The "Cool Kids" Election

Imagine you are at a party. You are a single guy. You look around and see a lot of single ladies. Making a good impression on a few of them is in your own self-interest. You go up to a group of them and start chatting. Eventually the topic of politics come up. People start talking about who they like for president. And you chime in to say you like Mitt Romney because he represents "real change in Washington." You know what happens next? You are not only standing there by yourself but you may also find yourself being asked to leave this party.

Let's talk about all this talk about "change" going on. Coming from a Republican, this is just plain silly talk. Mitt Romney supports George W. Bush and his policies. Where does Romney disagree with Bush? I am not sure. If anything, Romney wants to out-Bush Bush. You may remember him saying he wants to "double Guantanamo." Heck, even Bush said he wants to close Guantanamo down. Romney just picked up on the "change" message when cool kid Barack Obama used it in spectacular fashion in Iowa and in South Carolina.

I just have trouble believing that this particular rich white guy named Mitt Romney can represent change. What in his past shows that he has been fighting for change? I mean, beyond three weeks ago, what? What in Mitt Romney's past shows he has been interested in anything besides making money?

This is going to be a "cool kids" election. Barack Obama is an historic candidate. Hillary Clinton is an historic candidate. Either of them becoming president would move us past the little narrow paradigm we have chosen to live in for far too long. (I myself am aiming to be the first half-Asian, half-Jewish president. I am turning 35 this year. We shall see.) Now I am not saying that being a white guy should disqualify you from being president. But white guys running for president are going to have to bring their "A" game from now on.

What is Mitt Romney's "A" game? Well, he doesn't have one. Ronald Reagan had one. Bill Clinton had one. Even George W. Bush had one. All of these candidates could create a kind of unity with wide swaths of people. Their communication skills allowed this. Mitt Romney, not so much.

What She/He Really Means

What He Said:
"I'm Mitt Romney and I approve this message."

What He Means:
I'm Mitt Romney and the advisers and pollsters told Me that this is good shit that will appeal to voters wavering between McCainny and Me. I love America, can't you tell by the flag and the serious look on my face. I actually haven't seen the add.

What She Said:
"Mitt Romney and John McCain on Immigration"

What She Means:
Look at Mitt, he's serious and focused, he brings his hands together in order to emphasize his power. Look at John, he's an angry crank, who is lecturing you by jabbing his finger in the air like that. Come on, are we in the school yard John? Grow up.

What She Said:
"McCain championed a bill to let every illegal immigrant stay...PERMANENTLY."

What She Means:
McCain doesn't understand the importance of keeping the illegal immigrants illegal. Let me explain, he wants to give them rights and protections. My boss Mitt, and all of you business types watching, won't be able to take advantage of the cheap and voiceless labor. Did you see the angry look on John's face. I searched on Google for over an hour just to find one that made him look like he was taking a crap while dropping bombs on Hanoi. Good choice don't you think.

What She Said:
"He even voted to allow them to collect Social Security."

What She Means:
McCain is a communist who wants to give away the tax dollars that fund corporate tax breaks (for people like Mitt) to those nasty, thieving, lazy people who water our lawns, bake our chickens and roof our houses at cheap rates so people like us can get the second Lexus.

What She Said:
"Mitt Romney said NO to drivers liscences for illegal immigrants. Mitt Romney said NO to tuition breaks for illegal immigrants. And HE authorized police to enforce Federal Immigration Laws. On illegal immigration, there's a big difference."

What She Means:
Mitt Romney looks tough and serious in this picture, let's call him the ENFORCER (our polling data suggests that Law and Order is big with our base.) Mitt knows how to say No, he listened to Nancy just like the rest of the true Americans. No way does he want those illegals to get a driver's liscence because then they would have more equal status and he had have to produce documentation, tax records and other things that might make him spend more on the help and less on his hair. He also said no to an education for the help. Could you imagine if the help got educated? What's next book clubs? Unions? NOOOOOOOOOOO! Bring in the feds...oh yeah, that's what Mitt did.

There really aren't that many differences, because I've looked at the polling data very carefully and have advised Mitt to take positions very close to McCain's except on this issue....oh and did I mention he saved the Olympics?

