Fred Thompson is no longer in the race. Thoughts?

Darrell Birkey, in one of the few pleasant e-mails I've received in the past week, addresses my point about Fred Thompson being against a Human Life Amendment. One hostile commenter (not Mr. Birkey) illiterately asked "WHAT PART OF A HUMAN LIFE AMENDMENT DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?" as if I somehow missed that in my post about Thompson.

Firstly, it should be noted among the "personhood" crowd (as if the rest of us don't believe that fetuses are people too) that it really doesn't make sense to create a Personhood Amendment if the Constitution already protects people. (Not that I would be against such an amendment, but I'm just making the point.) The "let's stand on principle" thing doesn't really work that far, unless you are willing to "stand on principle" when the time comes and say, "We don't NEED a Personhood Amendment! It's already in the Constitution! Equal rights NOW!" Why have the redundancy? (This question is rhetorical, of course.)

But anyway, regardless of that, Darrell took slight exception to my statement that the president doesn't really have a role in the amendment process, saying that, actually yes, the president does have role: an influential role.

Well, yes. I agree with that. I was meaning an actual role laid out by the Constitution. But yes, the president can influence Congress and the states.

But Darrell, you also said that appointing judges was the least important thing that a president can do for the pro-life cause. I would totally disagree with that. But then again, I'm not going the amendment route, so our disagreement makes sense.

-N

Well, I've thought long and hard about whom I'm going to vote for, and, of course, we still have a while until Super Tuesday. (March) But I've decided that I'm going to go with my first gut feeling and vote for Fred Thompson.

My reservations with Fred rested on two major things: 1) he is divorced and remarried and 2) he isn't enthusiastic about a Human Life Amendment. I can live with the first one, I suppose, because no president is going to be morally perfect. Not that I expected that: it's just that there's something really sleazy about someone who leaves their first spouse to go start things "anew" with a younger, blonder woman. That's irritating to me, and I think that it says something about someone's character. That and the Bible calls it adultery. But that's another discussion.

I reconciled his statements about the Human Life Amendment by the simple fact that the president doesn't have an official influence over the amendment process, though you can be sure that it doesn't make one feel good to hear a person who claims to be pro-life say that they don't support a Human Life Amendment. Still, I do believe that he's pro-life.

I know this may not seem like an enthusiastic endorsement, but it is. I just want people to realize that I know we have reasons to have reservations about Fred. But I think that, once elected, he will be a great president and get things done. Presidents, in my opinion, are generally very limited in what they can do for the life issue, except, of course, they can appoint Supreme Court justices and federal judges. I think that Fred will appoint conservative judges or at least judges who will do less damage and actually consult the constitution before the NY Times.

What do you think? Have you decided whom you're voting for? If you don't live in the United States, do you have a candidate whom you like or lean towards?

I had a startling revelation the other day. It was that now that I'm an actual conservative, it's really, really hard for me to actually vote. When I was a pro-life liberal (the pro-choicers insist, by the way, that I never was liberal, and yet can never pinpoint a conservative belief of mine other than being anti-child-killing and being against enslaving blacks) I was able to easily vote for the candidate that I thought was the most pro-life. Or, in reality, since I voted democrat I couldn't vote for anyone at all in the primaries.

For president, it was either Kerry or Bush. Even then, while I obviously wanted Bush to win, I voted via absentee from Beautiful Switzerland for Donald Eugene Sheets of Clackamas County Oregon, a.k.a. my dad. This was on the principle that, at the time, pro-lifeness was the only thing that I agreed with Bush on (and allowing illegals to have amnesty, but I wasn't aware of this position of his until the switch had been made and I was thusly irritated by it) and I simply could not bring myself to vote for him.

But now here sit I, a total conservative, and I can't pick a candidate.

If I were to ignore the pro-life issue, for example, I would vote for either (in no particular order):

1) Giuliani: because he would beat Hillary
2) Thompson, because we share the most common beliefs though I am more conservative than he is

If I were to vote based only upon the pro-life issue (as I did back in Liberal Days) I would vote for either:

1) Mike Huckabee, who is pro-life
2) Fred Thompson, because I believe that he is at least vaguely pro-life even though he opposes a Human Life Amendment (and not for strategic reasons, either)

Now that I am factoring the two together, I get the following list:

1) EKLFj: Fkjweaerjhkl gag hrkajg

That, in case you can't decipher, is the result of me hitting my head against the keyboard.

