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Luis Palau
Hmm…My Vote in the forthcoming FL Primary….. See 1/30/2008 Update Below
Being a legal resident of Florida I am now and looking forward to the Florida Primary which is scheduled for January 29th. Actually the voting in Florida has already begun in what is called “early voting” but we have decided to wait until the official date for a couple of reasons, with one being important and another being not so important.
First of all we will delay because we have never voted in Florida and sort of want to get a first hand orientation with process and our precinct (not so important on some metaphysical scale) and the opportunity to evaluate the candidates in the daily changing landscape (ostensibly more important).
I must say that my sentiments in this race had been shifting towards (not to) Mitt Romney and I had been alarmed somewhat at John McCain’s resurgence. I have over recent years come to pretty much dislike John McCain. I haven’t always felt this way about Mr. McCain and was even a defender and proponent of him during the era of the Keating Five and its role in the collapse of many Savings and Loan companies in the 1980’s. This was an investigation initiated by the Senate Ethics Committee that was controlled by the Democrats in the Senate. There was some real misdeeds emanating from the “gang of five” when examined as a whole, but it was clear to me at the time that it encompassed McCain in order to dilute the accountability of the Democrats who held the other four slots in that grouping. Also innocently accused in this group of five was Democrat John Glenn but he became the sacrificial inclusion in the group to insure that it was a “bi-partisan” operation.
Well it didn’t work and no guilt was found in Glenn and even less guilt was found in McCain. This little blip in the career of McCain has not seemed to have any impact on his political career since then.
But in short I had not yet picked a candidate in 08’ but had McCain ranked as third from last on my personal preference list of the Republican hopefuls. Of course Paul was last and I had Huckabee as second to last. The primary reason for my low regard for McCain stems from my disdain for his liberal leanings in the more recent years in the Senate (McCain-Feingold & opposition to Bush tax cuts-I am not going to again defend those tax cuts here, but if you are interested you can read the posts on the topic tax cuts and numerous comment responses throughout this website).
So what is the purpose of this post? I might (don’t read this as a conclusion) vote for McCain. Not because of a single thing he has said but because I saw an interview of Jack Kemp tonight where Jack has endorsed John. Yes part of that is the “winability” strategy but he has explained his recent meetings with McCain where they discussed fiscal policy (both taxation and budgetary). Jack dislikes the past of McCain as much as I do, but if Jack is satisfied with McCain on where he will head in the future, so am I. (McCain has pledged a conservative tax and spending program) I have been sort of an acolyte of Kemp’s and over the past 30 years he has been my preferred person to rise to the level of Presidency himself. He was actually the intellectual architect of the Reagan Revolution at least as it depended on the tax reductions to come from Reagan’s administration. You may recall the accolade of the “Kemp-Roth” tax cuts. Well Regan’s tax cuts were authored by Jack Kemp.
So this leads me to my vote. Yes…….it MIGHT be for John McCain. (sheesh……I almost can’t even say that.)