Presidential Poll-O-Rama of Doom!

[The Top Crusader]

So yeah we can do this again once we have official candidates, but I thought it would be interesting to get early poll results from the many political scholars on the board.

[Laura Ingalls]

How about none of the above!

[Epic]

How about none of the above!

Yeah I don't really know any of them!

[darcie]

Wait... Mondale? Dukakis? What year is this, again?

[JesusIsAlive]

Lemme see: EWWW (although everyone should vote Bill Clinton for first lady! ), huh-uh, no way, I think not, don't know him, don't know him, don't know him, don't know him, and don't know him.

[Jonathan]

I don't like any of those democrats. Romney and Guiliani are conservatives, but in many ways in name only (especially the latter). Pat Robertson has always seemed like a bit of a flake, but I don't know much about him. Aside from some very basic facts, I don't know much about Fred Thompson either.

...Dukakis and Mondale aren't running, are they?!?

[The Top Crusader]

No, Robertson, Dukakis and Mondale are all my BONUS 80's candidates.

I sort of like Thompson, and Romney is okay. But I'm not really excited about anyone yet.

[Clodius Albinus]

In order of acceptability, subject to massive change and really somewhat arbitrary, as I haven't had much occasion to think through the lower rankings:

Rudy Giuliani (R)
Fred Thompson (R)
John McCain (R)
Mitt Romney (R)
Mike Huckabee (R)
Bill Richardson (D)
Joe Biden (D)
Hillary Clinton (D)
Ron Paul (R)
Sam Brownback (R)
Barack Obama (D)
Duncan Hunter (R)
Chris Dodd (D)
John Edwards (D)
Tom Tancredo (R)
Dennis Kucinich (D)
Mike Gravel (D)

[The Top Crusader]

I can't believe I forgot the democratic frontrunner Dennis Kucinich on the list.

[V-lady]

I hardly know anything about most of the people on there.

[Kait]

Well....I can't vote yet...so I don't pay attention to any of that stuff

John Edwards came to our teeny little town in Iowa last week...


and besides. I don't even know any of those dudes.

I do know that my dad would vote Fred Thompson (whoever he is)...I heard him mention it once...

[Blipadouzi]

Hey...you don't have Mark Lowry as a candidate, what's up with that?

[darcie]

I do know that my dad would vote Fred Thompson (whoever he is)...I heard it mention it once...

Fred Dalton Thompson is the one that just left Law & Order to run. He played the District Attorney for about 5 years. Just before that, he was a senator from Tennessee for about 8 years. Before that, he was an assistant US attorney, and was on the minority counsel during the Watergate scandal. He got into acting because he was asked to play himself in a movie version of a trial he was involved in.

I haven't made any presidential decisions as of yet. But I like Thompson as a person, especially since he's from TN and has an accent that reminds me of my father-in-law. Oh, and because I watch too much L & O.

[The Top Crusader]

I will add since I mentioned Thompson and Romney, I do actually like Guilliani quite a bit when it comes to certain issues. He is really good on the border and the war, and numerous economic issues, etc. It's really his pro-choiceness that brings him down in my eyes. Although otherwise, I'm at least semi-liberal on social issues so some of his stances that bother a lot of conservatives don't bother me so much. If we could merge Rudy and Thompson and make sure the pro-life part of Thompson won out, I think the Republicans would have a pretty good candidate. However, candidate merging has been banned since the fiasco that brought us William Howard Taft, so it's unlikely such will be attempted again.

[Chandler]

However, candidate merging has been banned since the fiasco that brought us William Howard Taft, so it's unlikely such will be attempted again.

[WatchaCall]

Huckabee. A smart guy with morals. Probably won't have a chance but the more I see of him the more I like him.

[Clodius Albinus]

I have no doubt that Mike Huckabee is a good guy, and he certainly presents himself well at the debates. That said, he is entirely unelectable, and in many ways undesirable, as a candidate. Running through his campaign issues pages, here are a few concerns by category on his site.

SECOND AMENDMENT

Huckabee is strongly pro-gun. My one concern, however, is his statement that "Second Amendment rights belong to individuals, not cities or states. I oppose gun control based on geography." The first sentence is undeniably true, but the second does not logically follow. The Second Amendment does not prohibit reasonable regulation, and the most sensible place for most restrictions to be applied is at the state and local level.

AGRICULTURE

Most candidates are bad on ag, but Huckabee is appalling. The first bulletpoint on his site is ludicrous: "We must be able to feed ourselves as part of our national security." Uh, why? By this logic, should we produce everything ourselves as a matter of national security? What possible logic is there for producing enough food to feed the entire nation here within our borders? It would practically bankrupt us to do so.

"We must help our farmers lead the way to energy independence." This is slightly more reasonable, but I'm still concerned about how those subsidies are targeted.

