Bill Kristol beat me to the punch. After it was clear that John McCain would be the GOP nominee for president, many conservatives assuaged their frustration by saying that McCain would be acceptable if he kept to his word on judges and borders, AND if he picked a suitable running mate. In my view, it would be hard for conservatives to do better than Bobby Jindal . Why Jindal?

● He's brilliant. He graduated from high school at 16 and he's a Rhodes Scholar.

Granted, Paul Krugman is a Hillary supporter, but it looks clear to me that Obama's campaign dishonestly used a quote in Krugman's op-ed as it relates to the federal gas tax. Michael Dobbs has an excerpt of the ad. To be fair, he says that both campaigns "have been stretching the facts" on this issue. I've come to expect fact-stretching from Hillary because it's been a common occurrence ever since Bill Clinton trotted out the lie in 1992 that we had the worst economy in fifty years.

That seems to be the gist of David Harsanyi's editorial in The Denver Post on the economy.

I see his point. He's right. By any normal measure, what we are experiencing is hardly new, unique, unlikely not to happen again and yes, it has happened before....but most importantly, according to Harsanyi, it's not as bad as it seems....in spite what everyone is saying, being told and being told to think.

Promoted by Brendan

John McCain has introduced legislation to the Senate to temporarily eliminate the federal gas tax. Hillary Clinton was quick to jump out in support of this “Gas Tax Holiday.” I thought her opinion was that Republicans don’t have any good ideas? Well, if she sees this as an example of a Republican good idea, then her judgment is even worse than I expected. But I suspect both McCain and Clinton know that this is not a good idea. It’s an idea that sounds good to the average American, though, so it scores them political points. At least Barrack Obama recognizes it as a bad idea. He should know, since it was tried on a state level in Illinois in 2000, while he was a Senator there. (He voted for it at the time, but when legislation was introduced to eliminate the tax permanently, Obama voted "no.")

Tyler Cowen has an utterly superb piece about his thoughts as a spectator of the "Democratic Spat" between Clinton and Obama...as well as the reality of hard knuckled, identity-politics political fights, what they really mean, how truly unpleasant it is and how little it has to do with policy differences

Pundits and commentators have made much hay out of the demographic trends in the Democratic primaries. This is really to be expected given the candidates and their policy. Never have voters had to choose between a woman and a biracial (yes, Virginia, Obama's mother is white and from Kansas -- it doesn't get much whiter than that) man. Given the haphazard coalition that the Democrats have cobbled together to form a working majority, it would make sense that identity politics would take center stage, especially so in this historic election.

"The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should," McCain said. "I've got Greenspan's book."^{1 ,2}

McCain is a solid Senator when it Tabela comes to fiscal matters. He opposes wasteful spending; as John posted yesterday he has no pork projects, in contrast to the Democratic candidates. He opposed the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts, saying (Edit: in 2001) that "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." But his current platform is inadequate to address the challenges currently facing America, and he betrays a fundamental lack of economic understanding as to the pros and cons of tax cuts.

My last post dealt with seven untruths that have come out of the mouth of Barack Obama. The Economist has found three more :

On the whole, the mainstream media is so bedazzled with Barack Obama that it won't do its job in holding the Illinois Senator accountable to his words. That job is left to the fact checkers, the blogs and Friends of Hillary and Bill. No wonder Bill Clinton is so angry. Obama's getting away with it and Team Clinton is not. When Obama started his campaign, he promised a new kind of politics, but what we've actually seen--especially in the last month--is a growing pile of old-style untruths. Instead of a new way, we're getting the Chicago way. Let's recap:

Here . Card of course is no liberal, so it's interesting to see his take. Certainly feel free to weight the relevance or importance of his view as you see fit. Also I have to admit I'm posting this partially for Ender, since Card is most known as the author of Ender's Game ;-)

On Wright and what it means for Obama, he strongly condemns Wright's statements but agrees with Obama not disowning his friendship with the man:

GMU economist Peter Boettke is yet another to come out with a mixture of critique and puzzlement about the Obama campaign. Like others who've commented on this before him, particularly of a libertarian bent, he has a great respect for Obama's economic advisers and I'm sure he's referring to chief adviser Austan Goolsbee even though he doesn't mention him by name.

Apparently more than a few northeast Ohio Republicans decided to cross over in the March 4th primary and presumably vote for Hillary Clinton by choosing a Democratic partisan ballot.

We're used to hearing about partisans trying to game the system by voting insincerely for a candidate that they don't support. Democrats attempted exactly the same thing in Michigan by voting for Mitt Romney since they knew their votes for President would not be counted due to DNC rules. But Ohio law is very different from Michigan law regarding the procedure in primary elections.

I found this inter-blog debate in the wake of the Obama's race speech interesting. Allow me to narrate.

First, the provoceurs, Will Wilkinson and Megan McArdle

Will (in a nutshell):

Along with the Spitzer story, the Wright story is one that I've noticed being forced into the role of a big deal and exciting story while personally finding the Celebrity Rehab Reunion far more interesting...and I didn't think that was possible. :)

I really don't care in either case. But I don't pick the news cycles.

Anyway, Ezra Klein stuck a cord of incredible common sense on this matter and asks a good and simple question: (emphasis mine)

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RealClearPolitics has the latest polls up:

In Ohio, on the Dem side, we have the latest polls showing a decent but vulnerable lead for Clinton.

The RCP average is Clinton +6 approx. And Reuters/Zogby is the exception of the latest round in that Obama is leading (by 2 points). Barring a late surge or a huge error in data, Clinton seems poised to take Ohio.

In an earlier post, I endorsed Barack Obama as the best choice for Democratic nominee, but that doesn’t mean I think he should be president. The two most important issues for me are the economy (which I’ll address in a later post) and the War against Militant Islamism, and the most important part of the war is Iraq. I have serious problems with Obama’s "plan" and statements and political record on the subject.

Promoted by John

McCain is delusional, Nader is pathetic. Now that this is settled, let's just put a Democrat in the White House.

Seriously, McCain recently criticized (his interpretation of) Obama's proposed Iraq policy , on the basis that if we leave, Al Qaeda will take over Iraq.

if we left they wouldn't be establishing a base, they'd be taking a country.

I happened to stop by and see my folks this weekend as is usually my custom and it is amazing how the conversation has changed in the last month. Originally we discussed the remote possibility of Senator Obama getting elected, then whether his agenda included black issues and would whites vote for him, and now as he is continuing to win a much more ominous question is being discussed. I wish I could say these conversations were only limited to my parents, but unfortunately they aren’t. The question and concern starting to arise among many blacks in America and maybe worldwide is the safety of Barack Obama.