Jasper Journal

I am back from Las Vegas and still have the shirt I left with. Great city and although our president discourages Americans from going there, I  do! I also want to thank Paul for his always sterling performance as editor when I am away.  In that regard, I would like to follow up on a topic he raised in his last article, and one that generated a fair amount of discussion. “What kind of president do you want?”

Should the person be better than you ? More experienced? Have accomplished more? Be more worldly and better travelled?  Have a wider variety of interests and friendships? Be kinder and gentler? Be more moral? These are great questions and really hit home. Tuesday we  will have the Colorado Caucus,  and I intend to go and speak for Mitt Romney.

I think he has accomplished more than me; Is better attuned to the financial world than I will ever be;  Is a good family man with a strong moral streak; and is more experienced in the world  as a whole than me.  I think he is a fine choice for president.  He is not better than me as a person, but as a presidential candidate he is infinitely better than me, and I think that is what Paul was referring to.

Now lets look for a moment at the current president. I think I can speak for many of you by saying that he is not better qualified than us. We have more experience in geopolitics than him.  We  have more business experience than him.  We have a wider and  more diverse group of friends than him. We understand the military and diplomacy better.  We have traveled  more and lived in more foreign countries. We have never used drugs or associated with racists and radicals. We worked our way up and were not given special treatment.  Our flaws are there for all to see and not covered up by a sycophantic media.  I consider all of us to be better than him as  president.

I understand the sentiment about wanting someone better and more accomplished than us to be president or why not just run yourself? As such,  I am very disappointed with Mr Gingrich and Mr Santorum. They both have flaws that in my mind make them unsuitable to support, especially Newt.

It’s great to be back and I  look forward to lots of healthy back and forth on these issues as we move toward what I hope is a new day for America.

Many apologies to my readers, I have been away on a business trip and did not get to the blog as often as I wanted to. However, the primaries roll on.

Watching the knife fight in Florida and the whip saw polling , I am becoming really concerned for our candidate, whoever that may be. I am appalled at the  vicious personal  attacks we are seeing. Also,  I do not believe Santorum or Paul add anything to the discussion, and I  wish Gingrich and Romney would just be civil in their debate.

I have become very disillusioned with Newt. He seems to have a scorched earth policy here and is missing the big picture, or perhaps he thinks he is the big picture?  I just read a really interesting piece  by Robert Hardaway from the University of Denver, about how the republicans can do themselves in this year, just like in 1964. It is posted below.  It is very eerie in how similar things are. Will we do the same thing again? What do you think?

“In 1964, the GOP nominated a conservative purist rather than a candidate who might actually have won the election against one of the most liberal presidents in American history.

Now in 2012, history seems poised to repeat itself even as polls show a sitting president with high disapproval ratings.

This might be explained in part by the fact that social conservatives were spoiled in 1980 when the charisma and likeability of the Great Communicator overcame the reservations of independents to win two presidential terms.

But with no GOP candidate showing these same qualities, it looks increasingly likely that the GOP will, with pathological zealotry, find a way to repeat1964 rather than 1980.

Here is a playbook for the GOP to snatch defeat from victory in 2012:

First, continue to cater to the demands of social conservatives and nominate a candidate who takes gratuitous positions on social issues that most Americans not only oppose but consider peripheral to the critical issues of the economy, unemployment, and national security.

Second, reward with primary votes those GOP candidates who violate the Great Communicator’s Eleventh Commandment, and selfishly seek short term advantage in the primaries by expending money and energy on political ads that can be used by their opponents in the general election.

If, for example, a candidate says he opposes ObamaCare because he thinks patients should be able to choose their own doctor, reward with primary votes an opposing candidate who spins this as “see, my opponent likes to fire people.”

Third, ignore polls that show which GOP candidate has the best chance of attracting the votes of the independents who will decide the winner of the general election.

Reward with GOP primary votes a candidate who claims that, even if polls show he is 12 to 15 points down in a match-up between him and the incumbent president, his glowing personality and bedrock social conservatism will win over independents and overcome that deficit in the general election.

Likewise, withhold primary votes from any GOP candidate who has actually shown executive success in both business and government, has firmly advocated balancing the budget by putting on the block any government program that cannot justify borrowing from the Chinese to keep itself in existence, and advocates fairness to legal immigrants by not letting illegal ones jump in front of them for residence and scarce jobs, and push down their wages to poverty levels by flooding the market with cheap foreign labor.

Oppose such a candidate on grounds that he is “not conservative enough.”

Fourth, continue to expend precious resources and energy on GOP primary battles by catering to conservative purists who either don’t think a leading candidate is sufficiently zealous on social issues, or who can’t stand the thought that his religion is different from theirs.

If such a candidate succeeds in gaining the nomination, insure that his victory is a Pyrrhic one, leaving him so injured that he cannot win the general election.

Finally, as in 1964, take the “principled stand” that, it would be far better to go down in flames with a social conservative purist than to win the general election with a candidate who will concentrate on reviving the economy and addressing unemployment.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2012/01/28/how-gop-can-snatch-defeat-from-jaws-victory-playbook/#ixzz1kjiYgw22

A  good friend asked the following question today: ” Whose hand do you want on the tiller of the ship of state?”  A great question considering the state of the country and the bloody political primaries in the Republican party. The  many coments on the last blog item indicate that there is a great deal of passion here.

Tonight we see the current captain of the ship of state try to tell us that things are getting better and that he needs more time to finish his mission. Does anyone really accept that? Okay, what about contenders for his job. Do we want Mitt or Newt at the helm? This is a critical question and has to be looked at without the passion of the debate spectacles. I just read that Newt is threatening to pull out of debates if cheering and applauding are not allowed. That concerns me. Actually, these so called “debates” are not really debates at all. I wonder why they even exist and  why people participate. I think it is time to revamp the entire process on how we get to know candidates. It is now a circus or a hatchet job, or both. What do we really learn?

But to get back to the original question, whose hand do you want on the tiller of the ship of state? A mercurial unpredictable Newt or a lacklustre bland Mitt?  It is hard to put passion aside as there really is a visceral dislike for the president: but we must. What is your opinion?