The Democrats are worried

About what? McCain, of course:

There was a consensus, among the Dems anyway, about the Republican race. Watch out for McCain. He's coming back. And if and when he does, he's the strongest candidate they've got.
Huckabee? We should be so lucky. Romney? A Democratic dream. Rudy? What's happened to him?
No, it's McCain who Democrats are watching and worrying about.

I want to add/remind everyone why the Democrats are worried. So here is my post to all Republican primary voters:

President Hillary.

Tell me that doesn't make you cringe. Just thinking of it and I get this sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. But that is where we are heading if we are not careful.

This is the thing. Running for President is an art form. It takes political savvy. It takes will and determination. It's not for the weak. What we have in Mitt, Fred, and even Rudy are novices. They could learn as they go, of course, but we have seen in past elections how any mis-step can be devastating.

Let me tell you the one person who will not be taking any mis-steps whatsoever. Hillary Clinton. We all know that. Name recognition. Fame. Star Power. She has all that as well.

I'll tell you why Hillary would beat Rudy. People have a way of tuning out politics when they think that it is just a partisan crowd going after the politician, be it right or left. The scandals that have followed Hillary have been worked up and down. She has convinced everyone that it was nothing but rightwing attacks. There is nothing in Hillary's past that anyone doesn't know. We heard it all. Even the Hsu fundraising thing will not hurt her. People figure if she hasn't been indicted by now for something, she never will be.

Rudy is another story. I keep hearing people on TV who were involved in New York politics say that things will come out about Rudy that the country hasn't heard and it will be very bad. I believe it. Don't you? When people hear scandal the first time, they listen. But with Rudy they will be listening just as he is trying to convince them to vote for him for President.

The one thing that we love about Rudy, his ruthlessness, is the one thing that will work against him with Hillary. He will look like the bully teasing the class nerd. There isn't any way around it.

Now I will tell you why Hillary would beat Mitt and Fred. They have never attempted to run a campaign as big as this one. They already have made gaffs. No one is watching now. But in the general election, everyone will be watching. This is no time to learn the plays in the game. This is no time for rookies.

Fred has show lackluster performance so far. I just don't see Mitt overcoming his flipflopping on the issues and this whole anti-Morman thing. Have you seen the commercials with his liberal soundbites of the past? He will look like Kerry did in '04.

Yes, this is about McCain. I know you are angry with him for all kinds of reasons. I don't blame you. But I am telling you this again. He is the only one who can beat Hillary.

I have tried to believe that others can beat Hillary. I have tried to get on board with Fred or Mitt. And I do think either one of them would be a fine President. If I thought either one of them could win, I would be looking closer at them and hoping for them. But I don't believe they can. McCain not only has the name recognition, fame, and star power that Hillary has, he has so much more. He is a war hero. He is a leader. He has dedicated his life to public service. His scandals are old and worn out as well. He has a sense of humor and can be charming. And this is key because those are the things Hillary has none of.... humor and charm.

She may not mis-step, but she simply cannot charm. Does no one else see how important this is? We are more visual than we have ever been in this country. This Presidential election will be a YouTube election. Relentless visual focus on our candidates. Rookies will make mistakes and YouTube will be there to remind us of it over and over. Hillary will make no mistakes.Think of this too. We are at war. We will still be at war in '08. McCain not only has the obvious experience with war, but he has a personal stake in it. Both of his sons are serving in the military. This speaks volumes about what he believes.I just want everyone to look at the big picture. Sure we want a conservative like Fred Thompson and a family values candidate like Mitt Romney. But this is not the year to "send a message" to Republicans.

This is the election to make sure that we don't have to sit in front of the evening news every night for years and hear what President Hillary Clinton proposed or vetoed. We won't have to watch her defund the military as her husband did. We won't have to see her add health care to the bloated bureaucracy of government control. We won't have to see her appoint a Ruth Bader Ginsberg clone to the Supreme Court.

The one thing that we all know is that McCain can get the moderate vote. Easy. There is no way we are going to win this election without the moderate vote.

It's more important than our anger at McCain.

It just is.

Just the beginning of Mormon bigotry...

It was just a matter of time. I suppose they figured what better place than South Carolina?

COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Many South Carolina Republicans got a bogus holiday greeting card this week, purported to be from White House hopeful Mitt Romney, that cites some controversial passages of the Book of Mormon.

......

The card contains passages that underscore some differences between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and those of denominations that are prevalent in South Carolina.
"We have now clearly shown that God the Father had a plurality of wives, one or more being in eternity by whom He begat our spirits as well as the spirit of Jesus His first born, and another being upon the earth by whom he begat the tabernacle of Jesus, as his only begotten in this world," reads one passage from Orson Pratt, cited on the card as an "original member of the Quorum of Twelve Apostles."
The card also cites a passage on Mary's virgin birth that underscores her race. "And it came to pass that I looked and beheld the great city of Jerusalem, and also other cities. And I beheld the city of Nazareth; and in the city of Nazareth I beheld a virgin, and she was exceedingly fair and white." On the card, "fair and white" are in a bolder, larger font and on a separate line.

