temperament. Obama has the coolest, calmest demeanor of any president since Eisenhower. Conservatism values that kind of constancy, especially compared with the hot-headed, irrational impulsiveness of McCain.

5. Faith. Obama’s fusion of Christianity and reason, his non-fundamentalist faith, is a critical bridge between the new atheism and the new Christianism.

4. A truce in the culture war. Obama takes us past the debilitating boomer warfare that has raged since the 1960s. Nothing has distorted our politics so gravely; nothing has made a rational politics more elusive.

3. Two words: President Palin.

2. Conservative reform. Until conservatism can get a distance from the big-spending, privacy-busting, debt-ridden, crony-laden, fundamentalist, intolerant, incompetent and arrogant faux conservatism of the Bush-Cheney years, it will never regain a coherent message to actually govern this country again. The survival of conservatism requires a temporary eclipse of today’s Republicanism. Losing would be the best thing to happen to conservatism since 1964. Back then, conservatives lost in a landslide for the right reasons. Now, Republicans are losing in a landslide for the wrong reasons.

1. The War Against Islamist terror. The strategy deployed by Bush and Cheney has failed. It has failed to destroy al Qaeda, except in a country, Iraq, where their presence was minimal before the US invasion. It has failed to bring any of the terrorists to justice, instead creating the excrescence of Gitmo, torture, secret sites, and the collapse of America’s reputation abroad. It has empowered Iran, allowed al Qaeda to regroup in Pakistan, made the next vast generation of Muslims loathe America, and imperiled our alliances. We need smarter leadership of the war: balancing force with diplomacy, hard power with better p.r., deploying strategy rather than mere tactics, and self-confidence rather than a bunker mentality.

-Andrew Sullivan, The Daily Dish

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3 Responses »

  1. i could have sworn i stated cynthia mckinney was the smartest candidate because she was the first to admit that 9/11 was an inside job.

  2. You did state that. It ended up being chopped off in the cut and paste process. It’s been corrected.

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