The Republicans

So I watched last night's Republican debate, and I have a few knee-jerk reactions. (For the record, I had been a registered Republican most of my life until taking on this news role at the paper. That, coupled with my overall disdain for the direction of our country in the last six years lead me to switch my registration to unaffiliated. So now, I am shopping for a candidate, though I am not excited about voting for anyone besides John Edwards, because I think it would be awesome if the President was from my hometown!)

— Mitt Romney should not win. I know I posted last week that he was my choice for the Republican ticket, but he looked like he was trying too hard to be the frontrunner. To step back and let the others fight. Kinda like Hillary has in every Democratic debate. There's just one problem with that strategy for ol' Mitt. HE IS NOT THE FRONTRUNNER. Or, at least not enough to sit back and wait. From all I've seen, Rudy is leading this thing so far. Of course, Howard Dean was leading by a wide margin at this time in the 2004 race, so polls don't mean anything. Still, Romney is a Mormon, has flipflopped more than John Kerry and is from Massachusetts. Obviously, many Republicans in the BIble Belt would have a hard time voting for him.

— Mike Huckabee would be a solid candidate for the Republicans. I know, you're saying "Mike who?" But this Gov. of Arkansas once lost more than 100 pounds. He is humorous, likable, and seems to have his priorities, and his stump speech down pat. It's a shame he won't get a second look by a lot of GOP voters, because he may be one of the only chances to unseat Hillary. (See John Edwards.)

— Guiliani is not a traditional Republican, and therefore would not rally the base enough to pull off an upset of Hillary. Sure, that 9/11 talk does fire up the base, and boy does he love to pull it out, but the Christian Right would never support fervently a pro-choice candidate.

— Fred Thompson is a joke. A tall, jowly joke. But a joke, nonetheless. Whoever thought it was a good idea for him to run must have thought voting for the Presidency was a lot like voting for Emmys, someting I'm not so sure Thompson deserves in the first place. In every movie or TV series he has ever been in, he has played the same character, and he was still playing it on the stage last night. But his wife is hot...30 years younger than him, but hot, nonetheless.

All of this leads me to...

— John McCain as my choice. Long ago and far away, before I went to college, I was a major supporter of McCain. The year was 2000, and he was tearing through the Republican primaries. Then came South Carolina, and the shenanigans Bush pulled to get that state, and eventually the White House. I loved McCain then. Fresh out of high school, I was perhaps naive enough to believe in the "Straight talk express." Fast-forward 8 years... McCain has been throttled in the press and among voters for selling out to the Bush regime. But he is still a principled man that spent five years in a prison camp for his country. That would be a hard thing to argue for the Democrats, especially for Clinton. And he looked like it again last night. I think his selling out days may be behind him.
McCain had the best line of the night, when talking about Clinton's support for a Woodstock Museum, he said he was "tied up at the time." alluding to his time in the camp. He can do this all year long. And he was the only one on the stage that had that Presidential look. He has the charisma, respect and knowledge to go toe-to-toe with Clinton on the campaign trail and at the debates. That's something that no other Republican can say.
If the Republicans want to throw out a sacrificial lamb for Clinton to devour, they will run Guiliani, Thompson or Romney. If they want to win, they will run McCain.

If the race came down to McCain and Edwards, I would have a hard time choosing. But it won't.