Redstate

Posted at 3:56pm on Feb. 7, 2008 I come to bury Romney

By smokymtman

not to praise him. The evil that men do in their political lives, lives after them; The good is oft interred with their concession speech.

I hope Mitt Romney gets involved in politics as a conservative. I would suggest running as a conservative against Granholm in Michigan.

I am annoyed greatly by the suggestion that it is classless to feel schadenfreunde at the demise of someone whose dirty tricks played a great role in ending the campaign of the only candidate I cared about.

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Posted at 12:48pm on Feb. 5, 2008 Red State decided on Romney...Please Answer Some Questions I Have...

By smokymtman

If you look at the posts and the recommender lists they are fairly certain to follow a pattern in the last week. Every post that is written past a 5th grade reading level (and some of them have truly been excellent) that rips McCain is instantly recommended by the 15 posters who wait at Redstate to comment again and again that they hate McCain.

I am a person who though I supported Fred Thompson admitted several areas of concern/disappointment. I also recognize that based on my worldview, all political candidates will be sinful human beings and at some level flawed.

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Posted at 4:18pm on Feb. 4, 2008 Mitt Romney flip flops on Vietnam and overall disappointment with everyone...

By smokymtman

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/DeroyMurdock/2008/02/04/mitts_vietnam...

"It is bad enough to reverse course 180 degrees on public-policy matters such as taxes, gay rights, guns, abortion, immigration, the minimum wage, Ronald Reagan’s legacy, or any of the other topics on which the old and new Romneys clobber each other. At least these are political issues on which, at best, new information and thinking can justify changed views or, at worst, electoral mathematics can explain abandoning one position for another.

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Posted at 3:34pm on Feb. 1, 2008 Do Conservatives Like Losing?

By smokymtman

Thank you for taking the time to read these musings about the plight of the conservative movement. I have often wondered if we as a group have a masochistic streak. Amongst evangelical Christians there is some consensus that America is now a post Christian nation. Robert Bork describes "Slouching towards Gomorrah" and many of us aver. If America is a nation of people who are largely antagonistic towards our cause, then the persecution and mockery of our cause only confirms our sense of moral superiority.

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Posted at 5:35pm on Jan. 31, 2008 Getting Real About Romney

By smokymtman

"Romney changed positions on gay rights, abortion and guns at the same time, that is not a conversion, it is an opportunistic liar."

Mike Griffith responded with this:

You should consider the fact that as governor Romney came dowon the side of life and traditional marriage time and again, and that he eased or abolished three gun control laws. He invoked an arcane law to prevent out-of-state gay couples from getting Massachusetts marriage licenses. He vetoed easy access to the morning-after pill. He instituted abstinence education. He vetoed tuition breaks for the children of illegal aliens. He vetoed tens of millions of dollars in spending. He pushed through property tax relief for seniors. He prevented the legislature from imposing capital gains taxes retroactively. And even though he took office in the middle of a bad recession, he wiped out a large budget deficit, balanced the budget, and turned the job market around without raising the income tax, the sales tax, or the gas tax.

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Posted at 8:44pm on Jan. 28, 2008 Financial apartheid?

By smokymtman

http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080127181914.e1z8r2hd&show_artic...

Reading this article deeply saddened me.

This is a quote written in 1869 by an Englishman named Thomas Hughes who was writing about the England found by Alfred the Great as he ascended to the throne:

When the corn and wine and oil, the silver and the gold, have become the main object of worship, -- that which men or nations do above all things desire, -- sham work of all kinds, and short cuts, by what we call financing and the like, will be the means by which they will attempt to gain them.

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Posted at 1:51pm on Jan. 20, 2008 John McCain has disdain for many evangelicals...and I forgive him...

By smokymtman

Dear John,

I have only recently understood the honor with which you stayed in prison camp despite being offered a way out. As the anti Jane Fonda living in a time before I was born you refused to become a prop for propaganda. I have often admired your honesty when I strongly disagreed with you. I have some problems with you but I am going to assess them here and now.

You were flat out wrong about illegal immigration. The "were" is crucially important to me. I heard George W Bush speaking in Spanish regularly and talking about compassion towards illegal immigration and helping a Mexican President who sneered at us and I was sickened. We bailed out the Mexican economy under his Presidency and saw remittances soar as one of the major driving forces behind the economy in Mexico. We saw a few individuals become incredibly wealthy (as in one who is as rich as Bill Gates) not because of capitalism and freedom, but because of cronyism and monopoly power that is propped up by corruption. We saw a flourishing drug trade and police so thoroughly coopted that it was often difficult for America to tell who we were fighting in the war on drugs. George W Bush did not hide even while campaigning that he would be wrong on this issue, but over the last 5 years or so more and more of the conservative base chafed over it.

