Thursday, February 7, 2008

Romney's Three-Legged Stool Toppled

In January, I addressed Romney's big mistake, and it looks as if time has proved me right, unfortunately.

Romney adopted the Three-Legged Stool approach, much like Tony Perkins and his Focus On The Family, far-right, agenda-driven group had put forth. I sent my summation on the Three-Legged Stool approach to Governor Romney's campaign headquarters and stated that a three-legged stool is a wobbly tool at best. It is not a foundation on which to stand to reach any height, certainly not that of the nomination or the door of the White House. While he won 4 million votes to McCain's 4.7 million and won 11 states to McCain's 13, the stool was not a steady enough platform, nor was it high enough, proving once again that size does matter.

So today it has toppled over, and Governor Romney has withdrawn from the race. Rather than adopt the sturdy ladder approach, which I put forth, he stuck with the unbalanced stool and fell. In doing so, he not only fell, but he failed this country. We now have three very liberal candidates running for office. None has a realistic view of the economy, and none has the experience to start fixing it.

The economy was the biggest issue, according to voters at exit polls, but it would appear that the electorate is as uninformed on the solutions as those we now have running for President. It would appear that the voters also failed by not being informed or, perhaps, by voting according to the word from the pulpit, especially in the evangelical south.

It appears the former Southern Baptist minister turned liberal governor is going to run for second place. If McCain is dumb enough to name him as his running mate, a Hillary or Obama victory will be assured in November.

Regardless of who is elected, be it McCain, Hillary, or Obama, there won't be a lot of difference.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

I sure agree that if McCain picks Huckabee it's all over except the funeral. What I don't agree with is saying there is little difference between the two Democrats and John McCain.

Clearly, the record shows McCain is far more to the right than either Clinton or Obama with Obama to the left of Clinton but not radically so.

To my way of thinking, a much more important characteristic of the ultimate winner is his/her ability to get people working together on solutions. The president, after all, is only one person part of who's job it is to present initiatives for congressional consideration. As we have seen with Bush, if the programs offered do not pass muster they go nowhere.

Even if we manage to elect a Democratic senate and house, there will by no means be an ideological homogeneity. Whatever else our two political parties are they are coalitions with the bulk of members of both parties tending to be centrist.

Anonymous said...

Well Romney is out so I guess that clinches it, McCain is the party's man. By this time next week we may know who the Dems will get behind. There is substantial pressure to avoid a floor fight at the convention, why I do not have a clue.
Seems adults should be able to go through the process in a civil manner but then what do I know,never been to a political convention.

Anonymous said...

I picked the Super Bowl winner but pronosticating politics ain't exactly my forte. However I pray that McCain doesn't offer the VP thing to the Huckster. That as Ticker said would be a disaster. Fred Thompson would satisfy me.

Anonymous said...

What's the attraction to a tired old B movie actor, his wife? I offer up Governor Jim Douglas or maybe Matthew Roy Blunt. No matter, whomever the choice is, goodbye Republicans for at least four years. I may be seventy but my thinking is we need younger men running the country. Nothing worse than an old codger pretending he's acquired wisdom with age and then administer using out dated ideas.

Ticker said...

Looking at the records I see little difference in McCain and Hillary. Of course Obama is so far left of either that it fails the smell taste .

Hillary has proven herself to be a divider over and over, Obama is no better. He thinks his glibness and chrisma will get him through the tough times. He thinks too highly of his abilities on that score for certain.

I would like to think that the parties are centrist but so far this season has proved not to be so. We have too many far right and too many far left and they have hijacked the parties and left the true centrist disinfranshised in most cases. I have always spoken for a true centrist type of leader and Congress but it ain't happened. We have had nothing but division since prior to the 2000 elections when the far right hijacked the GOP and the Soro's and moveon.idiot groups hijacked the Democrats. I alluded to that in a post on the ACT forum. Dick Armney is so far running 90% correct in his saying that the hijacking by the religious far right would come back and bite the GOP in the butt. It began in 06 and is continuing now.
That group used the "religious scare card" well. The pulpits were full of condemnation of anyone who would consider a "cultist" for president. I heard some with my own ears. Not from the pulpit at the church I attend but from the pulpits of those I associate with or just happen to be in the same resturant with and overhearing. Same scare card as used against Kennedy in 60, except this time it worked. The division will cost this country dearly regardless of being from the right or the left. It already has.

Anonymous said...

