McCain, Huckabee Worst Picks for Evangelicals
Contact: Rev. Schenck, 703-447-7686
MEDIA ADVISORY, Feb. 4 /Christian Newswire/ -- The Reverend Rob Schenck (pronounced SHANK), in his capacity as a private citizen, today released this statement regarding tomorrow's primary votes:
"I have spent the last 33 years as an active evangelical Christian. I am an ordained evangelical minister. I graduated from an evangelical Bible college and an evangelical seminary. I serve on the board of America's oldest association of evangelical church leaders, and I head one of the most active evangelical ministries in Washington, DC.
"I have thought long and hard about the upcoming elections. I have prayed earnestly about them, and I have met many of the candidates and their top campaign people and I have studied their platforms and policy proposals.
"After careful and prayerful consideration, I have concluded that an evangelical vote for Mike Huckabee is a vote for John McCain, and a vote for John McCain will be a disaster for this country.
"Let me explain. It's clear to me and many others that Mike Huckabee is not broadening his appeal enough to win the primary. Therefore, his only contribution is to siphon off votes, giving McCain a clear path to victory. It's very possible Huckabee is being positioned to be John McCain's pick for vice president. In order to win, McCain needs Mike Huckabee and the evangelical votes he brings with him. The specter of a McCain-Huckabee ticket is bad for evangelicals.

To read more click here.

Conservatives, here is Mitt Romney (hat tip Elect Romney Blog).

"Unlike some other candidates in the race, Romney is a full-spectrum conservative: a supporter of free-market economics and limited government, moral causes such as the right to life and the preservation of marriage, and a foreign policy based on the national interest.” – National Review (Editorial, “Romney For President,” National Review, 12/11/07)

Conservatives, here is John McCain.

Today, The Washington Post Revealed Sen. McCain Is Not Interested In Social Issues:
Sen. McCain: “It’s Not Social Issues I Care About.” “McCain seems distinctly uninterested when asked questions concerning abortion and gay rights. While campaigning in South Carolina, he told reporters riding with him on his bus that he was comfortable pledging to appoint judges who would strictly interpret the Constitution in part because it would reassure conservatives who might otherwise distrust him. ‘It’s not social issues I care about,’ he explained.” (Juliet Eilperin and Michael D. Shear, “Contenders Highlight GOP’s Ideological Struggle,” The Washington Post, 2/3/08)

Others Have Noted That McCain Doesn’t Care About Social Issues:
A Former McCain Aide Previously Said “His Heart Isn’t In This Stuff.” “‘Yes, he’s a social conservative, but his heart isn’t in this stuff,’ one former aide told me, referring to McCain’s instinctual unwillingness to impose on others his personal views about issues such as religion, sexuality, and abortion.” (Todd S. Purdum, “Prisoner Of Conscience,” Vanity Fair, 2/07)

- Former McCain Aide: “But He Has To Pretend [That It Is], And He’s Not A Good Enough Actor To Pull It Off. He Just Can’t Fake It Well Enough.” (Todd S. Purdum, “Prisoner Of Conscience,” Vanity Fair, 2/07)

Sen. McCain Tries To “Placate” Conservatives. “Will McCain’s understandable effort to bend a little here and bow a little there to placate the most conservative elements of his party, who play a disproportionate role in the nominating process get him all twisted up before he ever gets to face the general electorate that polls suggest admires him so?” (Todd S. Purdum, “Prisoner Of Conscience,” Vanity Fair, 2/07)

Couple Sen. McCain’s Lack Of Interest In Social Issues With His Lack Of Understanding Economics:
Sen. McCain: “The Issue Of Economics Is Not Something I’ve Understood As Well As I Should.” “Like Mike Huckabee, who joked recently that he ‘may not be the expert that some people are on foreign policy, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night,’ McCain suggested to reporters Monday that American consumer culture offered a short cut to expertise. ‘The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should,’ McCain said. ‘I’ve got Greenspan’s book.’” (Sasha Issenberg, “McCain: It’s About The Economy,” The Boston Globe, www.boston.com, Posted 12/18/07)

- Sen. McCain: “I Still Need To Be Educated.” “On a broader range of economic issues, though, Mr. McCain readily departs from Reaganomics. His philosophy is best described as a work in progress. He is refreshingly blunt when he tells me: ‘I’m going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.’” (Stephen Moore, “Reform, Reform, Reform,” OpinionJournal.com, 11/26/05)