It used to be really easy to vote (or not vote and yet still have someone who you secretly hoped would win, as was my case) because I knew that it was futile to hope for a candidate who was liberal and pro-life. The democrats wouldn't allow it. Now that I see things in reality, however, it's harder to vote because, while I obviously care about the abortion issue firstly, I am also extremely annoyed with Huckabee's position that I should be forced to feed homeless people with my income rather than be convicted by God to do it. Thompson also makes me a little nervous because he's divorced and remarried. Giuliani isn't even a conservative and barely a Republican.

If I were to take a shot in the dark, I would say that I will probably end up going for Thompson.

If you are informed about the candidates, please vote. If you aren't, please don't vote. You are not performing any service to our country to go in and aimlessly vote, regardless of what MTV tells you.

National Review, the nation's biggest conservative publication, endorsed Mitt Romney yesterday.

"Our guiding principle has always been to select the most conservative viable candidate. In our judgment, that candidate is Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts. Unlike some other candidates in the race, Romney is a full-spectrum conservative: a supporter of free-market economics and limited government, moral causes such as the right to life and the preservation of marriage, and a foreign policy based on the national interest. While he has not talked much about the importance of resisting ethnic balkanization — none of the major candidates has — he supports enforcing the immigration laws and opposes amnesty. Those are important steps in the right direction."
...
Uniting the conservative coalition is not enough to win a presidential election, but it is a prerequisite for building on that coalition. Rudolph Giuliani did extraordinary work as mayor of New York and was inspirational on 9/11. But he and Mike Huckabee would pull apart the coalition from opposite ends: Giuliani alienating the social conservatives, and Huckabee the economic (and foreign-policy) conservatives. A Republican party that abandoned either limited government or moral standards would be much diminished in the service it could give the country.
...
Fred Thompson is as conservative as Romney, and has distinguished himself with serious proposals on Social Security, immigration, and defense. But Thompson has never run any large enterprise — and he has not run his campaign well, either. Conservatives were excited this spring to hear that he might enter the race, but have been disappointed by the reality. He has been fading in crucial early states. He has not yet passed the threshold test of establishing for voters that he truly wants to be president.

This is pretty much where I am. While I think the National Review did a good job in sounding enthusiastic about Romney, they obviously had to think long and hard to choose which of the candidates to choose, since, in all reality, they are all a disappointment in one way or another.

I hope that if Romney becomes our candidate that he will be able to get everyone around him excited to oppose Hillary. I've said it in the past: I like Mitt, and he sure would make a much better president than Hillary, or, for that matter, any democrat.

Because I work a night job, I was able to watch the debate. And now, so you all can see things my way, I present to you my thoughts on last night's CNN/YouTube Debate. (WARNING: Not for the faint of heart!)

Mitt Romney was defensive the entire night, because people kept pointing out inconsistencies in his past. Some were valid, but he really shot down Fred Thompson's attack on him regarding Roe vs. Wade: he said that he would not apologize for becoming pro-life. Other than that he looked flustered, and while he got a lot of air time, I don't think he came out favorably.

Thompson did fairly well. Nothing too outstanding. His enthusiastic-o-meter as at a 2 out of 10, which, I guess, is better than last debate's 1 out of 10.

John McCain was, in my opinion, the "winner" of the debate, though he irritated me. I don't like McCain, and most Republicans don't. But if I were not me and some objective viewer, I would think that McCain handled himself well. He has an insane position on water boarding, but we aren't allowed to protest because he was a POW and thus is the moral authority on the matter, and don't dare cross him.

Ron Paul did well also, and I secretly hope he wins. I cannot vote for him because of his insane position on the war and his delusion that Muslim extremists will leave us alone if only we'd get out of Iraq. That's stupid. However, he is a very likeable person and knows what he is talking about on virtually every other issue.

Huckabee got a surprising amount of air time and did fairly well. Why Tancredo and that other guy (OK, OK, Hunter) are still in the race is beyond me.

Oh yes! I almost forgot. Rudy Giuliani did OK, though I don't think he was at his best. He probably was the winner of the top-tier candidates, if you don't count John McCain as a top-tier candidate.

Overall, the questions were actually very good. I think CNN knew that the Republicans didn't want to waste time on stupid questions as the Democrats did. The main people focused on, in my opinion, were Giuliani and Romney, with Thompson and McCain also talking a lot.

EDIT: Michelle Malkin has a different take:

So, who won?

Quick and dirty reaction: Romney looked strong and energetic, with one stumble on the Bible question. Huckabee didn’t harm himself, so he “wins” by not losing. McCain and Thompson were lethargic, with a few lucid moments each.

First, I don't understand Thompson's fixation with nonexistent state laws that would send girls and women to jail who abort. There never have been such laws, and there never will be. Thompson's insistence on bringing up this abortion industry scare tactic, unprovoked by any interviewer and all the while maintaining he doesn't want to discuss hypotheticals, only puts thoughts in people's minds that ought not to be. He needs to just shut up about that.