I can't effectively argue in your arena but I believe you and those like you, which account for probably 90% of the world's population, are anachronisms, 19th century minds living in 21st century bodies.

It has long been a truism that the social development of mankind is lagging far behind it's technological development. We have handed the power to destroy the world, to barbarians that have not advanced beyond Attila the Hun, just more proficient at killing each other.

I'm not happy with any of the political options. To my way of thinking they are way too conservative. They are children of the past. The future demands a new paradigm where cooperation will replace competition, where war will be unthinkable, where greed will be an historical dis-ease which no longer functions in our society.

Call me an idealist, a dreamer, but I say to you, if my dreams do not come to fruition in the next hundred years or so this planet will cease to be home for human life. We will have successfully created our own demise.

Ticker said...

No, Thomas, I am just a realist. I am very much in the 21st century. I see thing in clarity rather than in some kind of wishful vision.

Would I rather have a world where cooperation is the norm? Most certainly but I am realistic enough to know that as long as there are those who wish to control others there will be no such place. History, as far back as one wishes to go will always show something, be it critter or man, who wished to be in control.
If one would take the argument of good and evil from the Judeo-Christian view point the struggle for that control began in the heavens with the most beautiful angel created vying for control with his maker and losing. In losing he was caste out onto this planet, he and his minions. There they inhabitated the earth before the creation of Adam and Eve and a new earth enviroment and once again they were even confronted for control by the one who had been thrown to earth and now there were these new creations to contend with and he wished to be in charge, not the human creatures which now his nemisis the Creator had made. The rest of the story is now the struggle between the free will of man and the evil one described as a serpent. The struggle has never ceased.

For certain there will come an end of time and some say that we are now living in the time in which it will come about. Even the Mayan's in ancient civilization had created calenders which pointed to some great change, possibly the end of time as was known within the 21st Century. 2012 is one of the dates often mentioned in those Mayan calenders. There are other ancient civilizations who also dated such and in about the same time frame. Will it be 2012? I can predict no exact time nor date and to do so would be folly on my part. Why the Mayan's and others settled on this date is unknown since they no longer exist. Were they the messengers of what would occur? Did they offer any course that could be taken to change that date? At this point no one knows because again they are no longer and the key to that mystery is hidden somewhere perhaps in the ruins of their cities and tombs.
So call me a skeptic or what ever. I prefer to be thought of as a realist.

Anonymous said...

Glad to find this!

Anonymous said...

The difference between your realism and my wishful thinking is, I have seen it in action and a magnificent experiment it was. Yes, it failed but the very fact it was able to exist at all holds out hope for all mankind.

I saw people of all walks of life, of many different religious, cultural, ethnic and national backgrounds living and working in harmony. If it could happen even on a small scale involving less than 7,000 people tells me that the germ of such a life is there awaiting only the right moment to sprout again.

Ticker said...

Yes, Thomas but in the end even the dream you experienced ended in bitterness and division as have all such grand experiments.

Ticker said...

Anonymous said...Glad to find this!

Good then join the conversation. Pick a thread even going back to the beginning in Jan and make a comment. Read the welcome and you will understand the rules. There are few and they are simple.

Anonymous said...

Ticker wrote
"Yes, Thomas but in the end even the dream you experienced ended in bitterness and division as have all such grand experiments."

So it would seem but that experiment was never intended to last forever. It was a mystery school. There was a
learning to be had for those of us who had the perceptiveness to see it.

We were but one small piece of a picture puzzle that dates back thousands of years, merely "one small step for mankind". We became a target, a focal point for the resistance, a resistance that always seeks to maintain the status quo.

It's always about the individual, not the group. The seeker travels alone, occasionally joining with others but basically alone even as part of a group. The master says, each of the disciples is related to him directly and to each other only through him.

Critics, even sympathizers have always tried to quantify such movements using measures they can understand. From the outside we appear as followers but this is not the case. One is not to focus on the master. He is only a guide, not an object of worship to be emulated.

Hate to tell you how long this one little post has taken me as it is a very difficult thing to attempt to explain something that can only really be experienced. Thank you for providing the space to even try. You are, happily, full of surprises.

Ticker said...

As I stated in the beginning of this blog Thomas, this would be a place where people could gather to have a civil discussion, to agree and disagree and to hopefully come away from the discussion more aware and hopefully more informed than when they entered. I hope to maintain that type of community. It may not grow large but it will stand as a site for freedom to express sane and respectful views and to have those views respected by all. I hope that you continue to be happily surprised.