The NRO's Rich Lowry:

I think it’s totally dishonest, and I took away a couple of things from it. One, I think McCain just kind of feels entitled to this cheap shot, because he was genuinely up front about the surge, he was more courageous about it than pretty much any other major politician. So he just feels, though, he can deliver this low blow. And the other thing that is going on, I think, is McCain is much more comfortable attacking harshly and unfairly his enemies within the Republican Party than he is attacking Democrats. And layered on top of this is his obvious, and I think I find it very distasteful, but his obvious hatred for Mitt Romney. If you saw the clip of McCain today, chortling as he was talking about Romney’s flip-flopping, it’s this kind of insincere McCain laughter that masks his true bile that he’s directing towards Mitt Romney. So I find the whole thing, from the dishonesty to the kind of sentiment animosity it’s revealing about Mitt Romney, to be really unworthy of John McCain, and kind of a shame.

George Will chimes in on McCain's crooked talk and his increasing similarities to the Clintons.

This was a garden-variety dishonesty, the manufacture of which does not cause a Clinton in midseason form to break a sweat. And it was no worse than -- actually, not as gross as -- St. John of Arizona's crooked-talk claim in Florida that Mitt Romney wanted to "surrender and wave a white flag, like Senator Clinton wants to do" in Iraq because Romney "wanted to set a date for withdrawal that would have meant disaster."

Imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, the Clintons should bask in the glow of John McCain's Clintonian gloss on this fact: Ten months ago Romney said that President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki should discuss, privately, "a series of timetables and milestones." That unremarkable thought was twisted by McCain, whose distortions are notably clumsy, as when Romney said, accurately, that he alone among the candidates has had extensive experience in private-sector business. That truth was subjected to McCain's sophistry, and he charged that Romney had said "you haven't had a real job" if you had a military career. If, this autumn, voters must choose between Clinton and McCain, they will face, at least stylistically, an echo, not a choice.

But that dreary scenario need not come to pass. Romney seems to have found his voice as attention turns to the economy, a subject on which McCain seems neither conversant nor eager to become so. And in South Carolina, Obama, more than doubling Clinton's 27 percent, won a majority of the votes, becoming the first person in either party to do so in a contested primary this year. He won a majority of men and of women, which pretty much covers the rainbow of genders. And he used his victory speech to clearly associate the Clintons with "the idea that it's acceptable to say anything and do anything to win an election" (hello again, Bill, you political ethicist who famously said "you gotta do what you gotta do") and "the kind of partisanship where you're not even allowed to say that a Republican had an idea -- even if it's one you never agreed with."

Obama is running against two Clintons -- or one and a fraction of one, given how much she has been diminished by her overbearing spouse. Romney is marginally better off running against a Clinton impersonator.

TOP 10 REASONS WHY SEN. MCCAINSTILL NEEDS "TO BE EDUCATED"ON ECONOMICS

"When the most important pro-growth tax cuts in a generation were proposed by President George W. Bush in 2001 and 2003, Sen. McCain vigorously opposed them." – Club For Growth President Pat Toomey (Pat Toomey, Op-Ed, "The McCain Record," The Wall Street Journal, 3/13/07)

#1: Admits He Knows Little About The Economy:
- Sen. McCain: "The Issue Of Economics Is Not Something I've Understood As Well As I Should." "Like Mike Huckabee, who joked recently that he 'may not be the expert that some people are on foreign policy, but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night,' McCain suggested to reporters Monday that American consumer culture offered a short cut to expertise. 'The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should,' McCain said. 'I've got Greenspan's book.'" (Sasha Issenberg, "McCain: It's About The Economy," The Boston Globe, http://www.boston.com/, Posted 12/18/07)

- Sen. McCain: "I Still Need To Be Educated." "On a broader range of economic issues, though, Mr. McCain readily departs from Reaganomics. His philosophy is best described as a work in progress. He is refreshingly blunt when he tells me: 'I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.'" (Stephen Moore, "Reform, Reform, Reform," OpinionJournal.com, 11/26/05)

