The Democrats, in bowing and scraping to the fringe of their party and not appearing on Fox News Channel for debates, are not getting the exposure they need.

The Republican debate on FNC last night was the highest rated debate so far this election cycle. The debate scored 3.14 million total viewers. That beats the nine other presidential debates.

I realize that the primaries are really geared for the base, since that’s who votes in the party primaries. But wouldn’t more exposure be better in an effort to get their views out to more of America? Or does the fringe mean that much more to them?

Technorati Tags: Fox News Channel, Democrats, debates, Republicans, media

Brought to you by Republicans.

Sen. Larry Craig said Saturday he will resign, succumbing to rapidly intensifying pressure from within his own Republican Party.

Not censured, not wrist-slapped, not frowned upon; resigned. As noted before on this blog, more than once, both sides have their issues with fallible human beings in positions of power. But it’s Republicans that, far more often, do the right thing.

I heard Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday repeat what he’d heard from some sources that the number of Republicans leaving due to scandal shows how bad off the party is. I say that it shows how better off the party is. I repeat, both sides have their troubles, but the Republicans are ridding themselves of the bad apples, and they are better off for it.

Update:  Looks like Sen. Craig is trying to undo his guilty plea and resignation.  We’ll see how that turns out.  But if indeed he is still guilty on the other side of this legal maneuver, I believe the Republican party will continue to do the right thing.

Technorati Tags: Senator Larry Craig, Republicans, Chris Wallace, Fox News Sunday, scandals

As first noted here, talked about here, and with evidence here, the election results from 2006 were incredibly misread by Democrats. On the whole, conservatism won, with those Democrats coming in to power being far more right-leaning than those who were applauding the election results cared to see or admit.

But the chickens came home to roost, and the netroots are shocked — SHOCKED — at the outcome.

A leading liberal blogger has declared political war against centrist Democrats – the latest move in an intensifying show of dissatisfaction with the Democratic Congress by the once-friendly blogosphere.

Matt Stoller, who blogs at the well-trafficked OpenLeft.com, has compiled a list of 38 House “Blue Dog” Democrats who have voted with Republicans on key legislation, and called on the activist community to put pressure on them – and perhaps challenge them in primaries – if they fail to shape up.

“Some of these members may need to face a primary challenge, and it’s useful for potential primary challengers to know that there is criticism of these members,” wrote Stoller, who refers to the 38 Democrats as “Bush Dogs.”

MoveOn.org is getting in on the act as well, targeting those who have become better informed and thus are no longer towing the liberal line.

Rep. Brian Baird’s (D-Wash.) recent conversion on the Iraq war is beginning to affect more than the national dialogue. On Wednesday, liberal group MoveOn.org announced an ad campaign against the congressman in his own district.

Baird recently returned from a trip to Iraq and reversed his position on a withdrawal timetable, citing military progress in the four-year-old war.

The far left’s influence over the Democratic party is pushing that party further and further away from the mainstream. I wish Stoller and MoveOn all the success in the world in getting more fringe candidates. It’ll push the government to the right when they lose.

Technorati Tags: election, Matt Stoller, MoveOn.org, OpenLeft.com, blue dog democrats, bush dog democrats, Brian Baird

This is the 2nd and final part of my analysis of an open letter from Anne Rice. Part 1 can be found here.

Abortion

Anne Rice spends most of her letter covering this issue, and she starts with an assertion that, to me, shows a lack of consideration of the history of the issue.

I want to add here that I am Pro-Life. I believe in the sanctity of the life of the unborn. Deeply respecting those who disagree with me, I feel that if we are to find a solution to the horror of abortion, it will be through the Democratic Party.

Ms. Rice does touch on these historical issues lightly later on, and I’ll hit them more in-depth then, but even looking at how the abortion issue generally falls between the parties today, I don’t see this as making sense. What I hear from Democrats are things like John Kerry with this sentiment:

I completely respect their views. I am a Catholic. And I grew up learning how to respect those views. But I disagree with them, as do many. I can’t legislate or transfer to another American citizen my article of faith. What is an article of faith for me is not something that I can legislate on somebody who doesn’t share that article of faith. I believe that choice is a woman’s choice. It’s between a woman, God and her doctor. That’s why I support that. I will not allow somebody to come in and change Roe v. Wade.

