Since Mitt was the "consensus conservative choice' he won the nomination, right Jeff?

Of course if you really are thinking about supporting Cabana Boy, then you really do prefer a candidate that is more flexible in his principles, like Mitt was.

John

Nice dodge, John. But I would ask, if you believe Ose is "flexible," does that mean he is not always "a liberal?"

Jeff,

No, sometimes when Cabana Boy even votes to give social security benefits to illegals, that approaches extreme.

John

PS: I voted for Fred Thompson. Did you vote for Mitt?

I had already cast my vote-by-mail ballot for Rudy Giuliani before he dropped out of the race after Florida.

John,
There you go again with the lie about social security for illegals. Please don't try and spin (lie) like Aaron did. We at least still believe some of the things you say.
As for Tom, he's at least consistant with his few of medical marijuana - consistant with Terbo and Ron Paul. Long live the joint!

Jeff...
I guess I am trying to figure out your point. I have a lot of conservative friends who liked Thompson... personally it irritated me that he voted for McCain Feingold and he just did not seem to have the energy to run. I have a lot of conservative friends who went for Romney... but others who pointed to his flip-flops, and his socialized medicine in Massachusetts irritated me. I had conservative friends who loved Huckabee, but I watched Grover Norquest and Club for Growth go after him on tax issues. McCain, well there is the McCain Feingold, gang of 14... and the list goes on. Some conservatives justified Rudy.

The bottom line is, the whole group was flawed.... they all were going to expand government in some way. So Jeff, if you were for Romney, then you must have been for his socialized medicine plan, right?

Did Paul have some screwball ideas? Absolutely, just like the whole bunch of them did. But the only candidate who wanted to shrink government was Ron Paul. Any patriot, any person who loves the Constitution and all the history of our great nation... their hearts were warmed listening to Paul talking about cutting government back to Constitutional size. The question that should be asked, Jeff, is why are you opposed to cutting government down to the designated, enumerated and promalgated size the Constitution lays out? Why do you support a candidate that expands government way beyond Constitutional limits... in many people's eyes, that is screwball... and it does not bode well for the survival of a free nation.

So back to the orginal question, what is your point? Is it that Tom McClintock is principled and has always had an affinity for people who wants to shrink government?

And after you answer that question, please tell me why you support Romney's socialized medicine plan.

Ken - As you mentioned, none of the GOP candidates are or were perfect. But I raise a couple points with the Ron Paul/Tom McClintock love fest.

1. In my experiences with Tom, if you disagree with him, it is because YOU are wrong. So I wanted all the CRA/McClintock lovers to know that Tom thinks they backed a phony, flip-flopping conservative.

2. Similarly, Tom, like Ron Paul, believes that his and his reading of the constitution alone is the correct one. And in both of their cases, it leads to goofy positions like legalizing drugs and believing the broader War against Terrorism/Islamofascism is unconstitutional.

I would love to have a principled debate on the constitution with you, and I suspect on many matters we would agree. But the constitution was a politically debated, compromise document that had many mistakes in it. It directly and indirectly allowed for slavery...an affront to Natural Law. It did not allow women to vote. It was and is shaky on the right for Congress to pay for a standing army.

The original constitution did not include the Bill of Rights, which had to be amended in.

Of course, not all of the 27 amendments since are good. This being April 15, I could do without the 16th Amendment.

My point is not that the US Constitution is not great, it is. Clearly it is the best governing document in the world. We'd do well to adhere to it better than we do today.

But Ron Paul is not doing anything different than any other politician, reading their philosophy into the sections of the constitution they like.

As a statement of principle, I have always preferred the Declaration of Independence.

Jeff,

That post was just the opposite of the other long one: A lot of rambling to get to the last line that I KNOW Senator McClintock would agree with you on! And so do I because without the Declaration the words of our Constitution do not mean much more than all the wonderful words in many of those that have been written around the world and failed miserably.

John

Which part is the rambling part, the part where I said that slavery was wrong or the one where women should vote?

Seriously, I often see politicians say that we should adhere more to the Constitution...without as best as I can tell knowing what the are saying. Does that mean that, prior to 1865, they believed slavery was OK because the Constitution allowed it? Did the believe for the two years between the ratification of the Constitution and the adopting of the Bill of Rights that we had no right to free speech, to free exercise of religion, or the right to keep and bear arms?

I don't necessarily put Tom in that box, I have never discussed it with him. But there are higher Authorities than the Constitution, as we should all know.