#2: Opposed The Bush Tax Cuts In 2001:
- In 2001, Sen. McCain Was One Of Only Two Republicans To Vote Against The $1.35 Trillion Tax Cut. The bill lowered marginal rates, eliminated the marriage penalty, and doubled the child tax credit. (H.R. 1836, CQ Vote #170: Adopted 58-33: R 46-2; D 12-31; I 0-0, 5/26/01, McCain Voted Nay)

#3: Opposed The Bush Tax Cuts In 2003:
- In 2003, Sen. McCain Was One Of Only Three Republicans To Twice Vote Against The $350 Billion Tax Cut. The comprehensive bill lowered taxes by $350 billion over 11 years – including increasing the child tax credit and eliminated the marriage penalty. (H.R. 2, CQ Vote #179: Passed 51-49: R 48-3; D 3-45; I 0-1, 5/15/03, McCain Voted Nay; H.R. 2, CQ Vote #196: Adopted 50-50: R 48-3; D 2-46; I 0-1, 5/23/03, McCain Voted Nay)

#4: Opposed Making The Bush Tax Cuts Permanent:
- In 2004, Sen. McCain Said He Would "Clearly" Not Support Extending The Tax Cuts. RUSSERT: "Since the Civil War, every president who has been at war has increased taxes. Should the president consider postponing his tax cut?" SEN. MCCAIN: "I would have – I voted against the tax cuts because of the disproportionate amount that went to the wealthiest Americans. I would clearly support not extending those tax cuts in order to help address the deficit. But the middle-income tax credits, the families, the child tax credits, the marriage tax credits, all of those I would keep." (NBC's "Meet The Press," 4/11/04)

#5: Was Against The Bush Tax Cuts Before He Was For Them:
- Within The Span Of 15 Seconds, McCain Was For, Against, And For Tax Cuts. SEN. MCCAIN: "I've been involved in all of these issues, I know how to stop the irresponsible spending. I've always been for tax cuts, I have always...uh... although, I voted against the first tax cuts, but these tax cuts have to be made permanent..." (Fox News' "Fox & Friends," 1/24/08; http://www.youtube.com/)

#6: Still Says He Was Right To Vote Against The Bush Tax Cuts:
- Sen. McCain Still Believes He Was Right To Vote Against Numerous Republican Tax Cuts. RUSSERT: "Do you believe that voting against the Bush tax cuts was a mistake?" SEN. MCCAIN: "Of course not." (NBC's "Meet The Press," 1/6/08; http://www.youtube.com/)

#7: Used Democrat Class-Warfare Rhetoric To Attack The Bush Tax Cuts:
- Club For Growth President Pat Toomey: Sen. McCain's Statements Sounded Like Kennedy's And Kerry's "Class Warfare." "In 2001, Sen. McCain argued, 'I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who need tax relief.' That statement is virtually indistinguishable from the class-warfare demagoguery used by Democrats like Ted Kennedy and John Kerry." (Pat Toomey, Op-Ed, "The McCain Record," The Wall Street Journal, 3/13/07)

#8: Included A Tax Increase In His 2000 Campaign Economic Plan:
- McCain Said His 2000 Tax Plan Would Have A Tax Increase. O'REILLY: "All right. So you want to target the – the middle-class people, and you're willing to live with the rich people paying the taxes they're – they're paying." SEN. MCCAIN: "Sure. And I don't want to take any money. In fact, the program that I have gives them a slight tax increase, but the question is what do you do with the surplus. Governor Bush puts it all in tax cuts. I want to give middle-class Americans a tax break, spend it on Social Security, Medicare, and paying down the debt." (Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor," 1/20/00; http://www.youtube.com/)

#9: Opposes Permanent Repeal Of The Death Tax:
- In 2002, Sen. McCain Was One Of Only Two Republicans To Twice Vote Against Permanent Repeal Of The Death Tax. (S. 1731, CQ Vote #28: Adopted 56-42: R 45-2; D 11-39; I 0-1, 2/13/02, McCain Voted Nay, H.R. 8, CQ Vote #151: Motion Rejected 54-44: R 45-2; D 9-41; I 0-1, 6/12/02, McCain Voted Nay)

#10: Joined Sen. Joe Lieberman To Propose Higher Energy Taxes On Consumers:
- McCain-Lieberman Would Dramatically Raise Taxes On All Carbon-Based Fuels, Like Gas For Your Car And Home Heating Oil. "What is not widely understood is that [Sen. McCain] is currently sponsoring legislation that, in the name of fighting global warming, would dramatically raise the tax on all carbon-based fuels, including gasoline, home heating oil, coal, and to a lesser extent, natural gas." (Roy Cordato, "McCain's Costly Tax On Energy," National Review, http://article.nationalreview.com/, Posted 1/10/08)

