Given my center-right world view, I should be able to find a Republican presidential candidate who suits me. But it's been difficult. There are various problems, remarked on by pundits everywhere, with all the candidates. So I shouldn't go on at great length in taking on the critics of the GOP field.
But I'm getting more than a little tired of the gleeful schadenfreude from the left: Isn't it sooo delicious that the evangelicals are giving the "establishment" Republicans fits, and what's a "social conservative" anyway? Isn't Fred Thompson a bloated old snore, and why is everybody afraid of Huckabee? Har, har, har.
But at least Republicans are fractious with the clash of ideas, which means they have some. That sets them apart from certain other people, who are unable to do more than circle like ravening vultures over the carrion of the only motivating impulse they ever had, which is to promote class envy as a means of redistributing wealth. So I ask of them:
What, exactly, do they have to gloat over? They are going to nominate as president: 1) a cucqueaned scold from Arkansas, 2) a cliche-spouting state senator from Illinois or, 3) a malpractice attorney from North Carolina. The Republicans are in complete disarray, with a national leader they can't stand and a philosophical core they have trouble defining. They are more dispirited than at any time since the Nixon days.
So this is, so to speak, the opportunity of a lifetime for Democrats. And those three are the best they could come up with?
