The Ugly Primaries

I usually love the presidential primaries where there is a variety of candidates for the average voter to choose from, but this time I don't. Why is that? Because this season has turned into the ugly primaries for me.

Because the GOP has no standard-bearer this time, the field is wide open. That's usually a good thing, but, instead, what I'm observing is a nastiness in the punditocracy that is just turning me off.

First, there was the obviously preference of various talk show hosts for Mitt Romney, a candidate who never excited me, but whom I was willing to listen to. Listening to Hugh Hewitt for the last year has been one, long ad for Romney, but even that was acceptable. After all, the pundits have the right to choose their candidates, too, don't they?

I started getting an uneasy feeling about our slate of candidates first when there was Fred fever last summer. Here again, there's nothing wrong with being excited about Fred Thompson, although I think it helps if you were a Law & Order fan in the first place.

I think what bothered me was this sense of desperation, the smell of fear, I have detected among those ready, not merely to support their own candidate, but to eviscerate any other candidate who might win instead.

This problem became apparent to me when polls showed Iowans were leaning toward Mike Huckabee and the chattering classes were livid about it. How dare they! From Laura Ingraham, to Rush Limbaugh, the talk radio hosts spent hours drumming it into their listeners' heads that Huckabee was not a conservative.

It's not simply that they disliked Huckabee's policies. It was the endless drumbeat of talking points: Huckabee raised taxes. He pardoned lots of prisoners. Worst, he was for amnesty.

But the Iowa voters, an independent lot, voted for Huckabee anyway because they liked his populist stance and the fact that he wasn't afraid of his Christianity. Huckabee struck many voters as a big change (the operative word in this election) from the establishment candidates of Romney and Rudy Giuliani. In short, they were doing what primary voters do: voting for the guy they like rather than just a suit they think can win.

After Iowa, it was time to turn the slime on John McCain. Why? Because he was the front runner in New Hampshire, the first actual primary. And lots of talking heads dislike John McCain, not just because of campaign finance reform but because he compromised with Democrats (the horror!) in order to preserve the Senate filibuster. He didn't support tax cuts without cuts in spending. Worst of all, he was for comprehensive immigration reform. That is, he supported the idea of border security plus changes in visas to encourage illegal immigrants to get back in line.

The "anybody but McCain" campaign has reached fever pitch since New Hampshire. The pundits are absolutely apoplectic (particularly Hugh, who is absolutely shameless these days) that Republicans would actually vote for McCain and not Romney, their chosen king.

Here's why, in a nutshell, I support John McCain: judges and the war in Iraq. All other issues, even things I am concerned about like immigration, are negotiable. Why? Because those two issues are paramount to the advancement of Republican ideas and causes. Without more conservative judges, we cannot undo much of the court-imposed stupidity of the last 40 years. And without a strong supporter of our war efforts, our victory in Iraq is less certain.

Romney may be a good candidate. But his obfuscations on his own record, coupled with misleading, lying attack ads on his rivals has turned me off. And after listening to Hugh Hewitt excuse the sort of behavior he attacks others for, I'm not certain at this point that I could support Romney even in the general election. Nitpicking at McCain's speeches and arguing that he's not a conservative (even though he has the endorsement of many former Reagan officials) makes me less likely than ever to vote for Romney. Such attacks are dishonest and disgusting.