"As a percentage of national income, we spend only half as much on food as people in other developed countries. Subsidies help keep our food costs low by keeping production levels high" and "We need subsidies to help our farmers compete with heavily subsidized farmers in Europe and Asia and to insulate them from the effects of natural disasters."

Either Huckabee doesn't understand basic economics or he's willing to set it aside in favor of populist rhetoric. You don't have to be too bright to figure out that subsidies make food more, not less expensive. Without subsidies, we would all go out and purchase the least expensive products of the quality we desire, whether they come from Iowa, Argentina or Australia. With subsidies, Iowa products become more "competitive" -- but only because we already paid for them with our tax dollars. And we pay for them even if we purchase Argentine beef. Moreover, if we export grain, we're paying to reduce prices for people of other nations who are importing it from us. Subsidies are terrible economic policy, and agriculture subsidies in particular are propping up inviable economic units. I'm all in favor of easing the transition for ag workers, but we have no reason to sustain the absurd size of the agriculture industry indefinitely.

Consider the rest of Huckabee's points: "We need a counter cyclical revenue program that makes payments based on low yields as well as low prices, and we need a fully-funded crop insurance program." "Our agricultural policies must encourage young people to enter and stay in farming." "As President, I will watch out for our farmers because our national well-being depends on theirs."

Stupid, stupid, and stupid. He's trying to completely divorce prices from market forces, and frankly, planned economies tend to have a really bad track record. He wants to encourage people to farm, and use government to do it -- at a time when we have far too many farmers (precisely because government subsidies make it profitable to farm even when others can do it better). And the last line is just laughable.

CRISIS MANAGEMENT AND EDUCATION

I have a few quibbles, but Huckabee is pretty good in both of these areas, at least going by his issues pages.

ENERGY INDEPENDENCE

"The first thing I will do as President is send Congress my comprehensive plan for energy independence. We will achieve energy independence by the end of my second term." Is he crazy? I'd like to reduce dependence on foreign oil, too, but this sort of promise comes with an enormous price tag. We'd break the budget trying to subsidize every inefficient alternative energy idea out there to achieve energy independence, and even then, I'm fairly certain we couldn't do it within eight years. His focus on ethanol, moreover, has already shown its ability to play well in Iowa, but doesn't exactly show any seriousness about the issue.

FAITH AND POLITICS

This one is always a concern with Huckabee, and the long feud between his and Brownback's campaign (and then the proxy war over Brownback's conversion to Catholicism) doesn't help matters, but the issues page is a model of restraint. I'm a little uncomfortable with aspects of it, and don't think his summarization of the First Amendment is quite accurate, but it's not nearly as troubling a page as it could be.

FOREIGN POLICY: ISRAEL

It's kind of odd that this gets its own category, but I presume that it reflects evangelical eschatological preoccupation with that nation. I'm glad he pledges to support Israel, but find the omissions glaring. No word on whether he favors a two-state solution. No mention of the contested territories. Not a word about the Palestinian Authority, or the security fence, or Israel's counterterrorism policies, or the Hamas-Fatah power struggle, or anything else. To some extent, it's not the role of a U.S. presidential candidate to weigh in on the policies of other nations, but since every president since Nixon has been involved in trying to broker some sort of deal in the region, it wouldn't hurt to know where Huckabee stands.

HEALTH CARE

Huckabee has one of the best statements on this issue that I've seen.

IMMIGRATION

The candidate starts off by declaring that securing the border is his number one priority, suggesting, perhaps, the need for better prioritization. Unfortunately, he's extremely unclear about where he stands on anything other than building a border fence/wall. He seems to support some sort of guest worker program, with biometric ID card, but he fails to include any details about how this program would work, how large it might be, or what sort of conditions he would impose.

MARRIAGE

Huckabee supports the Federal Marriage Amendment, which I think would be a mar on that great document, and goes on for a while about how he led the effort to have Arkansas adopt "covenant" marriage and, in 2005, upgraded his vows with his wife. I think that many people will, rather justifiably, find the last part a little worrisome. Was he afraid that his marriage would fall apart without stiffer penalties? I don't like covenant marriage to begin with, as it suggests that divorce should be avoided due to financial sanctions, not the sanctity of the original vows, but wouldn't have a legal problem with people contracting in this regard. I'm not so comfortable, however, with states adopting very religious language in their legislation.

NATIONAL SECURITY/FOREIGN POLICY: IRAQ

That this goes under "National Security," not just "Foreign Policy," underscores Huckabee's views. He reads about the same as any of the top-tier candidates on this issue, so while I disagree with him and think he paints far too rosy a picture and refuses to consider tough choices we may face in the near future, I can't draw serious distinctions between his views and those of McCain, Romney, Thompson and, to a lesser extent, Giuliani.

