A few days ago I said that John McCain has only about a 15% chance of getting my vote. That's the wrong way to put it. I don't trust him and he's been banking on triangulating the Republican Party's conservative base for many years now.

I also think the Republican Party, of which I am no longer a member, sold out long ago. I remember with great pride the euphoria after the Republican sweep in '94 and Newt Gingrich's Contract with America. Unfortunately, although the Republicans kept their promise of at least bringing each issue in the Contract up for a vote, they failed to vote for the most important one: Term Limits. The reason I favor term limits is because politicians have proven incapable of thinking about anything but their own personal power and reelection.

Term Limits was our best hope for fiscal sanity. The Line Item Veto was determined (probably correctly) by the Suprem Court to be unconstititutional. Congress overturned its own Gramm-Rudman law (I emphasize the word LAW) the very first time it was supposed to kick in and force those bastards to balance the budget.

So, although I used to be opposed to a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution, I think it's our only hope. The reason I used to oppose it was because I did not want to tie our hands during crisis times, and because as much as I despise deficit spending, there are certain kinds of debt that are totally manageable and, in fact, investors all over the world will cry if there is no more U.S. debt to buy someday.

But, we cannot trust the political class. Although there are some decent, caring, hard working people who make it to elective office, the system is broken and the vast majority of them are corrupt, spineless, power hungry, attention seeking, weak, stupid scumbags. This is a conclusion I and so many others have reached, regrettably, after trying to argue against it for years. They've all gone wobbly, or were born that way, and if they do find a leader who really can organize them to do the right thing in spite of themselves, they throw him overboard at the first opportunity. Which is why we have the executive branch.

Senator McCain, as much as I revile him for his constant arrogance, hypocrisy, and lies, may be, just possibly, a slightly less distasteful candidate than Senator Obama or Senator Clinton. But I would rather have either of the latter than allow anyone to think my vote was a mandate for him.

So, the only way he gets my vote is if he makes it clear to the world why he got it. He needs to make a new Contract With the America People, put it in writing, and sign his name to it in ink. It needs to read something like this:

Executive Contract with America

1. Not only will I not raise taxes, I will not even keep them the same. I will cut taxes. I will reduce income taxes across the board and I will try to eliminate capital gains taxes altogether. I will not raise taxes of any kind or sign my name to any bill that does. The tax burden on the America people is still far too great and it is not the fault of the American people that the political class has proven incapable of fiscal responsibility.
2. I will propose a four -pronged attack on spending and the deficit:
1. A balanced budget amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America that will do what the Gramm-Rudman Act was supposed to do: if the Congress is unable to agree upon a budget that is in balance then all spending will be cut across the board until the budget is balanced. For more details see Appendix A of this Contract.
2. An amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America that prevents Congress from creating any new program that requires spending unless the proposed bill passes with a vote of at least 2/3s of all members.
3. An amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America that all taxes in aggregate shall never exceed 10% of GDP. Should taxes ever exceed expectations in any given time frame than the excess shall be promptly returned to the people who paid it in the form of a refund. Should taxes ever fall less than expected than the government will reduce spending according to the requirements of 2(a) above, and Appendix A.
4. An amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America prohibiting Congress from creating what are commonly known as “unfunded mandates,” which will prevent Congress from creating laws that effectively raise taxes without being accounted for in the government budget.
3. National Defense is the priority of any sovereign nation, particularly the United States in an era where other nations have abdicated their responsibility to their own security, for whatever budgetary reasons they have. Therefore keeping a strong and constantly modernizing national defense in place will always be my primary responsibility.

Without that, I will not cast a vote for anyone for President of the United States. If Senator McCain or anyone else signs his or her name to such a contract they will get my vote in the coming election.

I'm just one vote, but I think you'll find that there are millions of conservatives just as frustrated with John McCain and the Republican Party as I am.