If one’s commitment to Christianity should be “absolute”, as Ms. Rice has said, there is a big problem with this statement, that is generally the line religious Democrats use when talking about abortion, and that is the canard about legislating one’s religious faith, or sometimes call ramming one’s religion down your throat. Civil rights are very much a moral issue, but does Sen. Kerry have the same problem with legislating that? No, he’s very willing to impose his view on KKK members, and rightly so. It’s right, it’s moral and it’s the law. Legislators all throughout our country’s history, and more so in our early history, based many of their decisions partly or mostly on their religious faith. This excuse is disingenuous.

Regarding Hillary Clinton, NARAL gave her a 100% score on her 2006 voting record (PDF), and she’s a big supporter of Roe v Wade. See here for other details. You won’t curb abortions by voting the way she does. Like her husband, she’ll talk the talk, but watch the way she votes.

When voting, as Ms. Rice says, “Conscience requires the Christian to vote as a Christian”. If there is a substantial difference between Ms. Rice’s vote and Sen. Kerry’s or Clinton’s vote, I’d like to know what she thinks it might be. Both votes affect more than just the voter, and one’s Christianity shouldn’t be compartmentalized between private and public life.

In one sense, votes by representatives will, to different extents, reflect the people represented rather than the representatives views. At the same time, by that very title, the representative represents their constituents views and values, and his or her own views are part of that; he or she was voted in partially or mostly because of their views. It’s certainly not always a perfect fit between the politician and the constituents, but Sen. Kerry’s statement takes his religious beliefs totally and completely out of the equation. If Democratic politicians, in general, can’t bring themselves to vote against abortion, how in the world they be better in stopping the horror of it?
Read the rest of this entry

This is one of my longer posts, possibly the longest I’ve done on the blog. What happened was, I was reading an open letter from a Christian planning on voting a particular way, and as I read further and further into it, one objection after another kept coming to my mind, and one problem after another regarding the writer’s reasons kept getting in the way. Finally, I realized I’d have to just set aside some of my typical day-to-day blogging of the link-and-quick-comment type, and go in-depth into the problems I see with the author, and Christians in general, who vote Democratic for specifically Christian reasons, and especially regarding the social issues brought up in the letter. Pull up a cup of coffee and sit back.

Anne Rice is a Catholic author. I’ll admit to not being too well-read, but as a Protestant my knowledge of Catholic authors is even more limited. Therefore, I’m not sure how much Ms. Rice’s views are mainstream Catholic, although whether or not they are really isn’t the crux of this post. I do want to discuss the views she espouses, and espouses quite well as an author. That she is a Catholic and I am a Protestant has really no bearing on my criticism of her recent public letter dated August 10. I know Protestants who would agree with her on these issues, so this is not a denominational thing. She professes Christianity, as do I, and we have very similar goals, as far as I can tell, on the topics she discusses, and yet we’re voting differently. Ms. Rice wrote a lengthy letter to her readers on her main web site (no permalink so don’t know how long it’ll stay on the front page) about why she is endorsing Hillary Clinton for President. They reasons she lists for that endorsement, to me, run completely counter to her list of important issues and goals. If she is truly concerned about those goals, I don’t follow her endorsement, nor the endorsement of other of my friends and acquaintances of any Democrat in the current group. I want to address the inconsistencies I see in this post.

Ms. Rice starts out with her Christian and Catholic creds, which I respect and am willing to accept. She talks about how, while the separation of church and state is a good idea, the voter does not have that prohibition, and in fact must consider their vote based on their religion.

Conscience requires the Christian to vote as a Christian. Commitment to Christ is by its very nature absolute.

I agree wholeheartedly. But, she also correctly notes, we have only 2 political parties in this country. (She believes, as do I, that a vote for neither Democrat or Republican, whether it’s a non-vote or a vote for a 3rd party, is essentially a vote for one of the two major ones, no matter how you slice it.) In short:

To summarize, I believe in voting, I believe in voting for one of the two major parties, and I believe my vote must reflect my Christian beliefs.

Bearing all this in mind, I want to say quietly that as of this date, I am a Democrat, and that I support Hillary Clinton for President of the United States.

And that last clause is where the disagreement begins.

Charitable Giving

The first paragraph of explanation deals with giving.