It's unconstitutional to survive terrorism by fighting back far away from where they can do serious and quite probably irreparable damage??
I wasn't aware of that one...Oh, I get it! That's a rule like 'gun-free zones' are, right?? "You can't defend yourself where it's necessary for you to do so". I'll take that piece of insanity under consideration...just as I did Paul's candidacy.

I can't help but wonder if his supporters were the same folks who laughed at the consideration that we might be attacked at home before 9/11 while they smoked their buffalo-fart cigarettes.

AND who STILL doesn't know about the truth of McCain-Feingold??

Learn gwasshoppa,

From Fred’s extended chat with Laura Ingraham
http://www.twango.com/media/thepolitico.public/thepolitico.10002

“...My main motivation for Campaign Finance Reform...was a matter of whether you want to get rid of soft money… Bill Clinton and Dick Morris showed that you could use soft money in ways that people thought you could be put in jail for a short time ago so, they poured it in and instead of having the agreed upon limitations that historically..."everybody else” pretty much acknowledged were Constitutional because they have to do with federal elections and the idea that you don’t want to give too much money to any individual member of Congress and then come and lobbying him for a bill, I mean that’s called bribery in the real world but, they came in with this soft money to do the same thing, through the back door so, we wanted to do away with that. Now, they added on something that was a mistake and that is the issue ad you were talkin’ about and I voted for all of it so, I support the first part but, not that.”

Now, the "...added on something that was a mistake" is the incumbent protection attachment or AKA "issue ad" which was sponsored by Senators Paul Wellstone, Arlen Spector, John McCain, Olympia Snowe and James Jeffords. ( What a collection, right? We should file restraining orders that none of these clowns are allowed to speak with each other for national security reasons...yes, even the dead one. )

Therefore, who was actually responsible for the “Issue Ad"/"Ad Restrictions = Incumbent Protection attachment" if Fred wasn’t?;

THEREFORE, if we, the people, were to stop Clinton and Morris from bribery with soft money donations before the next election what was Thompson to do?? Protest the entire bill for an attachment which could otherwise be repealed at a later date? NO, lets not be stupid. The reason they haven't repealed it yet is that the incumbents now like it where it is and we haven't screwamed bloody murder enough for them to change it, that's all.

Bottom line: The only thing Fred Thompson was directly responsible for on that bill was the established hard money limit which he successfully negotiated to $2,300 and he was powerless to do anything about the attachment.

Any other aspersions you might have about Thompson?

AP Gives Thompson the ‘04 Treatment by Jed Babbin
http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=24127

Sorry about the above editing error above. ;- )

"Why not former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney? "I want somebody with a consistent record," McClintock said. "I want someone who didn't have to go through a political epiphany the day before he announced his candidacy."

I am confident that all the CRA backers of Mitt Romney will be glad to know that Tom McClintock thought they sold out to a fake conservative."

McClintock summed up Willard Romney in a single sentence where anyone who was fooled by him have no one to blame for their stone ignorance except themselves...and in so doing declared they are incapable of their own governance. We've had his history and records immediately available to us for a very long time;

Willard Mitt Romney
http://willardromney.blogspot.com/

This is about the 4th CD.

I do, however like the attempts by team Ose to drive a wedge in McClintock's base... classic.

Aaron, are you saying that McClintock's preference for Paul is not relevant to whether we should vote for him in the GOP primary?

Tell me, then, why it is relevant that Ose backed McCain? And if I were running, would you use my support for Rudy Giuliani against me?

Jeff,

I believe that only reference to Ose support for McCain was the fact that he was and will likely be again a delegate for McCain in the THIRD congressional district which is a little awkward for a candidate that is raising the issue of carpetbagging into the FOURTH district.

I would not hold your support for Rudy against you anymore than your support for Ose!

John

God forbid Tom McClintock support a guy who's really for smaller government, unlike most of our DC GOP brethren Jeff. When Tom gets elected as the next Congressman from the 4th district...he, Ron Paul, and a very few others will be the only ones left in Congress standing up for the Constitution and smaller government.

I was a strong support of Mitt Romney in the primaries.

I would have liked Tom McClintock's support from Gov. Romney - but just because we disagreed on who would make a better nominee doesn't mean I am going to now vote for Ose.

Romney and McClintock have a lot in common. Romney and McClintock are conservatives! Ose is not!! And that's what matters to me.