Rudy Falls To Fourth In New Poll; McCain Tied For Second In Another

Allah's analysis is mostly right, I think. After dallying with Giuliani on a lark -- and being quite surprised that this lark of a candidate was actually leading nationally, for some inexplicable reason -- it's time to put away childish things and admit what was pretty obvious all along, that a pro-choice candidate, no matter how otherwise attractive, cannot win the nomination for the GOP.

Apparently there can be only one Silly Candidate taken seriously at a time. For a while Giuliani was that Silly Candidate, silly because, well, he just couldn't ever win. But now there's a new Silly Candidate, and some of us are realizing it's time to stop being silly and look at someone serious.

Part of Rudy's fall can be attributed to the fact that indeed, most of the electorate seemed rather clueless on his pro-choice stance, previously. Stating up-front that he was pro-choice in a debate was forthright, but it also alerted folks to his heterodox position on the issue.

And for someone like me, for whom immigration is much more important issue than abortion, his constant blather about a "virtual fence" convinced me he was not entirely serious on that hot-button issue, either.

He also wanted a national ID card... but only for non-US citizens. Apparently it never occurred to him that non-US citizens, including especially illegal aliens, would simply claim to be US citizens and thus not be required to show his national ID card. So that the only people in America who actually had to get a national ID card were 1) illegal aliens who were 2) stupid enough to admit they were illegal aliens. Not serious, and kind of insulting in its absurdity.

Allah's taking a fresh look at McCain, something I started to do a while ago... in case of emergency. Why he's not looking at a rather more obvious candidate, like, I don't know, the rising Mitt Romney, I don't know.

Or, sure, Fred Thompson. I want to believe. Help me believe, Fred. Help me... help you. Help me, help you.

Unless Thompson shows me an awful lot by the Iowa caucuses, I'm going with Romney, personally. At some point I'll have to get behind candidate with a serious chance of both stopping Huckabee and beating the Democratic nominee (oh, and delivering competent conservative governance afterwards, in case that matters).

Someone has to catch fire if he's to stop Huckabee. And we have to stop him, because we can't have a Republican Jimmy Carter as our nominee because we hate Christmas.

posted by Ace at 05:15 PM

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