Why I Voted For Ron Paul But Hope Romney Is The Nominee...

Georgia's early/advance voting started yesterday.  Although I posted on Facebook saying I would probably vote for Mitt Romney due to him being the most electable of the four remaining Republican candidates, I'm not a Romney fan by any stretch of the imagination--I think he's ignorant on some issues (when commenting on an arms-control treaty, he made some comment that sounded like he thought ballistic missiles were fired from bombers) and prone to changing his views based on convenience.  It's certainly possible he changed his views on abortion, for example, as a result of genuine conviction, but given the timing (i.e. running for the nomination of the national GOP, which is much more anti-abortion than the Massachusetts electorate), I'm skeptical.

In 2008, I was a Ron Paul supporter, but Paul's opposition to the bin Laden raid, a comment he made about how the troops would come home faster if their air-conditioning was de-funded, and the possibility he was not being honest about his role in the bizarre newsletters that went out under his name in the 1990s made me rather leery of him.  Plus, even though I believe in smaller government, he takes it a bit too far and there will definitely be the perception of him as a radical.  However, the candidate I came to support--Jon Huntsman--fizzled.

However, Rick Santorum is too socially conservative to win the general election, while Newt Gingrich has the whole "marry-cheat-divorce-remarry repeat" thing going.  However, based on this poll, which is a composite of other polls, it's going to be one of them who wins Georgia when the primaries come on March 6.

If Romney was likely to win Georgia, there's a good chance I would have voted for him since the more states Gingrich or Santorum win, the more likely they are to get the nomination and get destroyed by Obama in November.  However, one of those two is going to win Georgia barring some kind of last-minute Romney surge or Gingrich/Santorum implosion and so it's time to think strategically.

At this point, I think Paul and his people know he can't win, but the goal is to get so many delegates that he can have an influence on the party platform.  That's something I can get behind--if some Paulite positions like not attacking Iran get made part of the platform, that will be both good for the country and will strengthen the nominee against Obama.  Since Georgia is not a winner-take-all state, my voting for Paul could help him get a delegate here and there.

If Paul Winning Will Marginalize Iowa, Santorum Will Do Worse...

I recently noticed a slew of articles taking shots at the Iowa caucuses that seemed awfully coincidental with polls showing that Ron Paul had a good shot at winning them.  Here's one.  Some have even gone so far as to suggest that Iowans will suffer if they vote for Paul, such as this one, from the New York Post, along with another from Yahoo.  Here's Chris Wallace weighing in.

Now it seems that Rick Santorum is rising in the polls, as an alternative to Romney.  Politico confirms this.

The whole "Iowa better not vote for Paul" meme is based largely on how Paul supposedly isn't going to win the general election against Obama or even the Republican primary.  However, that argument applies even more strongly to Santorum for the following reasons:

*Santorum lost his U.S. Senate seat by a huge margin in 2006.  Read all about it here. I remember a lot of mockery about Al Gore losing his home state in 2000.  If Gore had won Tennessee and its 11 electoral votes, he'd have beaten Bush, Florida or not.  Come the general election, Obama can bring this up to attack Santorum.  And all the stuff Casey used to slam Santorum can be used by Obama for the same purpose.

*Meanwhile, a surprisingly successful Internet campaign has made the top search for "Santorum" a rather gross sexual thing.  Check out the Wikipedia article for more.  That's going to make it even harder for people to take him seriously and can you imagine all the awkward questions kids who do an Internet search for him because he's the presidential nominee are going to ask their parents?

*Santorum said he would launch a military strike on Iran if they did not admit inspectors to their nuclear sites.  Given how Obama got elected in part because he said he would end the Iraq War, even threatening to launch a new war (or even something equivalent to an old-school punitive expedition and not an outright invasion/occupation) is not going to go over well with the electorate at all.

*Santorum's very socially conservative views cost him in Pennsylvania and they're going to cost him in the general election.  For example, the public is growing more supportive of gay marriage, something Santorum is strongly against.  I am willing to say that a decade ago, a show like Modern Family featuring a gay couple adopting a child and being generally liked by everybody wouldn't have been made, and neither would the show Glee.  Meanwhile, he has advocated against contraception.  Given that Santorum is a conservative Catholic, him holding that view makes sense, but I don't think someone who intends to use his role as president to denounce contraception is going to be all that popular with female voters, especially since hormonal birth control is used to treat menstrual cramps and other conditions.  Santorum has specifically criticized the mandate for insurance companies to cover birth control, but this is something that's proven rather popular.

