Author: Sam Anderson

It’s official: the republican base is in a panic.

Those reading the political tea leaves are all calling John McCain the “front runner” now for the GOP nomination heading into Super Tuesday. Rudy bowed out of the race and threw what little support he has behind John McCain (hoping for a VP nod, who knows?)

Real conservatives out there are in a quandary and conniption (both words I spelled wrong… thanks spell checker…). They hate McCain. A lot. In fact, many would rather vote for a Democrat than McCain.

My main problem with McCain is that he trashed my guy, Mitt. Sure Mitt did his share of attack ads, and is seen as cold and unknowable by the others in the republican field, but McCain is an attack dog with a temper. Mitt stuck to the issues, while McCain just lied about him and made personal jabs.

I currently hate McCain because he’s smarmy. I hate his pretend grin. I hate the way that he calls everyone “my friend,” especially in a moment when they aren’t being very friendly. I hate his haughty, glib attitude that can only come from serving for as many years as he has in the US Senate.

In my opinion, Romney is still the best guy for the job, and with the economy continuing on a crash course, he’s the only one on either side I would trust to pull us out of this financial disaster. McCain has admitted his strength is in foreign policy and not on economic matters. Duh… it’s really easy to be the world’s biggest saber rattler! But try being a good economist… not so easy.

So what happens if there’s no Romney Rally on Super Tuesday? What will I do? I have been thinking about this question since Tuesday evening. Could I in good faith support a McCain candidacy? I do claim to be a moderate, and so I shouldn’t have too much to hate McCain over, besides my bruised ego from him beating my guy up.

So the conclusion I came to is: taxes. Whichever candidate I feel like will keep my taxes the lowest, I will end up voting for. As I wrote earlier this week, we’re all pretty much agreed on the problems our nation faces, but I want the government to provide market-based solutions and to tax me as little as possible to make them happen.

And I’m no idiot… no politician would be caught dead saying they would raise taxes in an election year and during this economic uncertainty. So it’s back to the tea leaves and crystal ball, I guess.

So whether that candidate is a republican, democrat, independent, green, libertarian, or even whig, they are getting my vote this fall.

Last night, President Bush gave his last State of the Union speech. The pundits and politicians are abuzz with how it did or didn’t meet what is expected of such a speech in an election year, where much of the public’s attention is turned to candidate promises, and not as much on congressional action.

In short, this whole year will be a basic waste of time for our government.

So what is the real state of our union? Frenetic.

We are all running around like chickens with our heads cut off. We have a serious economic situation, but rather than having a ‘come to jesus’ moment and accepting the losses and bursting of our housing bubble, many just think the government should just fix it.

You don’t fix a leaking bubble by just pumping more air into it. You have to fix the leak.

The most convincing part of the speech for me was somehting he has had a lot of practice with: explaining and reinforcing his unpopular foreign policy stance. He convincingly stated our world role in defeating radical Jihadists and promoting moderate governments in middle eastern and Islamic countries. His rhetoric about the current state of the middle east, with the wind of the successful Iraq surge in his sails, was actually optimistic and forward looking. In a way it was a challenge for the next President, “Don’t screw up the gains we’ve worked so hard to achieve.”

But despite our recent success in this area, the frenetics in our country still won’t shut up. “Pull out!” “Pull out!” they scream from their easy chairs, when they have no idea what that even means. America, get used to the idea of us having a large presence in the middle east for a much longer time. Even if we take our military off the streets and take our posture from an offensive one to a defensive one, we will still have thousands of troops in Iraq for many years to come. Get used to that idea.

Strangely, I observed much less partisanship on the basic issues than there has been in the past. I think most everyone agrees we have to do something about the cost of health care, the future bankrupting of social security, illegal immigration, and even global co2 emmissions. Everyone seems to agree that these things need solutions, but the actual solutions are what we can’t seem to agree on.

Part of this is, again, due to frenetics in our politics. People are more concerned with being right than doing right. Some of these problems are so complex and their ramifications are so deep that there is no clear ‘best’ solution, but there are certainly good and better ideas that could be tried.

Making no decision is oftentimes worse than making a less than perfect decision.

With so much focus on the election and primaries, I almost forgot President Bush was there. But last night was a good opportunity to reflect on what he’s done in the last 7 years. While I don’t agree with every policy of his administration, and some of the tactics and secrecy, I still admire him for his strength of character. It is extremely lonely at the top, and he has handled himself gracefully, on principles, despite his abysmal approval rating. You always know what you’re getting with President Bush.

I only hope that our next President is someone with similar principles and integrity. Because mostly, I just want to know exactly what I’m getting into for the next 4-8 years.