As I headed home from work yesterday, our LA-based talk-jocks, John and Ken (KFI) were reporting that early exit polls back east were showing Barack Obama on a roll. Ah yes! The good ol' exit polls. As it turned out, Hillary Clinton basically "held serve" as they say in tennis, splitting states and delegates with Obama and maintaining her lead. On the Republican side, McCain cemented his status as front-runner, while Huckabee rebounded at the expense of Mitt Romney, who now appears to be fading. Things seem to be crystalizing-at least on the Republican side.
If you live in the conservative blogosphere and talk radio, you would think that there is a massive revolt against McCain's candidacy from the conservative base. Maybe there is, but it doesn't seem to affect his ability to win primaries. If something doesn't change soon, McCain is going to be the guy for the Republicans.
Something seems to be missing from Obama's coalition of blacks and younger voters caught up in the emotional wave. No doubt, Hillary had the support of California's Hispanics notwithstanding the endorsement of La Opinion (the local Spanish newspaper)for Obama. (Since I, as an independent in California, could not vote for a Republican, I did the next best thing and voted for Obama- against Hillary.) It was the first time in my life I ever voted for a Democrat.
More important to me were the California ballot measures, which I had to vote against. A couple were blatently dishonest, cooked up by our corrupt politicians in Sacramento-people like Fabian Nunez and Don Perata. Proposition 93, for example was worded as a term limits measure, when in reality, it was designed by Nunez and Perata to extend their own terms in office since they are scheduled to be term-limited out after this year. Fortunately, this fraud failed-barely.
Then there was LA measure S, cooked up by Mayor Tony Villaraigosa to save his 10% telephone tax, which was about to be thrown out by the courts since it was passed without voter approval. So Villaraigosa and his boys came up with propostion S and labeled it as a cut to 9%-at the same time telling taxpayers that it was necessary to save fire and police services!! Can you imagine asking voters to reduce a tax to save police and fire services? But the dumb voters in LA were fooled and approved the 9% tax. The 10% tax lawsuit now is a mute point.
Sadly, I am gradually coming to the conclusion that demographically, we conservatives are becoming a minority. It seems that between the young folks who vote with their feelings (as opposed to reason) coupled with those who depend on or look to government to get them through life are starting to outnumber the everyday tax-paying folks who will have to pay for all these big programs that the Dems promise.
But, the main point of this article for me is the prospect of McCain being the Republican standard-bearer in November. Like many conservatives, I am angered by his immigration stance, McCain-Kennedy, McCain-Feingold, Gang of 14 and his dismissive attitude toward our concerns. I hear so many conservatives and Republicans talking about staying home in November rather than vote for McCain. As this election process unfolds, and the prospect of Hillary slowly increases, we conservatives and/or Republicans are going to have to do some serious thinking between now and November.
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