Lastly, I would ask people to think about the points in the contract above. And think about this: I don't care about "abortion" as a political or legal issue. Killing an unborn baby is wrong, even to the point of murder, but criminalizing pregnant women is just obviously (to me) wrong. I believe in life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and that means people are free over what they do with their own bodies, even if they are carrying a life around inside them. Although the anti-lifers out there should ask themselves if anything should be done about the mother who abuses her infant by snorting cocaine during pregnancy, much less murdering the baby. But I do not care about abortion as a political issue. I hate busy bodies who want to tell other people how to live and what to do more than just about anything on the planet, whether they are members of a fanatical religious sect or members of Moveon.org.

Am I an extremist?

I won't be triangulated because I believe that certain ideas like individual freedom are more important than whom gets elected President. President Bill Clinton could be evidence that those he triangulated on the left are missing a key attitude towards what really matters.

into the Oval Office most conservatives will flock to John McCain and so too will all of the more moderate republicans remaining in the Party.

Then, too, millions upon millions of enraged mainstream democrats are either not going to vote in this election or WILL come over to the Republican Party rather than see the presidency go to Obama. They are just HAT angry over being labeled by the DNC and the mass media as old-White-trash voters.

McCain doesn't have to promise conservatives a damn thing because Obama is a greater horror to them than McCain could ever be.

Still, it's impossible to know who will do what and which way this race will go. All we know to this point is that the nomination process was deliberately rigged in Obama's favor by a corrupt DNC and that the national press has vigorously been campaigning for Obama at Hillary's expense.

Whether or not the national press will continue to campaign for Obama in the general election is anyone's guess; although I fully expect them to begin switching their favorable interpretation of events in McCain's favor and begin turning against Obama.

Still, only time will tell.

Obamacrats, of course, think that it's already a done deal for Obama and that he is going to cake-walk his way into the presidency.

If he does, of course, he will then be about as effective a president as was Jimmy Carter. Now THAT would be interesting.

Respectfully, I think you're buying into the hype. No doubt, Senator Obama is as far left as it gets, but Senator Clinton is too. But the minute the nomination battle is over every last one of the newspapers, magazines, and networks that pretended to back McCain in 2000 and this year will turn on him as if they just discovered how old he is, his role in the Keating 5, and his hypocrisy when it comes to campaign finance reform. They will also begin to drop insinuations that no man can go through what he went through without having a screw loose, and are we sure we want a brainwashed torture victim with a helluva temper to have his finger on the button.

As much as I revile Senator McCain, I do not think the latter insinuations are fair game, but they will be part of the drumbeat whether any of us approve or not. And his hypocrisy in office, his willfull abandonment of the core ideas that lead to supply side theory and conservative policy in general, while simultaneously wrapping himself in the mantle of "true conservatism" are so repugnant to me that they far outblast the sypmathy his opponents could generate within me.

You may be right, he may not need his conservative base. But it's not going to be as easy as you describe. I'm that last person that believes Senator Clinton is within telescopic range of giving up. She's going to personally visit all of the Super Delegates with scissors in hand and an FBI file in brief case; they'll be speaking soprano and coming up with grand canned statements about why she's the only one who can beat Senator McCain in the general. Either way, from my perspective on the dangers of modern liberal socialism, we're screwed.

The one thing I will say: unlike any on the left who were successfully triangulated by President Clinton during his two campaigns, I hope conservatives like me take it as liberation rather than relegation. We're free to stop defending wobbly Republicans in the hopes they might grow some spine from it. My God if they had a single person on staff reading what has been going on on the Internet for the past decade they might have taken more of a taste of conservatism. How many web polls have I seen CNN, MSNBC, and all the other leftist outlets put up, the results of which came back 90% slanted to the right? It's evened out a bit over the last several years, but if Republican politicians only opened their eyes they'd see a whole universe of support from the right. All they had to be was true to some basic ideas and principles.