Benazir Bhutto and the fight we fight

It's almost like a TV movie. A beautiful woman, her rise to power in her country at a young age, being brought down, prison, exile, and then redemption and possible victory.

Such is the story of Benazir Bhutto.

Her entire life reads like a novel. The daughter of a powerful political family, encouraged by her father to study the great women of history perhaps gave her illusions of greatness or, some might say, a passion for greatness. Given the recent tribute by Condoleezza Rice, some believed her brave and courageous. But some say she was driven by her own personal demons as well:

During her two terms in office as prime minister, Ms. Bhutto earned a reputation among many as an imperious, venal, and corrupt politician, bringing Pakistan to the brink of financial ruin on more than one occasion.

Did President Pervez Musharraf's intelligence and security services have anything to do with her death? Or was it Al Qaeda, who takes credit? It could be a Ken Follet novel. But it does have Al Qaeda's bloody fingerprints all over it.

Look at her personal past, and it is indeed the stuff of espionage movies:

When her father was lying in prison under sentence of death from Pakistan's military dictatorship in 1979, and other members of her family were trying to escape the country, she boldly flew back in. Her subsequent confrontation with the brutal Gen. Zia-ul-Haq cost her five years of her life, spent in prison. She seemed merely to disdain the experience, as she did the vicious little man who had inflicted it upon her.

Benazir saw one of her brothers, Shahnawaz, die in mysterious circumstances in the south of France in 1985, and the other, Mir Murtaza, shot down outside the family home in Karachi by uniformed police in 1996.

Despite the corruption charges, (which she denied) some see her as the modern force of goodness in the Islamic world:

Benazir Bhutto was a brave woman. She was the face of modernity that Pakistan needed to salvage its descent into a sea of Islamist darkness.

And there is the key. Personally, for myself, I don't see being a political hero worth taking the risk of not seeing my children grow up, marry, and have children. Bhutto gave that up. She knew it was a possibility with all the attempts on her life. She knew. Did she not care? Was her country worth that much to her, or was her celebrity worth that much to her? Is that bravery or foolishness? I can't decide. Can you?

According to Andrew McCarthy at NRO, we have one Pakistan of our fantasy and one of reality:

There is the Pakistan of our fantasy. The burgeoning democracy in whose vanguard are judges and lawyers and human rights activists using the “rule of law” as a cudgel to bring down a military junta. In the fantasy, Bhutto, an attractive, American-educated socialist whose prominent family made common cause with Soviets and whose tenures were rife with corruption, was somehow the second coming of James Madison.

Then there is the real Pakistan: an enemy of the United States and the West. The real Pakistan is a breeding ground of Islamic holy war where, for about half the population, the only thing more intolerable than Western democracy is the prospect of a faux democracy led by a woman — indeed, a product of feudal Pakistani privilege and secular Western breeding whose father, President Zulfiquar Ali Bhutto, had been branded as an enemy of Islam by influential Muslim clerics in the early 1970s.

Bhutto knew this, lived this. I have to wonder if her passion was for Democracy or for herself. Excuse my cynicism. Perhaps she is the brave hero mourned for her great sacrifice for a greater good, a better Pakistan free from extremism and fanaticism, I hope so. A life should be lived for good and for purpose. I hope and pray that her life was.

Andrew warns us that just wishing for Democracy in place like Pakistan will not make it happen:

But we should at least stop fooling ourselves. Jihadists are not going to be wished away, rule-of-lawed into submission, or democratized out of existence. If you really want democracy and the rule of law in places like Pakistan, you need to kill the jihadists first. Or they’ll kill you, just like, today, they killed Benazir Bhutto.

And this is the lesson of Bhutto. A lesson taught with Daniel Pearl, Nick Berg, and all our sacrificed soldiers in Iraq. They will kill us unless we kill them first. And with them, there is no mercy, no prison, no warm meals, no prayer rugs. There is only brutal death. For the innocent as well as the enemy. Do any of us understand this?

President Bush addressed it perfectly in August before the Veterans of Foreign wars, but no one I talk to even heard of this speech. It was a flash in the pan for the msm. Read it and understand that Bush understands our enemy and our history as most of us do not. Think of him what you will, but he gets this.

In this speech he tells us how we are winning:

Our troops have killed or captured an average of more than 1,500 al Qaeda terrorists and other extremists every month since January of this year. (Applause.) We're in the fight. Today our troops are carrying out a surge that is helping bring former Sunni insurgents into the fight against the extremists and radicals, into the fight against al Qaeda, into the fight against the enemy that would do us harm. They're clearing out the terrorists out of population centers, they're giving families in liberated Iraqi cities a look at a decent and hopeful life.

I am not happy with Bush for many reasons, but not understanding this fight is not one of them.

Those who killed Bhutto are the thousands upon thousands that we have killed. They will not kill again the innocent and the brave. They will not breed their hatred.

They are gone.

I wish that we could leave the Middle East to it's own destruction. I wish we could ignore the extremism and the killing. But they have made that impossible. They attacked us on our own soil.