Though I deeply respect those who disagree with me, I believe, for a variety of reasons, that the Democratic Party best reflects the values I hold based on the Gospels. Those values are most intensely expressed for me in the Gospel of Matthew, but they are expressed in all the gospels. Those values involve feeding the hungry, giving drink to the thirsty, clothing the naked, visiting those in prison, and above all, loving ones neighbors and loving ones enemies. A great deal more could be said on this subject, but I feel that this is enough.

First of all, neither the religious right nor the religious left have a lock on charitable giving. At the same time, as was noted on this post regarding a study by Arthur Brooks, conservatives outgive liberals by quite a significant amount. How does this relate to how the political parties differ in their view of the government’s role in this? Ms. Rice, I believe, falls into a trap by simplistically equating the advocacy of government charity with Jesus’ admonition to the individual to be charitable. Democrats say the government should give more, so by her reckoning thy are more in line with her Christian view. However, it has always made me wonder how when Jesus tells me, personally, to be charitable, that somehow this means that I should also use the government to force my neighbor, under penalty of jail, to be “charitable”. I put “charitable” in quotes because when there’s force involved, there’s no real act of charity. How Democrat Christians get from point A to point Z on this boggles my mind. Another statistic from Brooks’ study brings this point home; People who believe the government does not have a basic responsibility to take care of the people who can’t take care of themselves are 27 percent more likely to give to charity.

On top of this, the bureaucratic inefficiency filter that we’re all forced to funnel our “charitable” taxes through siphons money away from the needy, as does the massive fraud that goes on in a big government program that has little accountability.

Conservatives believe that forcibly taking money isn’t charity, and that it is not government’s role to rob from Peter to pay Paul, and that the way the government handles this creates dependency and causes further problems, like giving fathers a disincentive to stick around. Because of this, conservatives give more of their own money to local charities where the administrative costs are much lower. The Republican party, the current home of most conservative political ideas in this country, purports to support these goals, and while they don’t always follow those principles, they have done better at this than Democrats. An expanded role of government in the area of giving to the poor is not the best way for that to happen, and as a Christian I believe it’s not moral to force others to give when they don’t want to. Again, Jesus asks me to give; He didn’t ask me to force others to.

Ms. Rice, in ticking off a laundry list of values, seems to be falling for the framing of the issue that Democrats have put forth; welfare = caring. There are other ways to care, which can have much better results.

Part 2 tomorrow.

Technorati Tags: Anne Rice, Catholic, Protestant, religion and politics, charity, welfare, abortion, Democrats, Republicans, social issues

In Mark Weisbrot’s article, “Eyes Wide Shut: The International Media Looks at Venezuela” at the Huffington Post yesterday, Mr. Weisbrot just glosses over the importance of some of the actions of Hugo Chavez in the recent RCTV controversy. According to Mark, it’s no big deal, really.

Most consumers of the international media will be surprised to find that the controversy over Venezuela’s oldest TV station, RCTV, is still raging. We were repeatedly informed that President Hugo Chávez “shut down” the station on May 27th. But in fact the station was never “shut down” – since there is no censorship in Venezuela. Rather, the Venezuelan government decided not to renew the broadcast license that granted RCTV a monopoly over a section of the publicly-owned frequencies.

This is a big distinction, although the U.S. and international press blurred it considerably. Jose Miguel Insulza, the head of the Organization of American States, noted last month that the “Venezuelan government is empowered to do what it did (non-renewal of the license)” and cited Brazilian President Lula Da Silva’s statement that not renewing RCTV’s broadcast license was as democratic an act as granting it. Insulza added that “democracy is very much in force in Venezuela.”

See, it’s legal for Chavez to do it, so nothing to see here, move along. All you thousands of Venezuelans who protested the closure, er, non-renewing action, you just don’t know what’s really going on in your own country.

The fact that it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. The fact that the Venezuelan government has survived lo these many decades with RCTV often being a thorn in the side shows just how out of the ordinary this action was. And to blame whatever perceived misunderstanding there might be on the international press blurs the fact that Venezuelans themselves were outraged at this. Some polls put the number of those against this as high as 70%. Who’s eyes are “wide shut”, exactly?

Agreed, RCTV has behaved rather poorly in the past, as Mark notes.

