Month: November 2011

The Hill is claiming the NRA endorsement for Montana’s Senate seat is up in the air. It will be Tester against Denny Rehberg. Tester should generally benefit from NRA’s incumbent friendly endorsement policy, even though Rehberg has a very pro-gun record in the House. The only thing I could see complicating things for Tester is that he voted to confirm Sonya Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan. Other than that, I would be surprised if Tester doesn’t get the endorsement, unless NRA is looking to send a strong message to Senators that votes for Court nominees that don’t support the Second Amendment won’t be tolerated. I would agree with that course of action, because I don’t think there’s anything more important that Senators can vote on right now than Court appointments.

Tam wonders whether the GOP is trying to deliberately throw the election. By all historical accounts, given how poor the economy is, and how high unemployment is running, there should be no way that Barry wins a second term, yet I’m quite worried that’s exactly what’s going to happen. I’m normally willing to get behind someone in the primary by this point — in 2008, before he dropped out, it was Fred Thompson. Policy and temperament wise, Rick Perry actually seems to be the best of the lot, but his performance so far has just been disappointing.

I’d be willing to cast the “not-Obama” vote in the general election, and get behind the eventual candidate, even if it’s, and it pains me to say this, Mitt Romney. I don’t expect much from the next President, since I think the economy will still pretty much suck, and people still won’t have jobs. The next guy is likely to be a one termer too if Obama gets the boot, and I’d almost hate to waste someone good on a doomed presidency. So if Romney has to be the sacrificial lamb, so be it. We get to roll the dice again in four years with the Democrats, and maybe there’s a chance they’ll field someone who isn’t a total disaster. There are two things that are true, however, if Obama is re-elected:

• Scalia and Kennedy will be 80 by the end of Obama’s second term. Thomas will be 68. The chances Obama will get to replace one of these justices is extremely high, and if he does, it’ll be a bloody miracle of we can save the Second Amendment. Best case scenario is that you’ll, at the least, be able to keep a gun in the home, but with all DC and Chicago’s ridiculous regulations being upheld.
• Secondly, while Romney is responsible for socialized medicine in Massachusetts, as a Republican President he’ll be facing an awful lot of party pressure to sign an Obamacare repeal if it hits his desk. I don’t see any scenario where Romney could veto and not have a revolt within his own party on his hands. Obama will almost definitely veto a repeal, and the Republicans aren’t likely to have enough votes in the Senate to override.

So that’s kind of how I’m looking at it. To me the two things we want out of the next President are to put someone on the Supreme Court who will be a vote in favor of the Second Amendment, and to sign a repeal of Obamacare. The majority of Obamacare does not go into effect until 2014, but once it does, you’ll never get rid of it. I think the candidates we have now in the GOP field are going to be reasonable vessels for trying to achieve both those goals. It’s not perfect, but I can deal with a disaster of a GOP Presidency as long as those two goals have a reasonable chance of being achieved. Under Obama, there’s almost no chance of that.