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Posted at 9:13pm on Jan. 19, 2008 Bitter....Fox News can go back to covering Cats in Trees...

By smokymtman

When a lie was spread that Thompson was getting out and endorsing McCain that Novak traced to Romney's campaign, Fred lost 3 or 4 points and instead of a strong 3rd in Iowa, he came in 3rd reported as 4th by the media that hates him. They talked about McCain as if he had come in 3rd, when he had not.

When McCain lost in Michigan to Romney, Romney intentionally timed his speech to step on McCains.

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Posted at 2:44pm on Jan. 18, 2008 Why I will not vote for Mitt Romney in the primary or the general

By smokymtman

If you want to respond to my central argument that is fine, I would like for this blog to end up sparking a discussion and avoid personal attacks, but the central reason I will not support Mitt Romney is because I do not trust him.

My saga with Mitt Romney began when I was asked what I thought about him and realized I did not know much about him. Believing that before I could speak to the matter I needed to do my homework I began researching everything I could. The portrait that emerged was of a man who ran to the left of Ted Kennedy in 1994. Lets examine this. Many people say, "Hey I am a convert to the conservative cause, do not throw stones!" I think I am in a bizarre group with those who read Redstate blogs every day in that we are peculiarly interested in politics. My question is this for all of us, how much more would we consider our positions before we ran for the United States Senate?

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Posted at 4:34pm on Jan. 17, 2008 Can Minority Group Bigotry Exist?

By smokymtman

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

This quote taken from the most famous speech delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is a dream I subscribe to. I have been very blessed to be raised in a family where skin color has never been a basis for judgment about anything other than which SPF we each will need at the beach. I was very distraught to listen to a minister on the radio suggesting that Americans of African ancestry need to support Obama as a monolithic group. He encouraged pastors to tell everyone they know that Obama was the best choice, and the only choice. When I spoke to him I began my conversation by allaying his fears that Obama will be falsely portrayed in the general election as a Muslim, by telling him that Obama is much too savvy and articulate to allow that type of mischaracterization to stand (I left out whether his real religious beliefs in going to a very divisive church will hurt him).

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Posted at 1:39pm on Jan. 16, 2008 Preference voting, who would you vote for and who could you vote for?

By smokymtman

I am not going to attack any candidates in this post but the point of the post is to gather information. If the short time I have been here at Redstate has taught me anything it is that any comment thread will likely turn into, "I oppose candidate X because he is a X and betrays X. That is not the purpose of the responses I am requesting. Because a brokered convention has been discussed, I want to know in order how you would rank your preference with regard to the current candidates.

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Posted at 12:38pm on Jan. 14, 2008 Thompson supporters please read...

By smokymtman

We must prepare ourselves for the inevitable.

On Tuesday night and Wednesday morning we must make sure our e-homes are swept and clean because we will have some company.

Mitt Romney has outspent his opponents in states where no one was on the airwaves. He was able to paint himself as he wanted to be painted, and then when others showed up to contest his portrayals, he lost. He won in Wyoming because no one else competed. Sansonneti is happy to get mentioned as a "gold" medal, but everyone serious including those within Romney's camp know that it was a hollow victory. His spokesman Madden was seen after the NH loss claiming that owning a home in the state and having been the most visible GOP figure in the largest media market carried in N.H. for years left poor Romney as an "unknown". Spin is what everyone does after a loss, but they knew the truth.

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Posted at 1:28am on Jan. 14, 2008 Mitt stumbles badly on immigration...

By smokymtman

Here is the transcript:
I believe, I don't know about Ron Paul, but I think everybody else agrees -- I just haven't heard your posi-tion; I don't mean to be critical -- that we secure the border, we have the fence, and we have enough Border Patrol agents to secure the border, and that we have an employment verification system of some kind.

But the place of difference between us is what we do with the 12 million people who are here illegally. We all agree that anybody who's committed a crime should be sent home.

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Posted at 11:14am on Jan. 13, 2008 Single Elimination Week Starts Tuesday

By smokymtman

Fans of the candidates may deny it, but this next week has the potential to eliminate both Mitt Romney and Fred Thompson.

Romney has win or go home Michigan happening Tuesday. If he does not win, I have from very credible sources, he will be leaving the race.

Thompson has win or go home South Carolina happening Saturday. I am also certain he will leave if he does not win South Carolina.

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Posted at 2:42pm on Jan. 11, 2008 10 Million Meetings with Illegals for Mitt Romney

By smokymtman

I am curious as to why no one as far as I can tell has critiqued the comment by Mitt that he would have 10 million individuals have meetings with the government? He said they would meet, then they would have a timeline to get out, and after that they would be...he did not get to that part because "forcibly evicted" would probably not play well because it is
A. Impossible
B. Leading to a police state

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