RCTV’s owner, Marcel Granier, is an opposition leader who seeks to de-legitimize the Venezuelan government. He has had some success in this effort, most importantly in April 2002 when his station faked film footage to make it look like pro-Chávez gunmen were shooting down demonstrators on the streets of Caracas. This and other manipulations by the Venezuelan media helped provoke a military coup against the elected government. This is one of several reasons that the government of Venezuela declined to renew RCTV’s broadcast license.

Wrong, even from a “free speech” point of view. That still doesn’t mean that what Chavez did is right. Chavez took action against a media outlet for political reasons, and that brings the stakes up even higher regarding the politicizing of the media. A more appropriate action would be to bring Granier up on charges, not attempt to turn off the station.

And Mr. Weisbrot is completely failing to place the RCTV controversy in the context of further restrictions on free speech made by Chavez. Foreigners are not allowed to speak ill of him and his policies while in-country. Weisbrot says:

Granier is betting that the international media and other U.S.-dominated institutions will also frame his current battle as a “free speech” issue, rather than a legal dispute over whether his station is a national channel and hence subject to the same regulations as other Venezuelan cable stations. This is a good bet.

But regardless of the other reasons the Venezuelan government would use to attempt a shutdown, there is a free speech issue at stake. Perhaps not with the RCTV situation taken individually, because there’s a lot more going on than just free speech, but it is an element of that and many other actions that the Congressinally-uninhibited Chavez has been taking recently. All of it must be looked at, but Mr. Weisbrot doesn’t look that far.

So Venezuelans know that there is no “free speech” problem in their country. While there are problems with the rule of law, including street crime – as throughout most of the region – Venezuelans have not suffered a loss of civil liberties under the Chávez government, as we have for example in the United States since 2001. That is one reason why Hugo Chávez was re-elected in December by the largest margin of the 12 most recent Latin American presidential elections, despite facing an opposition-dominated media. Democracy is indeed “very much in force in Venezuela.”

Does any of this sound like the Liberal descriptions of the Soviet Union back in the 60s? “They have it better than we do.” “There’s is a more fair government.” Back then, eyes were wide shut, too.

Technorati Tags: RCTV, Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, Mark Weisbrot, Huffington Post, Jose Miguel Insulza, Lula Da Silva, Marcel Granier, democracy, media

Many on the Left try to disparage any action Bush has taken by citing his poll numbers, especially regarding the war in Iraq. If the public doesn’t like it, it shouldn’t be done, or so goes the argument. Well, as I’ve said here many times before, I hate polls, but if you want to live by them, are you willing to die by them? Whatever you said about Bush when his poll numbers were dropping, is the opposite true now that they’re rising?

We’re seeing some slight hints of positive news for the Bush administration. For one thing, Bush’s job approval rating has stopped its downward trajectory. Bush hit bottom with his administration low point of 29% in early July (based on our USA Today/Gallup poll readings). Now – in the data just about to be released from our weekend poll – Bush’s approval rating has recovered slightly to 34%. That’s not a big jump, but it is the second consecutive poll in which the president’s numbers have been higher rather than lower.

Is the war a better idea now because the “surge” numbers are going up? (Emphasis mine, for a point to be made later.)

Also, we are seeing a slight uptick in the percentage of Americans who say the “surge” in Iraq is working. That may not be a total surprise given the general tone of news out of Iraq recently, including the positive light on the situation put forth by Michael E. O’Hanlon and Kenneth M. Pollack in their widely-discussed New York Times op-ed piece “A War We Just Might Win” on July 30. But it represents a change.

Indeed, the most recent New York Times/CBS News poll itself found a slight increase in the percent of Americans saying that the U.S. did the right thing in taking military action in Iraq, and were so uncertain about it that they redid the survey. And found the same results.

While public opinion can be important with regards to a war, the very transient nature of it shows that it’s not a good idea to lean too heavily on it regarding public policy.

The role of the media should not be discounted, either. Most of the media folks are down on the war, and the stories they cover and how they cover them mirrors much of that. And, as emphasized above, those reports and opinion pieces shape the way people think about the war and other topics, so when the media ignore all the good stories coming out of Iraq and then trumpet poll results as bolstering their view, it is very disingenuous. They know full well how their actions game the numbers. A single opinion piece by liberals who finally decided to see for themselves what was going on was a big factor, Gallup says, in bringing the numbers up. This says to me that if the public knew all the good things happening in Iraq — if they got the fair and balanced full story — the poll numbers would be quite different.