But listen to me. I'll stop whining. We're free now and that's comforting.

feel the same way as you, as they realize how determined the DNC has been to throw the nomination to Obama. There is a sense of, 'Well, we are free now. The Democratic Party has turned its backs on us after spitting in our faces and so . . . Helloooooooo John McCain.'

There is an interesting reason for this possibility. You and I both know that no one can predict, other than through pure luck, precisely what will or will not occur as a campaign season progresses, but one can always bear in mind some interesting and important factors. I know that the Right considers Hillary dangerously liberal, but . . the . . . Left . . . does . . . not . . . consider . . . her . . . liberal . . . at . . . all . . . in . . . comparison . . . to . . . Obama.

This is one reason -- aside from deliberate press activities and the corrupt DNC -- that Obama is winning. He is the real deal so far as far left liberalism is concerned and being handed the nomination is his reward. It is also going directly against the wishes [as proven by the voting patterns] of those mainstream democrats that are beginning to feel that they have been thoroughly jobbed.

Therefore, regardless of the Right's perceptions of Hillary's liberalism, mainstream democrats think of her and John McCain as very nearly being two peas in a pod. They are far more likely to cross over and vote for McCain at this point -- or abstain from voting altogether -- than they are to vote for Obama and the DNC that blatantly rigged the nomination process for Obama.

Liberals really DO consider both Hillary and McCain to be moderates. Oh my!

So, yes, only time will tell. I may very well be [I probably am] whistling in the dark here, but it will be very interesting to see how the general election unfolds.

1. I agree about term limits. My ideal politician is a guy who has a life, does well in it, takes some time for a public service sabbatical, and then goes back to his life.

2. Same for the BBA. Politicians have demonstrated that we're asking too much of them to be fiscally responsible when so many things are pushing them in the other direction.

3. For taxes, I believe in the Fair Tax. Combine it with a BBA and you have something with teeth. Rewwards saving, and frees up capital.

4. National Defense: Freeze spending at current levels (including ALL defense spending, not just DOD) and take as long as it takes to scrub the books. Right now nobody (literally) has any idea where the money goes, so Congress is unable to discharge its oversight duty, and it has been thus for decades.

Then proceed as follows:

Does it not make much more sense to assess the actual threats the country faces, to determine the optimal means of meeting or deterring these threats with a sufficient degree of confidence, and then to add up the costs of obtaining the stipulated means? Whether this total amount happens to be 1 percent or 20 percent of GDP is entirely beside the point, which is to protect the American people from potential, likely, external attackers. Once an adequate defense program has been designed and its components priced, the military leadership can present the total bill to Congress and defend it by showing, item by item, why each of its elements is necessary to achieve the desired degree of national security. Higgs

Gotta go. More later. Thanks for the thread.

I've enjoyed your responses. You reminded me of the time someone had the bright idea to approach Coopers & Lybrand about auditing the federal government's books. In spite of the lucrative multi-year contract, they had to refuse. After just a cursory examination they realized that the task would be impossible for them without raising an insurmountable specter of liability. I'd imagine auditing the military would be equally difficult, if not more so, because of the necessity to balance security with openness.

The military holds all of the same downsides for me that any government bureaucracy does. I think part of controlling spending and power grubbing should be the constant effort to minimize bureaucracy. I agree with you that we should eliminate the current education bureaucracy.

But the military and national defense is just a core necessity for a nation. It does not exist, nor does the government have a function, without it. Furthermore, looking at the long history of fallen empires and failed efforts at Democracy (so many times now in Africa), once you have a system where the military and police forces are in place in a way that the emperor is not at risk of having his head lopped off by the nearest general, and yet those forces are strong enough to repel all invaders, then you have a rare thing on your hands.

That said, asking for appropriate books should be a matter of course rather than the impossibility it seems to be. This holds true for all of government.

I would agree with much of what you say, provided that the R&D budget is high, and there's room in it for "Classified" operations where a small committee of congressmen have clearance and the strictest non-disclosure oaths in history, and receive full disclosure.