The United States has been growing more and more social liberal in recent years, something that's backed up by The Emerging Democratic Majority and Whistling Past Dixie: How the Democrats Can Win Without the South.  Santorum's social conservatism, regardless of whether it's morally right or not, is going to be lethal in the general election if he gets the Republican nod.

Now, I am not suggesting someone be so unprincipled as to decide on their morals due to opinion polls, but the purpose of the Republican primary is to choose the best candidate to defeat Obama in 2012.  If Ron Paul's views, the racist newsletters that went out under his name, etc. make him unelectable and if his un-electability will discredit the Iowa caucus, then electing Santorum will do the same thing--only worse.

Problems With Cain, Perry, Romney

Here are some issues with the current Republican front-runner candidates that show why Jon Huntsman is a better choice for the 2012 GOP nomination.

Although I voted for Herman Cain when he ran against Johnny Isakson in the Republican primary in 2004, I am not inclined to support him now.  In addition to his earlier conspiracy-mongering about Islamic law in America, his "999" plan has a bit of a problem.

84% would pay more under Cain's 9-9-9 tax plan.  That's right.  84 percent of Americans would pay more taxes under this plan.  And it would burden the poorest Americans to a large degree.

Although many claimed the Bush tax cuts would burden the poor, that's a foolish argument.  Nobody's taxes were raised.  This, however, would be a tax increase.  I don't mind sales taxes in small quantities--I have written in support of Metro Atlanta's proposed regional sales tax to pay for transportation improvements and Fulton County's Special Purpose Local Option Sales Tax to improve the schools--but a nine percent sales tax on top of state sales taxes would be fairly burdensome.

And as Rick Santorum said, many states lack sales taxes.  This scheme would impose a federal sales tax on those states and additionally burden their taxpayers.

Meanwhile, Rick Perry has started pandering toward the Birthers.  Thankfully he isn't overtly claiming that Obama wasn't born in the United States, but this interview shows that he's trying to appeal to them.  There are reasons to dislike Barack Obama--"Gunwalker" comes to mind--but the claim he was not born in the United States when there are birth announcements for him dating back to the 1960s is absurd.  Such people should be ignored, not pandered to.

And here are some reasons not to view Mitt Romney as an authentic conservative, listed in an open letter from Huntsman to New Hampshire Gov. John Sununu.  Assuming this is true--and it does ring true, considering Romney's more left-wing record in the past--Romney's a lot less conservative than I had thought.

I Write About Jon Huntsman

Earlier this year, I posted here about why I supported Mitch Daniels as the 2012 Republican nominee.  Unfortunately, Daniels decided not to run this year.

So I set out in search of a new candidate.  Mitt Romney has an alarming tendency to change his views to gather popularity, while Rick Perry doesn't seem to believe in evolution and has interfered with the investigation about whether Texas may have executed an innocent man.  Rick Santorum actually used the phrase "man on dog" in an interview, while Ron Paul, who I once supported quite zealously, said he would not have authorized the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.

And then I found Jon Huntsman, who is fiscally conservative but doesn't have social views that would repel a growing percentage of the American electorate.

(Check out the book The Emerging Democratic Majority.  As the U.S. grows less white, less Protestant, and less Christian generally, Religious Right-type views are more and more going to be an albatross around any candidate's neck.)

Here's a column I wrote about Huntsman for my newspaper.

Don't overlook lesser-known GOP candidate in 2012

Let me emphasize this is NOT an endorsement, since my newspaper does not endorse individual candidates.  However, it is a list of reasons why Huntsman would make a good candidate.  And for good measure, I don't take shots at any of the other candidates--instead, I merely explain Huntsman's strengths.

Now to find a Huntsman group in Georgia.  In 2008, there were Ron Paul groups and I was even a member of one.  However, searching Meetup.com found nothing Huntsman-related in Atlanta and Googling "Georgians for Huntsman" only found me an anemic Twitter feed.

The Georgia Republican primary is February 7, 2012.  There really isn't all that much time left.

P.S.

If you all are ever in Little Five Points in Atlanta, be sure to check out Fox Brothers Bar-B-Q.  It's better than Shane's or any other BBQ place I've even been to.  I especially like the brisket.