I say again, I hate polls. My opinion on whether we should have gone to war in Iraq is not based on the feel-good (or feel-bad) story of the week, or how well the war is going today. But for enough folks, it does matter, and thus polls are the worst kind of “news” story. However, I am more than happy to hold those who do hold polls in high regard to their own standards.

Technorati Tags: polls, Iraq, Iraq surge, New York Times, CBS News, USA Today, Gallup, Michael E. O’Hanlon, Kenneth M. Pollack, George W. Bush

James Taranto has given a name to the idea that the country is getting more and more anti-abortion partially due to abortion being legal. Calling it “The Roe Effect”, it postulates that since those who favor legal abortion are more likely to get one, and assuming children generally follow the political leanings of their parents, more abortion foes are being born than abortion advocates, and thus over time support for legal abortion will dwindle. (See the Wikipedia entry for links to other articles on this.)

After the Roe decision, it would take at least 18 years for the effect to start being seen, when the post-Roe kids were of voting age. However, there’s another trend occurring that may have an effect on American politics without the waiting period.

Blame Canada!

It may seem like a quiet country where not much happens besides ice hockey, curling and beer drinking. But our neighbor to the north is proving to be quite the draw for thousands of disgruntled Americans.

The number of U.S. citizens who moved to Canada last year hit a 30-year high, with a 20 percent increase over the previous year and almost double the number who moved in 2000.

In 2006, 10,942 Americans went to Canada, compared with 9,262 in 2005 and 5,828 in 2000, according to a survey by the Association for Canadian Studies.

According to this survey, the increase is mostly politically-related.

The current increase is fueled largely by social and political reasons, says [Jack] Jedwab [ACS’s executive director].

“Those who are coming have the highest level of education – these aren’t people who can’t get a job in the states,” he explains. “They’re coming because many of them don’t like the politics, the Iraq War and the security situation in the U.S. By comparison, Canada is a tension-free place. People feel safer.”

If most of these folks are generally Democrat voters, depending on the places and districts they moved from, over time this could also help swing American politics more to the right. 10,000 may not be enough to swing a presidential election, but a Senator here and a Congressman there would matter after a while.

So I’m going to coin a term here for what happens when liberals move to Canada and take their politics with them: The Roeaux Effect (pronounced “the roe effect”).

Aside from its effects on American politics, the article notes the reasons of a couple of the 10,000 emigrants, and they are indeed political and social. One person is Tom Kertes. One of his thoughts on the move gives a peek into the liberal mind and its thoughts about soaking off the money of others.

Kertes, who moved with his partner, is happy in his new home. “Canada is a really nice country. My mother is thinking about it. My stepfather has diabetes and has health issues. So, he’d be taken care of for free if he moved up here.”

Sure, his stepfather could go up and get it for free — really free — because he hasn’t paid in to the system for his whole life. He’d essentially be living off the “forced charity” (oxymoron) of others. And, of course, it all depends on how long he wants to wait for treatment.

And here’s another testimonial:

Jo Davenport, who wrote “The Canadian Way,” moved from Atlanta to Nova Scotia in December 2001. She also cites political reasons for her move, saying that she disagreed with the Bush administration’s decisions after 9/11.

“Things are totally different here because they care about their people here,” she says, explaining that she’s only been back home once or twice.

By December 2001, Iraq wasn’t even on the Congressional funding docket, so Ms. Davenport couldn’t even abide going after those who harbored bin Laden. Definitely a reliable Democrat vote gone north.

Her comment that “they care about people here” insinuates that they simply don’t here. Well, there are some folks who might think differently about that. Earlier in the article it adds just a bit of perspective.

Of course, those numbers are still outweighed by the number of Canadians going the other way. Yet, that imbalance is shrinking. Last year, 23,913 Canadians moved to the United States, a significant decrease from 29,930 in 2005.

So over twice as many people come here as go there every year. First of all, you’ll note that none of them were interviewed for the article. Secondly, if people here simply didn’t care, I daresay the numbers would be quite different. One wonders how many of them come here to escape the waiting lists in the Canadian health care system.

And it would be interesting to find out the political and social leanings of those folks. It could be that the Roeaux Effect is not just about the 10,000 going north, but also the 20,000 coming south. Again, no mention of that in the article.