—Jill Stanek

I have also found these comments by Thompson to be annoying, and by saying them I think that he further proves my suspicion that he's in cahoots with NARAL. I mean, really, no actual pro-lifer would ever say something like this! Well, except for me of course, advocating such laws. But I'm the only pro-lifer apparently who actually thinks that the mothers who slaughter their children should receive some form of punishment. Ahem.

While the issue of abortion "going back to the states" is certainly what I believe should happen, I don't use that argument to shield the underlying principle I have about abortion: that it's murder. If anything, saying that abortion should be left to the states should be a way of softening the blow for poor college pro-choicers who can't fathom a world without a woman's right to choose; but not the other way around.

Thompson clearly doesn't care about his pro-life base, and that's annoying. Every Republican president needs to be aware of what the people who vote for him value. Usually at this point we could laugh maniacally and say that we hold the power through the NRLC endorsement...but, oh wait, NRLC chose to endorse Thompson who 1) has yet to say abortion is morally wrong, 2) shallowly says that it's a "state issue" in order to avoid any moral grandstanding, 3) talks as if he's a NARAL intern about "girls going to jail", 4) won't sign a Human Life Amendment, 5) has a bad position on end-of-life issues. Next we'll be finding out he supported McCain-Feingold!

You all know that I was somewhat disappointed with National Right to Life's (NRLC) recent endorsement of Fred Thompson. This was however, in my opinion, an inevitable endorsement. Romney's my man, and perhaps that played a part in the slight sadness as well. But I think really what I didn't like was the timing of it.

Other than that, I have agreed with virtually every thing that NRLC does on the political level. To insinuate that they don't care for unborn children is childish in of itself, and thankfully there aren't too many people who care to throw that accusation around anymore. But there sure are a lot of pro-lifers complaining.

There are two kinds of pro-life groups in our country: groups that stand on principle and groups that strive to be effective politically. NRLC is the latter group. Yes, they make "compromises" all of the time. They'll throw in a "rape and incest" exception in a bill if it will be the difference between the bill passing and not passing. And I highly doubt that a single person in the NRLC office is actually pro-slaughtering-rape-and-incest-babies. But they do what they can to save 90% of the babies in a particular bill if that is what the situation calls for.

There are other groups that stand on principle. And that's great—we need them. And, frankly, I'm with them most of the time as the pro-choicers in the blogosphere can attest to. I don't use the candor and language that the sensible people at NRLC use. That's because I don't pass bills, I blog. And I blog what most pro-lifers think but are too scared to utter aloud. However, I'm not with the "principled pro-lifers" when they complain about RTL and their political efforts. Many "extreme" pro-lifers hate the NRLC because they and their affiliates make exceptions in bills, with the very stupid reasoning that we should not pass any bills unless all of the babies are saved. That's simply stupid. These groups fail to see that, given their way, they sentence hundreds or thousands of children to death so they can stand on their principle. One such annoying group here in Oregon said that our very pro-life Speaker of the House and house members were not pro-life because they eventually passed a budget that allowed abortion funding. Apparently these political geniuses think that these reps should have starved to death in the House Chamber. What they failed to acknowledge was, while they were complaining, our pro-life people managed to at least shrink the "Abortions on the House!" budget by over $100,000.

If abortion were illegal—save cases of "rape and incest"—I guarantee you NRLC would still be in existence saving them. But they work with what they have, which is a culture of pro-choicers and apathetic "evangelical pro-lifers" who would much rather spend their time jet skiing than saving the unborn. They have passed countless bills at the national and state level, and have fought the good fight countless more times. Let's compare their political record with that of the groups that refuse to "compromise" in order to pass laws. Hmmm...virtually nothing passed vs. hundreds by RTL. Sure, the "principle groups" can save babies through "education", but so does NRLC and their affiliates. They are involved in every single aspect of Pro-Life outreach, except for that infernal band scene!

Because of the recent endorsements, the bashing of Right to Life has begun from pro-lifers. "They opposed the Human Life Amendment", "They accepted a bribe from Thompson", "They don't have cookies at their meetings". If the first South Dakota ban that NRLC opposed had passed and gone to the Supreme Court, we would be looking at another 30 years of Roe vs. Wade. People who know nothing about law and the SCOTUS have it easy: they can sit and complain about RTL and their opposition of what seem like great, life-affirming bills. What they should be doing is thanking Right to Life for not going with a group of pro-lifers whose actions, however unwittingly, would have sacrificed millions more children to death.