The United States as a Gateway Community

Do you know the cause of everything that is wrong with our country? Well, I do. I have thought about this for awhile and have come up with three reasons. Not two and not four. Three. The first reason is a guy named Jose. The second is a guy named Pedro. And the last reason is a lady named Maria. Everything wrong with our country can be blamed on Jose, Pedro, and Maria. But there are solutions.

Of course, to properly implement the solutions, there will be some sacrifices. If we don't want these three to return to our country and annoy us, we will have to change the way we have been doing things. If you keep up with the news, you will notice how Republican politicians are always talking about how great the United States is. ("Best county ever" or "We are so smart that we should tell other countries their business" or things like that.) Democrats never do anything like this. In fact, they always contemplate why our country isn't as good as France.

For once, the Democrats are taking the right approach. If you were Jose or Pedro or Maria and you were looking for a new place to live, why wouldn't you want to move to the "best country ever?" I mean, I would. So why do we keep unofficially inviting them over? If we started hyping France up as the "best country ever," wouldn't you think that Jose and Pedro and Maria would choose to illegally immigrate to France? I would rather France have a problem with illegal immigrants than us.

Okay, I am taking off my sarcasm hat now. Sometimes I leave that on too much and confuse people. People sometimes think that I am a Republican who's scared of his own shadow. ("I am not a frady cat Republican but I play one on my blog!" ) Immigration is something I care about a lot. It is both personal (my mom was an immigrant) and practical (if people want to come here and work hard, by jove, let them!) I am a lawyer who is going to be hanging out his shingle in the next week or so with my sister. Since passing the bar, I have been doing some pro bono cases. All immigration.

One of my beefs with the anti-immigration crowd is the idea that immigrants can't possibly love our country. Um, wrong. For example, compare me (born here, took the United States for granted for around the first 28 years of my life) to my mom (left her whole life behind to come live here.) It is really no contest. My mom lived under the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. I have always lived under democratically elected leaders. (Looking past the 2000 election. That be a story for another post.) My mom really became a student of this country. I slept through high school history classes. My mom marched in anti-abortion rallies. I stayed home and played video games.

I came across some questions from the United States citizenship test today. Hence this post. Let me give a little context about myself. I have a bachelor's degree in history, a master's degree in education, and a law degree. I taught high school history for almost four years. And I can't say I got all these questions right. Yet people coming to our country are studying to know our country's history. History that most of us probably don't know. History that I am pretty sure the most anti-immigrant hordes don't know.

Let me make an offer to the immigrant haters out there. If you can pass the United States citizenship test right this moment, I will shut up about immigration. If not then I think you have some studying to do.

Give Me Some of That Old-Time Division

I just read Josh's first post on this blog. He knows of my intense dislike for Mitt Romney. Yet Josh was excited about Romney winning the Republican nomination because he would easily be the weakest candidate to face Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. You know what, Josh? I think you may be on to something. And would I enjoy having Mitt to kick around for another ten months? Hell ya!

Much is made of Mitt Romney being a viable candidate because he can self-fund his candidacy. The man is worth $250,000,000. Or he was when the race was started. If Josh gets what he wants, Romney will get the Republican nomination but lose big in November and perhaps be $100,000,000 poorer. Those would be results I could live with too.

Being a bit of a contrarian by nature, I think the fact that Romney is spending his own money proves just how weak a candidate he is. He is spending his own money out of necessity, not by choice because nobody likes him. (I am betting that Mitt's wife Ann wishes he would just quit already.) If there was a wave of "Mitt-o-mania" sweeping the land, Mitt wouldn't have to rely on his own "bling-bling." But no one is donating to his campaign except a few of his rich buddies. His campaign is not built on support from people in the heartland or from the South, the supposed Republican base. You know what these people are seeing? A flip-flopper from Massachusetts, that is what.

There are bigger problems for the Republican Party out there in the ether as well. Mike Huckabee is running a quixotic and endearing campaign for president. He is representing himself as a "Christian leader." I personally like the guy. But Huckabee is hated by the Republican establishment because he talks about the government's role in making the lives better for the average person and not for the average corporation. If you listen to Rush Limbaugh talk about Mike Huckabee, you would think that Huckabee was Bill Clinton's long-lost cousin from Arkansas. I wonder what social conservatives will think when they reflect on the drubbing a true social conservative candidate (the dude is a Baptist preacher) received from the supposed party of "family values."

