A Few Shiny Pebbles

This is just one way to look at the current political campaign, but it helps to clarify things in my mind. More than ever before, the campaigns have become games, with lying, bluffing, cheating, and every other trick in the book. A lot of things are not what they seem. Putting the primaries and caucuses so early and so close, along with the dynamics of the specific people running on both sides, has created a situation where the conventions will end up with candidates that have been selected because of all sorts of shenanigans by the press, the Left and Right followers, and the candidates themselves, to get where they are.

Iowa: Some Leftists assumed Hillary had more than enough votes, so they decided to goof up the Right’s caucuses, and vote for Huckabee, making it look like Huckabee is popular among more than just the evangelists, but also moderates and independents. But Obama won, because despite the polls, Hillary finally didn’t get enough votes, partly because some that went to Huckabee due to mischief. (For similar mischief, The Daily Kos blog openly tried to encourage Left votes for Romney in Michigan.)

New Hampshire: Hillary followers couldn’t let Obama win again, so they stopped their nonsense about voting for Huckabee. Because a voter could just show up and vote in New Hampshire, and an unknown number of voters are bused in from out of state. The Right people who don’t want Huckabee—Iowa scared them—went out for McCain, who seemed to be the one who might beat Huckabee. With the Leftists back in place for Hillary, and with the identity politics demography of New Hampshire, she won. Naturally, it’s shocking that some people apparently lied to pollsters on both sides for various reasons.

Nevada: Obama got the nod from the huge Culinary Union. But in Nevada a lot of that union is Hispanic, and Hispanics and Blacks are having more and more of a problem within communities. (See the Note below for an article about this). So some union members didn’t show up, and some showed up and defied their union, and Hillary won. (Yes, I know, it turned out that Obama got more delegates; but his staff thought that with the Culinary Union it would be a big win for him, not an actual loss in terms of votes.)

So now the war between Obama and the Clintons is joined in full. Meanwhile some on the Right are really worried about beating Hillary, and instead of voting their values and issues—which should be behind votes in a primary or caucus, some voted for someone they thoht might bring in cross-over votes in the election. But a lot of the cross-over primary and caucus voting was, and will be, trouble-makers on the Left who won’t cross-over in November.

The Main Stream Media press makes it look like McCain can get the most votes by getting cross-overs, so the problem is going to get worse, with votes going to McCain that should normally have gone to Guliani, Romney, and Thompson. McCain is now supported by people on the Right who don’t really support him, but who think he’ll beat the Democrat. Meanwhile, the Left is tearing itself apart, and may end up with a lot of animosity that sits it out from those who don’t get their side, Obama or Hillary, in the nomination. Where the Right could actually have chosen someone more Conservative than McCain and still won in the election, it will be stuck with McCain out of fear for something that didn’t eventually materialize.

Meanwhile, the MSM press is busy making everything economic and ignoring the big issue of the War, and is busy telling everyone that McCain will get the cross-over vote. It is trying to deal with the situation between Hillary and Obama. Having had to ignore and swallow so much that was negative about the Clintons, some in the press are turning on them viciously. Race and gender Politics are coming back to eat their children. More, voter fraud, a skill the Democrats have honed over the years, is being used within the party competition. Naturally, they are all shocked about this.

The Democratic Convention will determine its candidate before the Republican Convention meets, and we Conservatives might do best to go to a brokered convention knowing the other side’s candidate and the state of the over-all situation, in early September, than to decide too soon on a candidate that is extremely problematic. It will be necessary to vote for the Republican nominee in November, but there is a lot we can do before we name him.

There is simply too much at stake in this. The next president will probably have two or three Supreme Court Justices to name. We need to keep FBI files out of the hands of the Left, who have no limits in their hunger for power. Moreover, the Left will make government appointments throughout the system. (Remember how one of Bill Clinton’s first acts as President in 1993 was to fire all but one of the US Attorneys in the whole country on the same day?) New appointees will develop policy, rules, and regulations that we all will have to live by.

We need to act as though nominating our candidate is an important project, not a test of our commitment to the purity of our beliefs.

*NOTE: See Steven Malanga: The Rainbow Coalition Evaporates: Black anger grows as illegal immigrants transform urban neighborhoods, City Journal Winter 2008. Excerpt:

[…] “Massive illegal immigration has been devastating to my community,” [Terry] Anderson, [KRLA-AM black radio talk show host], a former auto mechanic and longtime South Central Los Angeles resident, tells listeners. “Black Americans are hit the hardest.” […] [A]s new waves of immigration inundate historically African-American neighborhoods, black opinion is hardening against the influx. “We will not lay down and take this any longer,” says Anderson. If he’s right, it could upend the political calculus on immigration.

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