Lindsey Graham

I can't leave this Lindsey Graham story alone.  It's not just that the free market, limited government, social tolerance voters (a swing vote that accounts for up to 20% of the electorate) deserves more respect from the Republican Party - it does - but that Lindsey Graham and many other Republicans don't seem to realize the position of weakness they are in.  Consider...

Lindsey Graham, while announcing that "We are not going to build a party around libertarian ideas", said...

“I’m a winner, pal,” Graham [said] ... “Winning matters to me. If it doesn’t matter to you, there’s the exit sign.” [...] “I’m not going to give this party over to people who can’t win,” Graham responded.

But the Republican Party is already controlled by people who can't win.

The decline in Republican Party affiliation among Americans in recent years is well documented, but a Gallup analysis now shows that this movement away from the GOP has occurred among nearly every major demographic subgroup. [...] By the end of 2008, the party had its worst positioning against the Democrats in nearly two decades.

While it is important to be flexible enough to win elections in more States, the solution to the Republican Party problem is not "be more vague, so that you don't alienate people".

As for Lindsey Graham: It's hard to see any coherent vision from Sen. Graham beyond 'power and perks'.  Republicans need to find out exactly what it is Sen. Graham is trying to "win".  He may have won his own election, but that only makes him a leader in the downward spiral of the Republican Party.

If the discussion of the range of responses to the banking crisis on This Week today is any indication, we are truly living in a topsy-turvy world.

Stephanopolous leads with a clip of President Obama addressing a question about the nationalization approach taken by Sweden to resolve a mortgage bubble driven financial crisis in 1991-1992.

Barack Obama:

Sweden has a different set of cultures in terms of how the government relates to markets. And America's different. We want to retain a strong sense of private capital fulfilling the core investment needs of this country.

Lindsey Graham:

I think if you put most of our major banks under a 'stress test,' they're going to fail...

This idea of nationalizing bank is not comfortable but I think we have got so many toxic assets spread throughout the banking and financial community throughout the world that we're going to have to do something that no one ever envisioned a year ago, no one likes.   

To me banking and housing are the root cause of this problem. Government is going to have to...I would not take off [the table] the idea of nationalizing the banks.

Chuck Schumer:

I would not be for nationalizing. I think government's not good at making these decisions as to who gets loans, how this happens...

GOP Rep. Peter King joined Sen. Graham in speaking in favor of nationalizing some banks. Only Rep. Maxine Waters remained true to form. She, of course, has no fear of a government-based solution.

Needless to say, Schumer's remarks are disingenuous in the extreme. First, no one is talking about the government running the banks long-term and making "decisions as to who get loans", etc. Nationalization is merely a mechanism for an orderly disentanglement of failed banks, not dissimilar except in scale from what the FDIC does regularly. Second, Sen Schumer as usual neglects to mention that he is wholly a creature of the New York financial services industry. Schumer's opposition to nationalization is completely self-serving since step one of nationalization would be to wipeout the shareholders (his campaign contributors) and fire the executives (his friends) of any bank found to be insolvent.

On a purely partisan basis bankrupting Schumer's financial base would be good for the GOP since Schumer's ability to bring Wall Street money to the Democratic Party is a major if under publicized reason for his party's resurgence.

As a matter of policy, I agree with Sen. Graham that some of our major banks are indeed insolvent; their liabilities exceed their assets. It is only by clinging to the fiction that the face value of their toxic assets have any bearing on reality that these institutions can present a balance sheet that is not dripping red ink. As long as they insist on carrying on with that charade they will not have real assets to lend and that will mean the American economy will lack a robust financial intermediation function.

So here we are in a topsy-turvy world where within days of passing the gargantuan stimulus bill Democrats are lining up to preserve the zombie banks and Republicans are calling however modestly at this point for their nationalization. What a world!

I am concerned with much of the argument about V.P. picks. It seems sadly reminscent to me of the Miers debacle, where a host of well qualified  jurists had their names floated and then saw the shots come in (too old, too young,  too hard-line, wrong gender etc. ) So we saw the sad spectacle of the Bushies trying to pass off a close friend as a top level jurist--mostly because it appeared Harry Reid sorta didn't much mind her. 

