Conservative Donnybrook

Who ever shall he choose to run with?  McCain will host three potential Veeps at his home in beautiful Sedona, Arizona over the Memorial Day weekend.  So, whom shall McCain play host to?  Crist, Romeny and Jindal.  The decision will be a painful one indeed.  Judging by the roster McCain has put togther, he has his choice of the Bush/Lieberman hybrid (Crist), the competent yet flimsy flip-flopper (Romney) or the potentially exciting but utterly unproven newbie (Jindal).  Let’s take a deeper look.

Crist:  Mr. Crist served as the attorney general of the Geriatric State from 2003-2007.  He was lauded by liberals for his efforts to end the free market on utility rates and his desire to raise the price of oil by refusing to allow drilling in Florida waters for much needed oil.  His involvement with ponzi schemes and fraudulent campaign practices will surely be fodder for the already surging Obama campaign.  Crist was elected to governor in 2006, running on a platform of insurance reform, education standards, opposition to gay marriage and tougher immigration laws.  Crist would make a weak running mate and could potentially be a liability for McCain’s futile campaign.

Romney:  Mitt Romney is a notorious flip flopper on issues ranging from abortion, to taxes and back again.  He hails from a prominent Michigan political family.  Romney served as governor of Massachusetts from 2002 through 2006.  Mr. Romney is a Mormon and is open about his faith. Yet, many of his statements have contradicted his stated beliefs.  He is a classic politician with no discernible position on anything.  He simply can not be trusted.  Furthermore, with the very public raid on a polygamist compound in Texas, he religion is too great a liability for the already struggling McCain campaign to bare.

Jindal: A relative newbie to politics.  He was first elected to public office in 2004 as a Congressman from the 1st District of Louisiana.  He won he 2006 re-election bid with a staggering 88% of the vote.  In 2007, Jindal won the race for the Louisiana governorship with a 54% majority.  While 54% doesn’t, at first blush, sound like a large victory, he was running against three other opponents in this bastion of liberal corruption.  Jindal appears promising, yet he did, prior to his election to Congress, serve in the Bush administration.  This fact alone makes him somewhat vulnerable to Obama’s already daily “Bush-McCain policy” rhetoric.

Other names mentioned as possible McCain running mates include Joe Lieberman, Lindsay Graham and, of course, the laughable Mike Huckabee.  In the end I am not sure McCain even has a decent choice as to his running mate.  Furthermore, I am not sure any serious politician wants to be associated with the likely loss McCain will suffer at the socialist hands of Barack Obama in November.  So, pick some one you actually like, Mr. McCain, it may make your sinking ship a little more tolerable for you.  

To my way of thinking there are three major conservative magazines: National Review, Chronicles, and Weekly Standard. I subscribe to the first two. I find Bill Kristol to be irritating and wrong. A lot. And Fred Barnes is not much better. Therefore, one might surmise that my two subscriptions are NR and Chronicles. The last several months NR and Chronicles have arrived on the same day – which, of course, raises a dilemma. Which do I read first?

I find that I am reading NR as a first option and only then reading Chronicles. Interestingly, it is not because I think Chronicles is badly written. I don’t. However, it is a monthly mag whereas NR is fortnightly and so NR is slightly more topical (although even an every other week effort finds itself out of date frequently). I have been going back and forth between the two magazines as far as which I agree with more. As a traditionalist, much of what Chronicles writes resonates, although I think that several of the writers on NR are superior to almost everyone other than Fleming and perhaps Trifkovic. And so, every time I receive the two mags at the same time, the internal debate rages. Sometimes it depends on what Chronicles is covering in any given month, as they are more prone to writing theme mags than NR.

This month in NR is “Escaping the Tyranny of Genes,” which I am desperately hoping has something to do with the findings of Hernstein and Murray, with the promise that it will be interesting and controversial versus “Surviving the Global Economy.” Which to choose…

I can think of a couple other “conservative” magazines, like First Things and American Conservative, but I have not read them regularly. If anyone has a particular favorite, I would love to hear which one you like and why you prefer them over the subscriptions I already take.

For the record, I take Crisis over any other Catholic mag and find it to be the best I’ve seen.

Comrade Chavez thinks the United States is using military aircraft to spy on Venezuela.  The United States refuted his statement saying the aircraft are used to perform anti-narcotic surveillance in Colombia.  The U.S. did acknowledge that militray assets did unintentionally violate Venezuelan airspace and that the Air Force is working to ensure it does not happen again.

If we are spying, and we should be, it had better happen again!  collecting verifiable intelligence on hostile regimes is essential to the national security of the United States and out allies in South America.  Keep up the good work, Air Force.