From MyManMitt:

Miami Herald: Robo calls paint Romney as pro-Castro, says Cardenas
Mitt Romney' s state chairman Al Cardenas says robo calls portraying Romney as soft on Castro have been going out this afternoon to Miami voters.
The calls almost immediately following appearances by diplomat Roger Noriega praising the candidate on Spanish-language radio, said Cardenas, who called the calls "dirty pool" and "despicable."
He said he's not sure who is behind the calls but said "we can only assume it's one of our opponents."

St. Petersburg Times: Anti-Romney pushpolling
Romney campaign is getting reports of anti-Romney pushpolling in Orlando, Fort Myers and West Palm Beach, the calls started this morning.
The poll calls are saying that Romney never supported Bush tax cuts, supports tax-payer funded abortions and wants relations with Fidel Castro. Some calls have targeted the Cuban community in South Florida and are in Spanish, said Al Cardenas, Romney's Florida chair.
"These are clearly negative and false attacks against Gov. Romney by a flailing campaign desperate to change the dialogue on issues that matter most to Florida voters like lower taxes, less government and stronger families," said campaign spokeswoman Kristy Campbell.

Funny, I never hear the news reporting on pushpolling calls from Mitt Romney or in support of Mitt Romney.

John McCain's Latino outreach director is scary.

Mexico First?
McCain has embraced a Vicente Fox’s aide as his own.
By Mark Krikorian of the National Review Online

“I want the third generation, the seventh generation, I want them all to think ‘Mexico first.’ ” These are the words of Juan Hernandez, John McCain’s “Hispanic outreach director,” on Nightline June 7, 2001.

The blogosphere has been abuzz over the news of Hernandez’s position in the McCain campaign, thanks to the spadework of Michelle Malkin (see here, here, and here) and Jerry Corsi. Thanks also to the power of the Internet, McCain was actually asked about this at an event in Florida Sunday, though he tap-danced his way out of answering directly.

But this potentially explosive story hasn’t gotten any traction in the mainstream press. The first explanation that comes to mind, of course, is that McCain is the media’s preferred Republican, a sense reinforced not only by Thursday’s endorsement of him by the New York Times , but also the Washington Post’s quasi-endorsement on Sunday.

But the more likely explanation is that many people don’t see the news value. After all, whom do you expect McCain would name as his Hispanic outreach director but a fellow supporter of amnesty and accelerated mass immigration? But this is a bigger deal than that.

Contrary to some of the more enthusiastic venting on the web, the problem is not that McCain has a Hispanic outreach director; while the government shouldn’t have anything to do with race or ethnicity, it’s perfectly natural for a political campaign to do outreach to any and every kind of voter. In fact, McCain’s “very close” friend, Hillary Clinton, last spring named Raul Yzaguirre to lead her Hispanic outreach effort. Naturally, Yzaguirre is a big supporter of amnesty and mass immigration — until he retired in 2004, he was president of the National Council of La Raza.

But even Yzaguirre has never been a foreign government official.

After Vicente Fox was elected in 2000, he named the U.S.-born dual citizen Hernandez (a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas) to head the newly created, cabinet-level Presidential Office for Mexicans Abroad (making him, in effect, Fox’s “Hispanic outreach director”). Hernandez’s oath of office was presumably similar to the one taken by his boss:

I swear to follow and uphold the Political Constitution of the United Mexican States and the laws that emanate from it, and to perform the job of President of the Republic which the people have conferred upon me with loyalty and patriotism, in all actions looking after the good and prosperity of the Union; and if I do not fulfill these obligations, the Nation will demand them of me.

“Loyalty,” “patriotism” — it’s a good oath. For a Mexican. Not for an American.

Before Earl Warren started making up emanations and penumbras of the Constitution (in this instance, the case of Afroyim v. Rusk in 1967), Hernandez would have been stripped of his American citizenship for having committed an “expatriating act,” specifically “accepting, serving in, or performing the duties of any office, post, or employment under the government of a foreign state or a political subdivision thereof.” (8 USC 1481)

On the radio Saturday, Hugh Hewitt and Michelle Malkin noted the incongruity of the McCain campaign’s embrace of this former foreign government official:

HH: I know. I’ve got a question for you. If John Kerry had employed as a senior adviser a dual citizen who had served in the French cabinet under any of our many French adversaries/allies, how would the Republicans have treated that Kerry adviser position? Wouldn’t we have raised holy hell about that?