The downside of punching holes in the rationale for Romney and Pawlenty is we might well get some second tier candidate whom the McCain team incorectly thinks is a good pick because they haven't been bashed lately--perhaps because the punditocracy, the party establishment and the blogosphere perceive the candidate as so unviable as to be unworthy of criticism.

We need to "Miers-proof" this process as well as critique the frontrunners. So here are my list of very lame dark horses---the type of picks that will put Mac in a deep hole he can;t dig out of .

Some of these people are great in their field. But they would not be of any use in getting Mac elected.

1. Lindsey Graham. No redeeming social value to this pick . At all.http://rightblog.zubrcom.net/ironman/the-worst-possible-mac-veep-pick

2.  Kay Bailey Hutchison  If we want a pro-choice candidate, a non Texan might have a better shot of trying to end up in the net vote dept. Much of America says "No New Texans"

3.  Haley Barbour A great example of politics being very unfair. One of the best Governors in America, but past life as a lobbyist and an accent you could cut with a fork, well... as I said, not fair, but.

4.Fred Smith of Fed Ex : You do not want to know how hated Fed Ex is amongst the union movement. Lots of working stiffs will covertly stiff Obama in the comfort of the polling place unless we throw a red flag like this at them. 

5. John Engler. Wife on Freddie Mac board. Since I expect them to be seeing Hank Paulson with the tin cup to start Q 4....nope.......   .

6. Jon Huntsman  the Mormon Governor nobody knows. UT is our best state already.

7. Joe Lieberman. One more time. He won't flip CT, but will flip out much of the base.

Let's air the dark horses now and get this out in the open. I do not want another "Miers moment" August 29.

In all the turmoil over the alleged interest in having Joe Lieberman as McCain's running mate, a thought occurred to me.

McCain could do worse than Joe Lieberman. Or Tom Ridge, or Mitt Romney.  At least I can identify some pool of potential additional voters they might bring to the table. But McCain could pick someone less helpful. MUCH less helpful. 

a.) He could pick a V.P. who had a history not of appealing to Clinton-style voters; but of taking the Clintons over the coals

b) He could pick a V.P. who had alienated conservatives on such hot button issues as judicial appointments, immigration and oil drilling.

c) He could pick a V.P. who at the same time had no issue agenda to appeal to independents and moderates, having opposed abortion rights and the Medicare prescription drug plan.   

d) He could pick a V.P. who was a white southern protestant male from a state that is never in play. 

e) he could pick a Washington insider in a year when the mantra is "change" 

f) and he could pick a V.P. with the same verbal dexterity as Joe Biden

It has been rumored that South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham is McCain's "BFF". http://www.slate.com/id/2197499/

Being a "BFF" doesn't bother me; the man is not on the ballot. But if there was a better way to produce mutual political disarmament by all elements of the conservative and Republican rank-and-file while netting zero new voters, I've yet to figure out what it would be.

My nickel for a Bizarro world McCain V.P. choice is Lindsey Graham. What's yours?

I know people in SC are sick of Graham's politics.  No one wants somebody who is just pandering to the left leaning Republican presidential candidate McCain. 

We want someone who will stand up for conservative values.  Many South Carolinians agree and we are lucky to have Sen. DeMint. 

In order to pick up the slakc behind him however, Graham is not the best solution.  The other republican running in tomorrow's primary is a man named Buddy Witherspoon.

This guy is something else.  I've seen him speak several times.  Each time I asked myself WHY????  This guy does not need to be in the senate.  You can look him up and understand why.

There is however a third option that SC voters need to look into.  Mayor Mark McBride of Myrtle Beach.  This man is the conservative idealist we need to turn around Graham's mistakes. 

http://www.markmcbride.us/index.html

Help him out.  As a petitioning candidate, he needs 10,000 signatures.  Look into him, if your'e on here then this is the character that you should be listening to.