Time To Choose A Conservative Presidential Candidate

Time To Choose A Conservative Presidential Candidate
A Commentary by J. D. Longstreet

Rasmussen Reports reported yesterday (11.04.10) on a national telephone survey of likely republican primary voters. (To see the questions as they were asked go (HERE).) Basically they asked whom they would vote for if the Republican presidential primary were held today. Well, 20% said Romney, 19% said Huckabee, and another 19% said Palin.

The Rasmussen Report went on to say: “Rounding out the list of seven candidates chosen by Rasmussen Reports for the question, with their levels of support, are former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (13%), Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (6%), Texas Congressman Ron Paul (5%) and Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (3%). Seven percent (7%) prefer some other candidate, and eight percent (8%) are undecided.” (SOURCE)

When I read this report, frankly, I wanted to sit down and weep for my country.

Look, apparently the majority of republican voters have yet to learn that running the same old RINO (Republicans In Name Only) candidates is a recipe for LOSING. Did you get that??? I’ll say it again: LOSING!

Romney is a RINO. He cannot win. I repeat: Romney cannot win in a race against a democrat, ANY democrat. Huckabee will be laughed off the stage -- and Palin is pure poison, as is Newt Gingrich!

I don’t mean to be popping the GOP’s champagne bubbles while they are still celebrating, but as we say down south, “Them’s the facts!”

So who do I, in all my arrogance, think would make a good republican candidate for president? How should I know?? I’m just an ole country boy down here in the swamps of North Carolina.

But … since you asked …

I’m looking at Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey and Haley Barbour of Mississippi. Of course, with Barbour, we’d have the same problem we had with Bush II -- speaking skills. Oh, he speaks just fine for us southerners. See, some of us ole unreconstructed southerners still leave the “t” off words. It sorta makes our slow delivery of the spoken word seem to be a bit more – uh -- swift. (I have never understood how anyone could believe that a “fast talker” is a “fast thinker,” anyway. But, alas, people do.)

Now, allow me to hastily add that I know practically nothing about Governor Christy. All I know about Christy I have learned from watching him perform before press conferences in which he seems to out think the members of the press -- at every turn. (Not that it is very difficult to out think the press. As a former card carrying member of the press, I can attest to the fact that many, if not most, are not so much trying to get at the truth as they are trying to impress the other members of the press corp herd!)

I also like the manner in which Christie seems to have little difficulty in stating the unvarnished truth and make decisions that will ultimately favor the taxpayers of that extremely taxed state. He doesn’t seem to mind getting under the skin of the unions and anyone else feeding from the tax trough of the New Jersey treasury. THAT recommends him to me.

Barbour is a southern conservative. So am I. He is a southern gentleman. That means as James Dickey, the former poet laureate of my beloved home state of South Carolina, once said, a man “with a bible in one hand and a cannonball in the other.” He is equally ready to pray – or fight. You choose. And yes, Barbour is a southern politician. Chicago politicians could learn a few lessons from southern politicians.

Having said the above let me assure you, I am not locked into a choice for the GOP presidential candidate. Not by a long shot.

But, I will not hesitate to stress haste in making our selection – after much thought and reflection and, (and this is very important) thorough vetting of the candidate. Because whomever we choose the dems will be looking for even the smallest piece of dirt on him/her and they will not hesitate to use it as a blunt instrument to beat that candidate, unmercifully, about the head and shoulders, until he/she is no longer a threat to their candidate, which in all likelihood, will be Obama.

I expect that if Obama chooses to actually listen to his advisors he will make every attempt to stir toward the middle of the political spectrum and try to distance himself, at least publicly, from his extreme leftist philosophy and ideology. Should he win – again – he will drop the façade and go back to his first love, socialism, for America and his anti-colonialism views for America’s foreign policy.

We have learned, much to our sorrow over the past two years, that Obama is NOT HIS OWN MAN. He is his father’s man. Yes, his father was a socialist and an anti-colonialist who smashed his car into a tree and died.

All this aside for the moment, I am sorely afraid by not winning control of the US Senate the GOP has opened the door for one, or possibly two, new Supreme Court justices both of whom will be dyed-in-the-wool liberals. That would be disastrous for America. As they say: “Elections DO have consequences.”

In the meantime, we conservatives absolutely must demand that the GOP chose solid conservative candidates for both the office of President and Vice-President. If we do – we will win. If we don’t we will lose – again!

J. D. Longstreet