The election

Loyal readers must recognize that I've blogged a lot less about the 2008 presidential election than I did about 2004. Partly, this reflects the fact that this election is not going to be as close as the last two. At least that's what the polls, the experts, and the insiders are saying.

Second, while I cannot imagine voting for John McCain for President, I've admired some of his previous "straight talk" on policy questions. He was "my favorite Republican" during the early aughts, before losing that title to Chuck Hagel and Ron Paul.

A large part of my problem with McCain 2008 is that he's backed away from the "maverick" positions I admired in the first place. Contrary to his current position, McCain originally opposed the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy, favored diplomacy towards all sorts of dubious states, fought the administration's policy of indefinite detention, supported the moratorium on coastal oil drilling, supported mandatory cap-and-trade proposals to fight global warming, etc. There's a comprehensive list of McCain "flipflops" here.

Even though I'm not writing as much about the election, I've still been following it very closely (at least that's what I told Rasmussen yesterday when I was polled over the telephone). I read the blogs linked in the first paragraph (or on my blogroll) and remain quite interested in the campaign minutiae, such as newspaper endorsements.


Visit this blog's homepage.