Depressing

Romney (Obama or Clinton) and I vote Romney.
Obama McCain I hold my nose and vote Obama.
Hillary/McCain I just don't vote.

I would choose Thompson over any of the above.

I would choose Paul over all of the above, but
he's a little too far out there for many to accept.

I despise McCain (an arrogant, sanctimonious, creep who long ago used up whatever credit he earned for his valorous war service), but if the choice is between either him or Hillary, I am (very sadly) forced to choose him. The stakes are way too high to sit this one out, no matter how much I dislike the man, his policies, or anything else associated with him.

How unfortunate that it has come to this....

Rand

Just remember that if McCain gets elected Robert Oler will become NASA administrator.

:)

The main issue I'm concerned about is the rise of Islamofacism - and say what you will about McCain, he at least understands the importance of this issue.

Plus, I'm a little worried about what kind of judges Hillary or Obama would put on the bench.

Actually McCain looks pretty good to me. It's been four years since McCain-Feingold and nobody has really come up with anything bad aside from that (for example, "arrogant, sanctimonious, creep" describes most people who run for office, they just hide it to some extent). Tit for tat is my motto and I don't see the need for more punishment for an old offense. If he wins the nomination (and I see plenty of reason why that's still up in the air), he'll probably be the first Republican that I'll probably vote for.

Having said that, with McCain Feingold, he peed in the blogger pool and I guess people still are legitimately unhappy about that. Maybe it'd be wiser to mail him your anger and see if he responds to that.

While Romney has a lot of experience both in the political and business worlds, he has strong social conservative views which (like many other things) I don't believe belong in a government. I recognize that any Republican nominee is going to have to support social conservative views to some degree. But I'm concerned that Romney would do more to distort his administration's tasks and functioning. For example, I don't want an administration to fritter it's political capital on gay marriage, obsess with abortion, drug prohibition, or the other vaguely moral, irrelevant (at least to Federal level tasks and obligations) debates that somehow get to the federal level. I certainly don't want them to innovate another undermining of the US Constitution to support any of this (drug prohibition tactics being particularly notorious here). If he can address these issues, I'd be more confident in him.

For what it's worth, I don't find Romney's religion to be a problem. Mormon isn't that far out there to me. And I'd still consider it that way even if they still practiced polygamy.

On the Democrat side, I really distrust Clinton. Sure she might return fiscal conservatism to government policy, which might compensate for the other problems. But I don't think we need a return to the unprofessional politicians of the Bill Clinton era. And frankly, she's hiring those people. And they mostly have the oily feel of used car salesmen.

Obama seems interesting. He's running the "big idea" route with a big idea for each problem. My take though is that many of these big ideas just aren't thought out. For example, from a short look at European carbon markets, we can see that hard caps just don't work. You get the situation where when carbon emissions are low enough, the carbon credits are cheap, but the price of carbon credits spike when you pass that point of consumption. Rather than a hard limit, it should be a gradual increasing limit, with the governments selling more carbon credits but at increasing price as the demand goes up. Then no silly price swings and economic disasters.

McCain-Feingold is bad enough (an outright attack in the First Ammendment is not something easily forgive, especially when he - McCain - still backs it), but his position on Immigration, his attacks on those with principled disagreements or even different priorities (his 'Patriotism, not Profits' line tonight was chillingly reminiscent of something one might expect from a Dem) are profoundly worrying at best.

Dennis is right about his position on the threat of Islamicism...and ultimately that is what really matters. I would also concede that I am more comfortable with him on the matter of judicial appointments than I might otherwise be, but still and all...only the weakness of the Dem field gives me any sense of consolation.

McCain, Clinton, Obama. The difference is so small that it could look through a keyhole with both eyes.

I'd vote for McCain on gun control, but I live in California and we've already got the full Democratic rim job here so we're unlikely to see any difference. Clinton may talk withdrawal, but the Clinton's are savy enough to know that any big attacks on US soil will be the end of them. And Obama will need training wheels before going full bore socialist on our b*tts.

As you say, depressing.

It would be nice--this being, you know, the Land of the Free--if least one of the major parties had a genuinely pro-freedom candidate. But in the 21st Century, as we head further down the Road to Serfdom, that's too much to ask.

Rudy would have been cool

America's first Cross-dressing president

I can imagine him ina dress next tot he queen
of England