On election night 2004, I watched the results with my friend Leona and her husband Ian. They were both very distressed. I was distressed too but only about 75% or so. 25% of me was happy because I didn't think President Bush wouldn't be any great shakes in his second term. Turns out he hasn't even been any mediocre shakes. If John Kerry had won the presidency, everything in Iraq would have been blamed on him. President Bush would have become a martyr. The Republican Party would be able to label themselves victims of liberal elites again.

But today, we are able to call a spade a spade.

The Jedi Candidate

John McCain seems to be emerging as the front runner in the crowded Republican field.

This is interesting on a number of levels.

This last summer his candidacy was considered all but done. As a result he abandoned Iowa and focused on New Hampshire. This strategy worked and coincided with the rise of Huckabee and the perceived demise of Romney. As a result the establishment which didn't take to kindly to those uppity religous folk pickin' one of there own, started to welcome McCain back into the fold. Remember that the McCain-Train of 2000 was the outsider candidate. Of course in 2000 he was as establishment Republican as they come, often referring to himself as a Reagan Republican. It was just that he didn't always vote with Tom Delay or his brothers in the House that made him a rebel.

Which brings me to the 2000 election. You may recall that McCain scored some early victories, including New Hampshire, and seemed poised to knock off the Bush juggernaut (oh, how things could've been different.) Then South Carolina came along, Bush sicked Rove on those poor people and scored a victory for his boss.

The next day speaking in front of high schoolers in Michigan, John McCain gave his usual stump speech about being trapped inside the Death Star (read Bush) and how he was Luke Skywalker trying to blast his way out (I always wanted to be the Wookie for some reason.)

Except, that day he was kind of angry and had a Howard Dean moment (before Howard had his.) You can read some of the text here or watch the video below. (Credit to good old Michael Moore for including this on one of his DVDs. By the way, he added the song by Rage, not McCain's camp.)

Some in the blogosphere have been pointing out that McCain does quite well nationally against Hillary and Barack. In fact (if you can believe polling data) he would probably win if the election were held today and he was up against one of those two. Scary.

This brings me to my last point, the significance of the lazy Fred Thompson. Yesterday he had an aid announce that he was dropping out of the race, (one that he was never really in, figuratively and literally) which, as the Votemaster (one of my favorite pundits out there) pointed out is actually good for democrats. This is because he was drawing votes from Huckabee and Romney. Now that Thompson is out, the thought is that those voters will go to either Huckabee or Romney, and with the glut of winner-take-all states fast approaching, this could be the necessary boon to either Huckabee or Romney (sorry Thomas) and a knock out McCain. This is good for dems because both Hillary and Barack mop the floor with either Huckabee or Romney (plus Thomas would have a lot more to blog about if Romney somehow won the nomination.)

So here's to the Jedi and his attempts to get out of the Death Star.

Blog New World

Hello and welcome to the new blog. This here blog is going to be a collaborative process that will involve both me and my friend Josh. We are going to talk about the political process. Josh is a current teacher and I am a former teacher. We are both rather interested in how things work. And we are both liberals, I think. Call me "Left" and call Josh "Lefter."

At my other blog "American Sweatpants," I had the tendency to talk at great length about how I couldn't stand members of the Republican party. Limbaugh, DeLay, Rove. Quite a list of great Americans there. How do I know this? Why they remind us everyday, silly. My other blog was a kinder and gentler place. All the talk of cutthroat Republicans scared my readers there. Hence this new blog.

Let us talk about my homey Mitt Romney. He was out among the African Americans yesterday as you can see from the above video. I guess he lost his dog because he started asking people, "Who let the dogs out?" Hopefully Mr. Romney will find his missing canine. Another thing I liked about this video is Mr. Romney seems to think that African Americans can only talk about one thing - the weather.

I can say one thing nice about homey Romney. He is nice to babies. I liked how he went up to an African American baby and called him "Michael Jordan" as he was admiring the baby's bling bling.