MM: Oh, yeah, it would be worth five Drudge sirens in 100 point, World War IV font.

No kidding.

The contempt for American citizenship that McCain has shown by naming this political bigamist to a post in his campaign isn’t even the whole problem. One might also ask how McCain could even consult with a person of such extreme views, let alone name him Hispanic outreach director. McCain’s support for amnesty and accelerated mass immigration is bad enough, but you can, at least in theory, be for those things and still support firm borders and patriotic assimilation.

But McCain’s Hispanic outreach director is a man who has spent years opposing the very legitimacy of America’s borders and Americanization in the most public way possible. The man has been on every TV-news show in creation rejecting as passé the very idea of sovereign borders and patriotic assimilation into the American mainstream. (Digger’s Realm has compiled a greatest-hits video.)

Before teaming up with McCain, Hernandez became (he still is) a senior fellow at the Reform Institute, the think tank McCain set up after his unsuccessful 2000 presidential campaign — Brian Anderson of City Journal described it as “the 2008 McCain-for-President campaign-in-waiting.”

And Hernandez’s job there is to run — what else? — the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Initiative. If any more evidence of the institute’s leanings were needed, note that last year it sponsored an online contest to “Design Your Portion of the Border Fence” and gave top honors to a design that explicitly compared border fencing to the Berlin Wall. (See all the entries here.)

This is much worse than the similar controversy over Ron Paul’s ghost-written newsletters; it’s obvious McCain and his people knew perfectly well what Hernandez was about, and they didn’t see anything wrong with it. That tells us all we need to know about the sincerity of McCain’s newfound support for secure borders.

— Mark Krikorian is executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies and an NRO contributor.

I just got done making phone calls for Mitt. One of my fellow callers in the call center spoke with a woman who had received a call from the McCain campaign earlier in the day. When the woman indicated she would be supporting Romney, the McCain campaign caller asked if she would still support Romney if she knew that Romney had voted against the Bush tax cuts.

Funny, I didn't know that governors could vote on federal tax legislation?

The straight talk just gets more and more crooked.

A woman I talked to asked if it was true that Romney engineered taxpayer-supported abortions underneath the his health care plan. I gave her the correct information. I don't know who was the source of that fallacy, but McCain did send out a mailer with that info on it in South Carolina, so I doubt we'd have to look far.

For a breakdown of McCain-onimics, click here. For a look at Romney's economic prowess, click here.

McCain-onomics. That spells "recession."

John McCain is dishonest. He has made claims about Mitt Romney that he can't produce proof to back up. He has attacked Mitt Romney for something he didn't say, but gave a free pass to Democrats for actually saying what McCain claims Mitt said.

John McCain is no straight-talker. He is a desperate man. For evidence of his duplicity, click here, here, here and here.

Here's what CNN (of all networks) is saying about McCain:

Speaking of straight talk, no American politician has gotten more adoring press coverage than John McCain. But let's be clear about what John McCain is doing about Mitt Romney. He's lying. He's lying about Mitt Romney's position, no question about it. And you know I think that -- this idea that Mitt Romney supports timetables, now, in fact most Americans support timetables to get out of Iraq, Mitt Romney doesn't happen to be one of them. That's really outrageous what McCain is doing bringing up this ancient interview and distorting it at the last minute so he doesn't have to talk about the economy.

In New Hampshire Romney rad ads contrasting his position with McCain's on several key issues. Despite the fact that those ads said McCain was an honorable man, McCain whined that Romney was unfairly attacking him. McCain then rad an add that did not talk about issues or accomplishments, it merely called Romney a phoney. While Romney praised McCain's character while pointing out differences on positions, McCain ignored positions and slurred Romney's character.

In South Carolina, as noted in a previous post, McCain sent out a mailer with blatant falsehoods about Romney's record. Romney didn't return the favor.

Now in Florida McCain, trying to get the topic back on the War in Iraq, makes the false claim that Romney supported a withdrawal timetable for the troops like the Democrats. He did not. Now, McCain repeatedly lies about Romney and attacks his character. Romney calls McCain an honorable man.