Believe that going into Iraq was right or wrong. Fine. But there is no doubt that we are killing Al Qaeda there now. The brutal enemy of all people of good will.

They killed Bhutto. And they would kill you or me if given the chance. That is a fact no one can argue.

Some tell me that this is a fight we cannot win. They say that nothing we do can change the Middle East.

Bhutto,whether for herself or her country, believed that it could change and she gave her life for it.

I believe that it is a fight, that if we don't win now, our grandchildren and their children will not only fight, but suffer because of it.

I may be wrong. Time will only tell.

Benazir Bhutto RIP

It's a terrible thing in a terrible world. HotAir has all the links you could want to read and keep updated.

I'm posting McCain's response because, as you might imagine, I feel he is the leader we need in a dangerous world. I have always felt that way, and given all that is going on in the world, it's more important than ever to have a brave strong hero at the helm. That's just the way I feel.

I'm busy with family, but I'll try to get back as soon as possible.

An Iraqi Christmas

Cardinal Emmanuel III Delly, leader of the ancient Chaldean Catholic Church and Iraq's first cardinal, celebrated Mass before about 2,000 people in the Mar Eliya Church the eastern New Baghdad neighborhood of the capital.

"Iraq is a bouquet of flowers of different colors, each color represents a religion or ethnicity but all of them have the same scent," the 80-year-old Delly told the congregation.

Muslim clerics—both Sunni and Shiite—also attended the service in a sign of unity.

Amazing.

I'll be on the road in the morning. Be back as soon as I can.

Merry Christmas!!

The Church of Bill

Maureen Dowd, I admit, can write as well as Peggy Noonan. It's just what she writes, most of the time, is born out of a narcissistic feminist liberal view that frankly, makes me want to puke.

But I guess it takes one narcissist to know another, because she has Bill Clinton pegged.

She asks:

Inside the Bill gang and the Hillary gang, there is panic and perplexity. Is Bill a loyal spouse or a subconscious saboteur?

......

Is Bill torn between resentment of being second fiddle and gratification that Hillary can be first banana only with his help? Their relationship has always been a co-dependence between his charm and her discipline. But what if, as some of her advisers suggest, she turned out to be a tougher leader, quicker to grasp foreign policy, less skittish about using military power and more inspirational abroad? What if she were to use his mistakes as a reverse blueprint, like W. did with his dad?

When Bill gets slit-eyed, red-faced and finger-wagging in defense of her, is he really defending himself, ego in full bloom, against aspersions that Obama and Edwards cast on Clintonian politics?

Maybe the Boy Who Can’t Help Himself is simply engaging in his usual patterns of humiliating Hillary and lighting an exploding cigar when things are going well.

Because you know, it's all about Bill.

Hillary advisers noted that when Bill was asked by a supporter in South Carolina what his wife’s No. 1 priority would be, he replied: C’est moi! “The first thing she intends to do is to send me ...” he began.

He got so agitated with Charlie Rose — ranting that reporters were “stenographers” for Obama — that his aides tried to stop the interview.

He also got in the way of her message with stretchers about opposing the Iraq war from the start, and — in a slap at Obama — deciding not to run in ’88 because he lacked experience. Truth is, he didn’t run for fear of bimbo eruptions.

While making a speech in Iowa, The Associated Press’s Ron Fournier reported, Bill used the word “I” 94 times in 10 minutes, while mentioning “Hillary” just seven times. At a London fund-raiser, one Hillaryite said, it took him nearly half an hour to mention her.

94 to 7. Good grief.

As the Arkansas journalist Max Brantley told the Billary biographer Sally Bedell Smith, “He’s always evangelizing for the church of Bill.”

Could that describe him any more perfectly?

It’s hard to feel sorry for Hillary because the very logic of her campaign leads right to Bill. When she speaks of her “experience,” she is referring not to the Senate but to the White House, thereby making her campaign a plebiscite on the ’90s.

And that is the thing. Do we want a re-run of the politics of the 90's? Any of us? Left or right? Do we want whatever is hidden in the archives of Hillary's papers to become public after she is elected and start another cycle of the corruption, hatred, and sliminess that was the Clinton Presidency?

More good news for McCain

Iowa Quad City Times Endorses John McCain

John McCain has now secured the endorsements of nine newspapers across the country. The two big Iowa papers (The Des Moines Register and Quad City Times), the Boston Globe and Herald, and five New Hampshire papers (The Union Leader, Portsmouth Herald, Salmon Press, Keene Sentinel and Valley News). The endorsement of McCain by the Quad City Times is a big blow to Mitt Romney who had heavily lobbied the QC editorial board in recent days.

I just want you guys to feel the McLove.

via race2008 (<-click this link for Quad City Times reasoning) via HotAir

Btw, the market finds McCain to be the most electable.

Pretty Funny

via Time.com

The Christmas Season...

It's all about love.

A profound love, that can conquer anything. Even that which seems impossible.

via Dave in Texas

It's coming!!