Posted by
Bert Chapman on Friday, January 04, 2008 10:35:26 AM
Interesting results from the Hawkeye state. On the Dumbocrat side, it was nice to see Hillary get smacked in the face and to see the sour looks on the faces of her philandering perjuring "spouse," Madeline Albright, and other members of the Clinton cabal. Hillary is a ruthless termagent, though, and will fight hard against Obama who is presenting himself as the latest liberal multicultural avatar and against Pitchfork John Edwards and his peasant sans-culotte mob army.
The Republican results gave a boost to Huckabee and, unfortunately, were a setback for Mitt Romney the most substantive conservative candidate. I try to be a committed conservative Christian, but I am disturbed that Huckabee thinks he can get the GOP nomination by spouting superficial evangelical theological cliches instead of presenting substantive and credible public policies that are intellectually sound, good for the country, and Christian compatible. Hopefully, Huckabee's aw-shucks veneer will wear off in New Hampshire and his ill-advised protectionist economic policies and incoherent foreign policy understanding will be exposed to more criticial scrutiny than it has received so far.
Another striking aspect of Iowa, is how both Obama and Huckabee have heralded themself as harbingers of change. If there is a more vacuous word in the English political campaign language than change, I can't think of it. Calling for and espousing change is not intellectually credible! You must present coherent and credible policy alternatives to existing policies and programs and have full-throttled debate over these proposals. Even if existing situations and policies are bad, it is a reality of human nature to accept that things can get worse as well as better. It's not enough to criticize the conduct of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by calling for premature and unilateral withdrawal. You need to present credible options for winning in these wars. It's not enough to complain about high gas prices or mortgage foreclosures, you need to present realistic ways of resolving these problems. Unfortunately, we'll hear the word "change" or the phrase "time for a change" tossed about like crazy during this election year, with their being limited likelihood that candidates or their followers will have substantive qualitiative or quantitative proposals behind such vapid calls for altering the status quo.
Regardless of your partisan proclivities, voters should demand candidates spell out specific legislative, legal, and regulatory ways that they will change existing "unpopular" policies, individuals and organizations they're willing to offend to bring about such changes, and the economic and other costs of such changes to individuals, families, communities, businesses, states, and the country, instead of vapidly droning on about the need to make change or change Washington.