Why does John McCain have more nice things to say about Hillary Clinton than Mitt Romney? Here's what Bill Clinton has to say:

If Hillary Clinton and John McCain become their party's presidential nominees, the general election race is likely to be a love-fest.

At least according to Bill Clinton.

Campaigning in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Friday, the former president brushed aside suggestions his wife would prove to be a divisive nominee for the Democratic Party, pointing out how she has successfully worked with Republicans in the Senate — including one of the current GOP presidential candidates.

"She and John McCain are very close," Clinton said. "They always laugh that if they wound up being the nominees of their party, it would be the most civilized election in American history, and they're afraid they'd put the voters to sleep because they like and respect each other."

John McCain thinks Sam Alito is too conservative and wouldn't appoint justices like him (from the Wall Street Journal via NRO):

More recently, Mr. McCain has told conservatives he would be happy to appoint the likes of Chief Justice John Roberts to the Supreme Court. But he indicated he might draw the line on a Samuel Alito, because "he wore his conservatism on his sleeve."

Mitt Romney, on the other hand, has called for more justices in the mold of Alito and Roberts. I don't trust John McCain to appoint conservative justices to the bench.

The NY Times (probably the most liberal paper in the country) has endorsed John McCain in the GOP primary (hat tip Hugh Hewitt). Here are some quotes:

Still, there is a choice to be made, and it is an easy one. Senator John McCain of Arizona is the only Republican who promises to end the George Bush style of governing from and on behalf of a small, angry fringe...

We have shuddered at Mr. McCain’s occasional, tactical pander to the right because he has demonstrated that he has the character to stand on principle. He was an early advocate for battling global warming and risked his presidential bid to uphold fundamental American values in the immigration debate...

But Mr. McCain took a stand, just as he did in recognizing the threat of global warming early. He has been a staunch advocate of campaign finance reform, working with Senator Russ Feingold, among the most liberal of Democrats, on groundbreaking legislation, just as he worked with Senator Edward Kennedy on immigration reform.

George Will weighs in on McCain in his latest column: "John McCain--Faux Straight Talker."

Maricopa County is the heart of McCain country. It is the most populous county in Arizona by far, and houses Phoenix, the capitol. Maricopa County's GOP held a straw poll Saturday, and here are the results (via Sonoran Alliance):

Overall Votes (662 Votes):
#1 - Mitt Romney - 28.4% (188)
#2 - Fred Thomson - 18.3% (121)
#3 - Ron Paul - 17.4% (115)
#4 - Duncan Hunter - 14.0% (93)
#5 - John McCain - 12.1% (80)
#6 - Rudy Giuliani - 5.0% (33)
#7 - Mike Huckabee - 4.8% (32)

Most Acceptable (1781 Votes):
#1 - Fred Thompson - 20.8% (370)
#2 - Duncan Hunter - 20.1% (358)
#3 - Mitt Romney - 20.0% (356)
#4 - Rudy Giuliani - 13.2% (235)
#5 - Mike Huckabee - 11.6% (207)
#6 - John McCain - 7.6% (135)
#7 - Ron Paul - 6.7% (120)

Most Unacceptable (1949 votes):
#1 - John McCain - 21.9% (427)
#2 - Ron Paul - 20.3% (396)
#3 - Rudy Giuliani - 18.3% (357)
#4 - Mike Huckabee - 17.4% (340)
#5 - Duncan Hunter - 8.0% (156)
#6 - Fred Thompson - 7.8% (152)
#7 - Mitt Romney - 6.2% (121 )

Notice that McCain finishes a distant 5th to Romney in the voting, and places first as the most unacceptable candidate amongst those who know him best.

Also, if you remove Hunter (who's already dropped out) and Thompson (who is expected to drop out this week), Romney wins every category (even without those deletions he wins two and finishes .8% behind first on the third).

Ross Perot will vote for Mitt Romney and slams McCain in this Newsweek interview:

Perot says he intends to vote for Mitt Romney in the Texas Republican primary on March 4, citing Romney's experience in business and his family values. "When I went to the Naval Academy and met my first Mormons I asked why so many were excellent officers," Perot recalls. "I learned it was because of their strong family unit."...