NATIONAL SECURITY/FOREIGN POLICY: WAR ON TERROR

I don't feel like writing a full essay on GWOT right now, and none of you feel like reading it, but suffice it to say I'm not sure that the implications of considering the nation to be engaged in a "world war" with "Radical Islamic fascists." He certainly has the neoconservative terminology down pat, but just because Mark Steyn calls them Islamofacists doesn't make it so (it really doesn't make that much sense), and his statement that "They have sworn to annihilate each of us who believe in a free society, all in the name of a perversion of religion and an impersonal god" is very strange. Why the mention of an "impersonal god"? Is this a slam at all Islam, and if so, do we really want a prospective president degrading one of the world's largest religions, especially when we're trying to assure Muslims that we're not waging a war on them?

Huckabee also wants to raise defense spending as a percentage of GDP to Cold War levels -- indeed, to the height of the arms race. Why we should do this, he doesn't quite say. Somehow, though, he expects that we can spend $262.5 billion more per year without raising taxes. I suppose we could just deficit spend, but that doesn't sound very appealing, either, does it?

SANCTITY OF LIFE

Huckabee appears to use this label to defend quite a number of expensive social programs; I get a little nervous when a term like "the sanctity of life" can be employed to defend everything from a right to health care to expanding HUD.

Moreover, his discussion of Roe and Carhart is not going to play well. He suggests that he approves of these decisions because we must ban abortion, not because they are correct judicial interpretation. He'd be extremely susceptible to the litmus test question. Moreover, someone should tell his policy team that the case the governor supposedly cares about so much is Gonzales v. Carhart, not Cathcart.

This policy page is also somewhat misleading about the potential of umbilical cord stem cells, and does not make it clear whether he supports the Bush policy (no federal funding for new embryonic lines) or something harsher (e.g., banning research on new embryonic lines). Since I support embryonic stem cell research, I don't like either option.

TAXES/ECONOMY

Huckabee supports the FairTax, which sounds great in theory but falls apart when subjected to stricter scrutiny. As far as I can tell, it's a disastrously bad plan, and Huckabee has not expressed any interest in modifying it or shoring up its weakest elements.

Huckabee writes that he "cut taxes and fees almost 100 times" as governor of Arkansas, which is technically true, but he also hiked taxes quite a few times, and by the end of his term, Arkansans were paying higher, not lower taxes, and supporting a substantially larger state government.

Then there's this: "I believe in free trade, but it has to be fair trade." Actually, Governor, if you believe in the moronic "fair trade" platform, you don't believe in free trade. So-called "fair trade" imposes so many restrictions that it almost eliminates the benefits of trade. I'm all for demanding child labor laws, improved environmental standards and things like that, but regulating every aspect of another nation's economy is none of our business, and refusing to allow trade until corporations abroad are saddled with all the restrictions our firms face is going about things precisely the wrong way. Huckabee doesn't want trade if he thinks it will create "trade imbalances," and won't support anything that could mean job displacement. So, basically, he wants no trade at all, only allowing it when it would be unwise to engage in international trade in the first place. Protectionism is -- how shall I put this diplomatically? -- incredibly stupid.

So, in summation, I'm glad that Huckabee doesn't stand much of a chance in this race, and hope he doesn't get picked up as a running mate.

[Danadelfos]

I really highly doubt Rudy Giuliani has any chance at the White House. He might have had a better chance as a Democrat. On that list I would have to go for Fred Thompson, but I would probably vote for Ron Paul. I personally think he does have a chance at it.

[Clodius Albinus]

In what world does Mr. Quasi-Isolationist Abolish-the-IRS Eliminate-Federal-Education-Funding Restore-the-Gold-Standard Kill-NAFTA-and-the-WTO-Because-They-Forbid-Child-Labor Abolish-the-Welfare-System have a shot, but Rudy Giuliani does not? And on what possible grounds would the Democrats want to nominate a hawkish, tax-cutting, program slashing, reform-minded conservative like Giuliani? He has many flaws, but I can assure you that the Democratic party faithful don't see him as their ideal. Inasmuch as he has crossover appeal -- and he does -- wouldn't that make him more, not less, electable?

[Aram]

In what world does Mr. Quasi-Isolationist Abolish-the-IRS Eliminate-Federal-Education-Funding Restore-the-Gold-Standard Kill-NAFTA-and-the-WTO-Because-They-Forbid-Child-Labor Abolish-the-Welfare-System have a shot, but Rudy Giuliani does not? And on what possible grounds would the Democrats want to nominate a hawkish, tax-cutting, program slashing, reform-minded conservative like Giuliani? He has many flaws, but I can assure you that the Democratic party faithful don't see him as their ideal. Inasmuch as he has crossover appeal -- and he does -- wouldn't that make him more, not less, electable?

/me laughs. Loudly. Out loud.

I'm inclined to Romney, Thompson and Giuliani. But, too early to call.