So now I’m going to put out the call to whoever has the resources to do a study on the effect of immigration & emigration from & to Canada has on American politics. If you just read the ABC News report, you’d think quite a lot, based on the interviews. But then again, this is the MSM. There might be nothing to it.

Technorati Tags: Canada, immigration, US politics, Roe Effect, Roeaux Effect, James Taranto, Association for Canadian Studies, Jack Jedwab, socialized health care, Afghanistan, media bias

James Taranto’s analysis and humor on events of the day is not to be missed. On a daily basis, he writes Best of the Web Today for Wall St. Journal’s Opinion Journal. Today is definitely no exception, and the rest of this blog post will be his analysis of a NY Times op-ed piece from today. It’s something that needs to be said, and said loudly and often. When, instead of reading what the liberal media writes about the war, journalists actually go to Iraq and see what’s happening, the results are amazing. And now, James Taranto.

On Second Thought, Don’t Surrender
In an important and surprising New York Times op-ed piece, Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack, both from the liberal Brookings Institution, describe a visit to Iraq, where they find that things are not as bad as–well, as New York Times readers have been led to believe. The piece is titled “A War We Just Might Win”:

Here is the most important thing Americans need to understand: We are finally getting somewhere in Iraq, at least in military terms. As two analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq, we were surprised by the gains we saw and the potential to produce not necessarily “victory” but a sustainable stability that both we and the Iraqis could live with.

After the furnace-like heat, the first thing you notice when you land in Baghdad is the morale of our troops. In previous trips to Iraq we often found American troops angry and frustrated–many sensed they had the wrong strategy, were using the wrong tactics and were risking their lives in pursuit of an approach that could not work.

Today, morale is high. The soldiers and marines told us they feel that they now have a superb commander in Gen. David Petraeus; they are confident in his strategy, they see real results, and they feel now they have the numbers needed to make a real difference.

O’Hanlon and Pollack report that Sunni sheikhs in Anbar province “are close to crippling Al Qaeda and its Salafist allies,” that “the Iraqis have stepped up to the plate” in the northern cities of Tal Afar and Mosul, and that “the American high command assesses that more than three-quarters of the Iraqi Army battalion commanders in Baghdad are now reliable partners.”

They say the situation “remains grave,” especially on the “political front,” but they counsel against a quick retreat, as many Democrats on Capitol Hill have been advocating:

How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part? And how much longer can we wear down our forces in this mission? These haunting questions underscore the reality that the surge cannot go on forever. But there is enough good happening on the battlefields of Iraq today that Congress should plan on sustaining the effort at least into 2008.

In a way, though, what is most telling about this piece is the introduction:

Viewed from Iraq, where we just spent eight days meeting with American and Iraqi military and civilian personnel, the political debate in Washington is surreal. The Bush administration has over four years lost essentially all credibility. Yet now the administration’s critics, in part as a result, seem unaware of the significant changes taking place.

For the sake of argument, let us suppose that the authors are right when they claim the Bush administration has “lost essentially all credibility.” Does this excuse the administration’s critics for being “unaware of the significant changes taking place”–especially when some of those critics have, for reasons of partisanship, ideology or just plain animus, actively campaigned to destroy the administration’s credibility?

In the critics’ defense, one may say that they have not, by and large, been in positions of responsibility; that if things have gone wrong in Iraq, the administration deserves the lion’s share of the blame.

On the other hand, those critics now include the leaders of both houses of Congress, as well as several politicians who would like to become president. For them, at least, it is a serious failure of leadership if they base their views on Iraq on their own disdain for President Bush, or the hope of exploiting voters’ disdain for him, rather than on reality.

Technorati Tags: James Taranto, Wall Street Journal, Opinion Journal, New York Times, Michael O’Hanlon, Kenneth Pollack, Iraq, George Bush

Hey, you want to start the campaign earlier than ever before? This is what you get. I have no idea why the candidates started so early this time around — I suspect Democrats wanted to capitalize on Bush fatigue as soon as possible — but the landscape now will almost certainly be nothing like the landscape before the first primaries. It just raises the bar to entry; those who are the richest and/or have the richest friends can stay in for the extremely long haul. Is that what we want to have as the first determiner of our presidential choices?

Fred Thompson’s waiting game may not be such a bad idea.

Technorati Tags: presidential campaign, Fred Thompson, debate fatigue