The Perot-McCain relationship goes back to McCain's five and a half years of captivity in Hanoi. When McCain's then-wife Carol was in a serious car accident, McCain's mother called Perot for help. "She asked me to send my people to Philadelphia to take care of the family," Perot says. Afterwards, McCain was grateful. "We loved him [Perot] for it," McCain told me in 2000.

Perot doesn't remember it that way. "After he came home, he walked with a limp, she [Carol McCain] walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona [Cindy McCain, his current wife] and the rest is history."

The Real McCain Record:
Obstacles in the way of conservative support
By Mark R. Levin (NRO)

There’s a reason some of John McCain's conservative supporters avoid discussing his record. They want to talk about his personal story, his position on the surge, his supposed electability. But whenever the rest of his career comes up, the knee-jerk reply is to characterize the inquiries as attacks.

The McCain domestic record is a disaster. To say he fought spending, most particularly earmarks, is to nibble around the edges and miss the heart of the matter. For starters, consider:

McCain-Feingold — the most brazen frontal assault on political speech since Buckley v. Valeo.

McCain-Kennedy — the most far-reaching amnesty program in American history.

McCain-Lieberman — the most onerous and intrusive attack on American industry — through reporting, regulating, and taxing authority of greenhouse gases — in American history.

McCain-Kennedy-Edwards — the biggest boon to the trial bar since the tobacco settlement, under the rubric of a patients’ bill of rights.

McCain-Reimportantion of Drugs — a significant blow to pharmaceutical research and development, not to mention consumer safety (hey Rudy, pay attention, see link).

And McCain’s stated opposition to the Bush 2001 and 2003 tax cuts was largely based on socialist, class-warfare rhetoric — tax cuts for the rich, not for the middle class. The public record is full of these statements. Today, he recalls only his insistence on accompanying spending cuts.

As chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, McCain was consistently hostile to American enterprise, from media and pharmaceutical companies to technology and energy companies.

McCain also led the Gang of 14, which prevented the Republican leadership in the Senate from mounting a rule change that would have ended the systematic use (actual and threatened) of the filibuster to prevent majority approval of judicial nominees.

And then there’s the McCain defense record.

His supporters point to essentially one policy strength, McCain’s early support for a surge and counterinsurgency. It has now evolved into McCain taking credit for forcing the president to adopt General David Petreaus’s strategy. Where’s the evidence to support such a claim?

Moreover, Iraq is an important battle in our war against the Islamo-fascist threat. But the war is a global war, and it most certainly includes the continental United States, which, after all, was struck on 9/11. How does McCain fare in that regard?

McCain-ACLU — the unprecedented granting of due-process rights to unlawful enemy combatants (terrorists).

McCain has repeatedly called for the immediate closing of Guantanamo Bay and the introduction of al-Qaeda terrorists into our own prisons — despite the legal rights they would immediately gain and the burdens of managing such a dangerous population.

While McCain proudly and repeatedly points to his battles with Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who had to rebuild the U.S. military and fight a complex war, where was McCain in the lead-up to the war — when the military was being dangerously downsized by the Clinton administration and McCain’s friend, former Secretary of Defense Bill Cohen? Where was McCain when the CIA was in desperate need of attention? Also, McCain was apparently in the dark about al-Qaeda like most of Washington, despite a decade of warnings.

My fingers are crossed that at the next debate, either Fred Thompson or Mitt Romney will find a way to address McCain’s record. (Mike Huckabee won’t, as he is apparently in the tank for him.)

The American Spectator's Quin Hilyar's case against Huckabee and McCain (mostly McCain):

As truly horrific as it would be for the liberal and unethical Mike Huckabee to win the Republican presidential nomination, many Republicans still believe it would be almost as difficult to stomach the nomination of John McCain.

Huckabee, of course, would utterly destroy the old Reagan coalition, as even his campaign chief Ed Rollins has acknowledged. Huckabee's bizarre propensity for letting criminals return early to freedom, combined with his utter cluelessness about foreign policy, also means that he would get absolutely crushed by the Democrats in a general election contest.

But McCain's problems are almost as great, which is why reports of a comeback by the Arizona senator have so many conservatives scratching their heads.McCain is, and looks, more than two years older than Ronald Reagan was when Reagan was elected president, and a poll last year showed that 42 percent of respondents said they would not vote for somebody who is 72 years old. That is a far higher percentage than that of people who would not vote for a Mormon (24 percent), a woman (11 percent), or a black person (5 percent).

