Tom’s Big Picture

Two stats for you from the exit polls. The first: among people who thought the economy was “poor”, Paul tied for first with McCain. So Paul may not be too little too late, but rather too much too soon for much of the electorate. The problem with a waiting strategy is that the demographic situation continues to worsen, making the probability of a patriot President less likely while it makes the solutions required to fix the country more painful and disruptive.

Another stat: among people who disapprove of the Iraq War, McCain still won! This is the guy the neoconservatives like the most besides Rudy, yet somehow Republican primary voters think he’s the guy they should support if they oppose the war! The guy who wants to occupy Iraq for 100 years!

Apparently voters can’t even fill in the right box to reflect their own stated political opinions.
The charts are below from CNN:

I enjoy seeing people who sell out their civilization getting sold out themselves by the very people they betrayed us for. Witness Hillary’s latest poll result from South Carolina:

Bill Clinton has made regular stops in South Carolina all year, arguing that only his wife has the experience to be president and reminding voters, sometimes by his mere presence, that many black Democrats fondly consider him to have been the nation’s first black president. He spoke at an NAACP convention earlier in the year, at a black sorority in Charleston on the eve of Oprah’s visit, and in Orangeburg on Monday.

Mr. Obama has eaten into the Clinton lead. The latest surveys show a dead heat, with black voters steadily migrating toward him. In a new CBS News/New York Times poll, Mr. Obama leads 35 percent to 34 percent but 52-27 among blacks. A new Rasmussen survey shows half of black voters support Mr. Obama and just 28 percent Mrs. Clinton. A month earlier they were running even.

Hillary and Bill have worked their entire life for these people. Obama has nothing in common with black voters: his mother is white and his father (who abandoned him at birth) was an East African Muslim. American blacks are West African Christians (East Africans and West Africans are approximately as different as a Frenchman and a Russian)! Yet their racism overcomes them in their support for Obama: “better a black man with no experience, no accomplishments and nothing in common with me than white people like the Clintons, who have spent their whole lives working on behalf of my people.”

And since Obama is unelectable (Hillary could possibly deliver Tennessee, Arkansas, West Virginia and Louisiana, solidifying a win, whereas Obama will lose the entire South in the general election; never mind his race, his middle name is friggin’ Hussein), they are also choosing to harm their party for the sake of gratifying their racism.

This reminds me of an incident from 2004 in the Texas Legislature. Tom DeLay was using a loophole in redistricting rules to draw new Congressional districts for Texas to squeeze out more Democrats. He needed a super-majority to get it done. Here’s how he did it: he promised the minority members of the Legislature that while the Democratic prescence in Congress would shrink, he would draw the districts such that more blacks and Hispanics would occupy the remaining spots.

You see, blacks and Hispanic legislators were so racist that they cooperated with DeLay to hurt their own party in order to get more of their people in office. DeLay’s victims in the push were middle-aged white Democrats, liberals who had spent their entire life undermining their own civilization for the benefit of these minority groups. Yet, when push came to shove, the minorities threw them to the wolves to get more of their own into power.

This is exactly the message the white liberal enablers need to hear. Many of them harbor fantasies that, once the demographic destruction of our country is complete, they will be remembered as heroes and visionaries who fought the “bigots”. They believe they and their children will hold coveted “intellectual” roles in the new multicultural Babylon America. They need to know that their fate, in the long run (if demographics trends continue), is everyone else’s: being envied, then hated, then oppressed and eventually chased out of their house with a machete, Zimbabwe-style.

He’s against anchor babies:

washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080108/NATION/311698216/1001

But he’s also for them:

http://corner.nationalreview.com

Ron Paul, for all his libertarian autism on the national question, does support an amendment to end birthright citizenship.

Paul disappointed but is still in the game. Iowa has a poor track record of predicting the nominee.

That said, Huckabee does look unstoppable from a neutral point of view. The “flyover” part of this country is so tired of being marginalized that they’ll nominate a bad conservative from Arkansas (who at least seems to be mostly decent in his personal life and shares their Christian faith) over bad conservatives from Massachusetts. And it is with a bit of sporting regional pride that I say this, as nobody makes better politicians than the South. When the fake conservatives fight, ain’t nobody gonna out-fake a southern-fried good-old-boy like Huckabee. He was born in that there briar patch!

And I can’t help but smile at Rudy Giuliani’s butt-whooping in the Heartland. Paul has saved us from the cross-dressing criminal at a minimum.

My gut in the first debate told me Huckabee was the best political tactician: I actually cringed a few times when watching Paul in the first debate. Unfortunately for Paul, most of the populace votes with their gut, not based on researching the policy positions of the candidates. If Paul does not succeed, the most interesting question is this analogy- Goldwater:Reagan::Paul: [?] . The Paul Revolution is a once-in-a-generation phenomenon already.

I think Peggy Noonan does a good job at explaining Huckabee, similar to my analysis of his Christmas ad. Mix equal parts cultural alienation from the elites, social gospel-lite and millions of Christians with their heads full of doctrinal mush and Huckabee is what comes out:

Something new begins on the Republican side, too.

Everyone said Mike Huckabee was a big dope to leave Iowa Wednesday to fly to L.A. to be on Jay Leno, but did you see him on that thing? He got off a perfect line on why he’s doing well against Romney: “People are looking for a presidential candidate who reminds them more of the guy they work with rather than the guy that laid them off.” The studio audience loved him. And you know, in Iowa they watch “The Tonight Show” too.

Mr. Huckabee likes to head-fake people into thinking he’s Gomer Pyle, but he’s more like the barefoot boy of the green room. He’s more James Carville than Jim Nabors.

What we have learned about Mr. Huckabee the past few months is that he’s an ace entertainer with a warm, witty and compelling persona. He won with no money and little formal organization, with an evangelical network, with a folksy manner, and with the best guileless pose in modern politics. From the mail I have received the past month after criticizing him in this space, I would say his great power, the thing really pushing his supporters, is that they believe that what ails America and threatens its continued existence is not economic collapse or jihad, it is our culture.

They have been bruised and offended by the rigid, almost militant secularism and multiculturalism of the public schools; they reject those schools’ squalor, in all senses of the word. They believe in God and family and America. They are populist: They don’t admire billionaire CEOs, they admire husbands with two jobs who hold the family together for the sake of the kids; they don’t need to see the triumph of supply-side thinking, they want to see that suffering woman down the street get the help she needs.

They believe that Mr. Huckabee, the minister who speaks their language, shares, down to the bone, their anxieties, concerns and beliefs. They fear that the other Republican candidates are caught up in a million smaller issues–taxing, spending, the global economy, Sunnis and Shia–and missing the central issue: again, our culture. They are populists who vote Republican, and as I have read their letters, I have felt nothing but respect.

But there are two problems. One is that while the presidency, as an office, can actually make real changes in the areas of economic and foreign policy, the federal government has a limited ability to change the culture of America. That is something conservatives used to know. Second, I’m sorry to say it is my sense that Mr. Huckabee is not so much leading a movement as riding a wave. One senses he brilliantly discerned and pursued an underserved part of the voting demographic, and went for it. Clever fellow. To me, the tipoff was “Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?”

Of course, I think the cultural alienation and populism are valid concerns of an increasingly marginalized majority in the country. And Huck’s social-gospel-lite does appeal to the little old ladies who vote in Republican primaries, soft-hearted folks who can’t comprehend the harmful consequences of unregulated state-funded charity. As a Baptist preacher, he’s got more experience than anybody with that demographic.