Day: October 13, 2011

How The Republican Party Has Gone Wrong: Lincoln Chafee’s View

Ronald Leave a comment

Rhode Island Independent Governor Lincoln Chafee is a former moderate Republican Senator, whose father, John Chafee, was Governor as a Republican from 1963-1969; Secretary of the Navy under President Richard Nixon from 1969-1972; and Senator from 1976 to 1999 when he passed away.

Both Chafees were mainstream Republicans, and the younger Chafee became an independent after losing his Senate seat in 2006.

Chafee is dismayed that even Northeastern and New England Republicans have moved to the right, and he mentions Mitt Romney, who has been trying to change his image from what it was before 2006; former New York City Mayor Rudy Guiliani; former New York Governor George Pataki; and even, outside the Atlantic coast, Senator John McCain of Arizona–all of whom he says have lost their principles due to ambitions and desires for higher office.

National ambitions have caused these men to become chameleons, who cannot be believed, as they change their beliefs and principles, and therefore are “completely different” from what they once were.

Realize how troubling this statement by Chafee is, that it indicates no one can trust that any politician believes what he advocates, if he can advance by compromising his principles and appealing to those who are really the enemies of everything he once believed in!

When, oh when, will we have candidates for public office and the Presidency who stick to their convictions, “come hell or high water”?

When will candidates stop appealing to the extremes and go toward where most voters are, in the center, as Lincoln Chafee has done, and should be commended for?

Herman Cain, Ross Perot And Wendell Willkie: Businessmen As Presidential Candidates

Ronald 1 Comment

Herman Cain has become the newest “flavor of the month”, or some would say the “flavor of the week”, in the Republican Party battle to find a candidate who can defeat President Barack Obama.

Right now, he is running high in the polls, similar to Donald Trump, Michele Bachmann, and Rick Perry in the past few months, but he has many shortcomings.

1. He has NO experience in government and politics, and that makes him unable to understand that government is NOT a business, and cannot successfully be run as a business.

2. He is very ignorant on most issues other than his 9-9-9 tax plan, which economists say would not be a solution to the economic crisis, and would never pass Congress.

3. Cain has no concern about poverty and the struggles of the middle class, and his plans would include the destruction of Social Security and Medicare as we know it, and that does not go across well with a wide swath of voters in polls.

4. He may be popular among those who want a blunt personality, but that is not the way to make progress in diplomacy, and he lacks tact and basic knowledge in international affairs.

5. He would represent a backward trend in the African American community, a person who succeeded and does not care about those he left behind, in many ways an executive branch Clarence Thomas (Associate Justice of the Supreme Court).

Some would say that Herman Cain is this generation’s Ross Perot, the billionaire who ran for President twice in 1992 and 1996 as a third party candidate, and by so running, helped to put Bill Clinton in office and keep him there. But Perot actually, with all of his idiosyncratic nature, actually really addressed one issue that still affects us–the deficit and the national debt. Cain has no such vision or intelligence on the level of Ross Perot.

Others would wish to compare Cain to Republican Presidential nominee Wendell Willkie in the 1940 Presidential Election against Franklin D. Roosevelt, who ran a good race against the New Deal, but still lost by a substantial margin, but in the process, gained respect for his backing of FDR on foreign policy. Willkie’s background as a utilities executive harmed him, but his oratory wowed delegates at the Republican National Convention in 1940, who went berserk and nominated him.

The point is that Cain is no Ross Perot and is no Wendell Willkie!

Interestingly, C Span has a series on Friday nights this fall, mentioned in an earlier post, regarding losing Presidential candidates, and both Perot and Willkie will be portrayed in coming weeks. Willkie will be covered on Friday, October 21; and Perot on Friday, December 9.

This nation has never elected a businessman to the White House, and except for Willkie and Perot (third party), has never nominated one, either. We are NOT going to see Cain match those two in being a choice of the voters in the national election!