McCain is not a tax cutter in a party that has made tax cuts one of its most basic tenets for nearly 30 years. Not only did he vote against President George W. Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 -- cuts that clearly are responsible for the booming economy of the past four-plus years -- but just last week he told National Review's Rich Lowry that he was correct not to vote for those tax cuts.

Then, of course, there is the large and passionate segment of the Republican electorate that wants to get tough against illegal immigration, and they have good reason to consider John McAmnesty to be not just against them but a highly disagreeable archenemy.And speaking of which, McCain seems almost constitutionally unable to disagree without being disagreeable. When he disagrees with somebody on just about any issue, he gives the sense of being so angry that he is having trouble not jumping out of his own skin to wring the other person's neck.

Witness his politically effective but completely cheap shot at Mitt Romney a couple of debates back when Romney made what actually was a reasonable point about the dangers of discussing the specific procedures used in various forms of "waterboarding" terrorist suspects.

In the same debate, McCain vociferously attacked Rudy Giuliani for supposedly being against the line item veto. McCain was wrong and Giuliani right that the form of item-veto at issue was dangerously unconstitutional legislation. (I write this as somebody who has been writing columns in favor of line item vetoes for a full quarter century. Even I, an item-veto supporter, saw from the start that the version supported by McCain was unconstitutional.) But right or wrong, McCain's demeanor was far too aggressive for the case at issue.

In short, McCain is an angry old man.

THEN THERE ARE McCain's weaknesses (from a conservative standpoint) on government regulation and on judges. On the first topic, what it pretty much boils down to is that if something moves, McCain wants to regulate it. He wants to regulate campaign speech, anything having to do with the environment, smoking, the price of medicines (interfering with free-market savings), oil drilling in Alaska, securities trading, and other things.

On judges, McCain repeatedly boasts about being a main mover behind the "Gang of 14" that supposedly helped garner approval for President Bush's nominees. The numbers say otherwise.With a tiny Republican Senate majority in 2003 and 2004, the Senate approved 19 of Bush's appeals court nominees while blocking 12. But with the Gang of 14 operating in 2005 and 2006, the Senate approved only 16 appeals court nominees (plus two Supreme Court nominees) while again blocking 12 -- even though the party's Senate majority was much bigger, with 55 seats versus just 51 seats in the previous Congress.

What's worse, other than the three nominees immediately approved through the Gang's deal, the few other post-Gang nominees who were approved tended to be less solidly conservative than the ones approved in the previous Congress.The simple fact is that the Gang of 14 "saved" a "right" to filibuster judicial nominations to death that Republicans have never, ever used, while the alternative to the Gang would have been to deny the Democrats the unconstitutional filibuster option they had grievously abused.Conservatives were not helped by the Gang. We were mugged.

SUCH REGULAR MUGGINGS of conservatives by McCain helps explain why so many in the conservative movement are unmoved by McCain's story of personal heroism, his stances against wasteful pork barrel spending, and his undeniable leadership on matters of defense.

I was just making some phone calls for Mitt to voters in New Hampshire (and they're getting hammered by everybody).

I spoke to one gentleman and explained I was supporting Gov. Romney because of his pro-life, pro-traditional marriage positions.

The man laughed and said he wasn't supporting Romney for the same reason. When asked who he was supporting he responded, "McCain."

Now, I have no problem with someone voting for McCain because they like the fact that he's voted against the federal marriage amendment (twice) and is for embryonic stem cell harvesting.

But I hope no one will vote for McCain under the delusion that he will protect life (in all its forms) and stand up for traditional marriage (which included appointing conservative judges), because McCain won't. Romney will.

Boston, MA – Today, U.S. Representative Pete Hoekstra (R-MI), the top Republican on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, issued the following statement on foreign policy experience in this era of new global threats:

"Senator McCain is an honorable man but his recent attacks on Governor Romney are a stretch. In challenging times, we need a leader who can guide America and chart a course to overcome the threats our country faces today. Governor Romney is the only presidential candidate who has outlined a comprehensive strategy for leading America forward and defeating the global Jihadist threat. He will build a stronger military, develop a new counter-terrorism force and work with our allies and partners around the world to help nations reject Jihadism. Governor Romney is the leader our country needs."